ATI RADEON

[BenSkywalker]

Oldfart-

Thanks for sending me those files, I'm going over them now and have to ask if you are running the latest OpenGL.dll file? Some of your values that are set to 1 or 0 have been switched to True or False with the latest patch(which may explain why my .ini is crashing on you). Lokis has the latest patch up if you want to give that a try with my .ini, I will be going through yours line by line and firing up UT to compare unless I can get some more Log and ini files from other Radeon owners. I'll be sending you some email as soon as I can figure anything out(the latest dll file is the only thing I can see without testing).

Fodd3r

"ben the radeon is dx8 compliant. nvidia isn't the one who is soley deciding what goes in. last i checked ms doesn't give up control to anyone. the dx8 compliant specs were released long ago. plus why would ms not put in the radeon features? it makes no sense, they do have a good working relationship."

MS does have complete control of DX8, and they also are putting over one billion dollars into the X-Box, it will match with the NV20's feature set. The DX8 specs have not been released, only certain portions have been stated(and then changed). Will DX8 support the Radeon's features? Absolutely, but DX8 is significantly more advanced then what the Radeon offers(even going by the limited info they have already released). I'm not trying to flame on this, the RadeonII will be the first offering from ATi that may be fully DX8 compliant.

Extension support in DX8 is still an iffy subject, from everything that I have heard, and that is rumors, it is very limited in scope and was a relatively late development for MS. DX9 is looking like it will be the MS API with extension flexibility to match OpenGL.

The Radeon is the closest board to being DX8 compliant, I'm not arguing that. The image quality argument is completely lost to me, which games are supposed to look better? There are tests that measure 3D image quality under OpenGL at least and under those the Radeon does extremely poorly when compared to the nV boards, being roughly equal to that of the V5 or G400 and not close to the class the nVidia's offerings are in. These are pro OpenGL class tests, during actual gameplay I haven't seen a difference with the exception of Quake3 when texture compression is on, though I would be interested in hearing of any games as I haven't had extensive hands on time with the Radeon. Honestly, which games are supposed to look better on a Radeon?

 

[oldfart]

You are right, I had the old file in there. When I upgraded to 4.32, I put the old Loki driver in by mistake.

I put the new Loki in, put your ini file in there. This time it locked up instead of crashed . I'll send you the UT.log from this.

 

[Hawk]

Hey oldfart, sorry, don't read this very carefully...=) I've sold around 40 Radeons I guess...

Mr. Ben...wow, you are so knowledgable (or at least seem to be). Dang, I guess I bought into the Radeon is made for DX8 marketing crap too.

But I do love the Radeon! =)

P.S. The ST3C Path isn't really supposed to work perfect for everyone though, right? It doesn't mean the Radeon sucks at OpenGL if it doesn't work, just that the "hack" doesn't work well enough yet. The best is to just get a Viper II for like 75 bucks if you really want the awesome S3TC in UT.

 

[TAsunder]

After a few days I must say that the Radeon is merely "good" and not great. Most importantly perhaps is that it is significantly slower in UT on some levels than a v3 3000 (although faster on others). I get an average of 40 fps on the galleon level with 32 bit color, Medium world, High skin, and high sound quality at 800x600 and 1024x768. Sometimes it slows down to 23 fps. With the v3 almost all levels were a consistent 45-50. On the other hand, some levels with the radeon average 60 fps. Does anyone have tips for speeding UT up without sacrificing much video quality? I'm running a duron 700 @ 900

I've also had trouble shutting my pc down now that it's installed (the screen goes black with a flashing cursor).

Q3 looks and plays beautifully at 32 bit color, though. I'll keep toying with powerstrip.

The total price (before rebate) was $184 for the DDR 32 meg radeon. $134 after rebate, .. sounds decent to me.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"Does anyone have tips for speeding UT up without sacrificing much video quality?"

Are you running the Loki OpenGL patch yet? Improves visual quality significantly(allows S3TC textures on CD2 to be used on your Radeon) overall and has improved performance for me quite a bit.

 

[Bobstopper]

Where can I find that Loki Patch?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Shameless promotion link. Unfortunately it isn't quite as simple as installing a patch and going, you need to edit certain files, use the settings on the Loki link instead of the ones in the article, they are outdated and as soon as I gather info on a few more boards this will be updated.

After you get it all up, if you have any problems or don't could you please email you UNREALTOURNAMENT.log and UnrealTournament.ini files in you UT/System folder? The issues with the Radeon I'm still trying to figure out a fix for, ATi can fix this with a driver update but I'm not sure the users would be too happy with what it does overall(could result in a nasty performance hit in 32bit color).