[ATI cards] Anyone tried Catalyst 10.10's yet w/ ArmA 2 & OA?

[Ripsaw5165 10]

If so, any improvement over 10.8? Or problems?

[Rich_R 1087]

It looks like you and I were posting about the same issue and question.

In my post while the performance has improved, the texture and LOD problem has reared its ugly head. If I can't find anyway to fix it, I'll just go back to the 10.4' which seemed to work best for me.

[kklownboy 43]

no no real performance improvement.

The best performance improvement you can get is to run the most recent BetaOA patch.

So what are your System specs? Running CF?

[Ripsaw5165 10]

My system specs are an HP DV7-2270us notebook.

Core 2 Quad Q9000 (2.0Ghz) <lol>

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 w/ 1 gig ram

7200rpm Seagate 500Gigabyte SATA2 (?) hard drive

17.3" 16:9 display (1600x900)

4 gigabyte system ram

Win 7 64bit

Onboard RealTek sound (yeah, crappy)

No CrossFire for me, due to notebook.

[5133p39 14]

I am running on 10.10 now, and i can't see any difference from 10.6 or 10.8.

It feels the same - game runs ok, its playable, there is no more to say about that.

If the question is "will new drivers make the game magicaly faster and smoother?" then i think no.

New drivers may solve some issues you could be having such as not working crossfire, or some visual glitches, but it will never make the game faster - that's up to BIS to optimize the game code (if there is any space left for optimizing).

[duckmeister 10]

5133p39, the issue isn't that the game isn't fast enough, the issue is the huge amount of LOD trashing or otherwise low-quality, slow-switching texture LODs that is an issue only present on ATI cards using drivers later than 10.4.

[xeno 234]

5133p39, the issue isn't that the game isn't fast enough, the issue is the huge amount of LOD trashing or otherwise low-quality, slow-switching texture LODs that is an issue only present on ATI cards using drivers later than 10.4.

Yep. Ugly as hell. 60 FPS and lowres LODs.

Xeno

Edited October 28, 2010 by Xeno

[5133p39 14]

ok, i understand, but i do not experience such things (well, i do, but not more than before with older drivers).

Sometimes i see a bush not exactly far away, which is rendered in lower detail than i would expect in that distance, but it doesn't happen often enough to make it annoying for me.

The grass (on Chernarus) thats a different thing - there i have lot's of Lod switching when moving.

When i make even one step forward, some parts of the grass in front of me are like switched to not only different LOD, but sometimes it seems like to a completely different type of grass (taller/smaller/different color/ take your pick).

But i had this issue ever since i run ArmA for the first time, so i guess this is not what you are talking about?

edit: but the grass problem seems to be related to its LODs, because when i set terrain detail to highest, then it gets better (still some switching, but not that apparent).

[vivadiga 10]

ok so we the should use 10.4,anyway im running now 10.9 and seem not bad but my pc is very very good(i7 950,5870 etc.) plus since when i disabled windows page file (i have 8 gb ram) texture trashing seem almost gone.but i think ill try drivers 10.4.thx 4 share info guys

[kklownboy 43]

5133p39, the issue isn't that the game isn't fast enough, the issue is the huge amount of LOD trashing or otherwise low-quality, slow-switching texture LODs that is an issue only present on ATI cards using drivers later than 10.4.

I dont have that issue with 10.8/10.9/10.10 hotfixes.

And the LOD issues are on all cards NVDA too. The LOD issues are fixed in the BetaOA patches. Also LOD issue will happen if you havent enough FB for the Rez/IQ your using.

---------- Post added at 08:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 AM ----------

ok so we the should use 10.4,anyway im running now 10.9 and seem not bad but my pc is very very good(i7 950,5870 etc.) plus since when i disabled windows page file (i have 8 gb ram) texture trashing seem almost gone.but i think ill try drivers 10.4.thx 4 share info guys

No you should use the 10.10c.

The older drivers are for the older 4xxx cards But I am on the 10.10c's and the latest Beta 74630 and the game is great. Haven't had any lod issues (CFX 4870x2's)

---------- Post added at 08:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 AM ----------

ok, i understand, but i do not experience such things (well, i do, but not more than before with older drivers).

Sometimes i see a bush not exactly far away, which is rendered in lower detail than i would expect in that distance, but it doesn't happen often enough to make it annoying for me.

The grass (on Chernarus) thats a different thing - there i have lot's of Lod switching when moving.

When i make even one step forward, some parts of the grass in front of me are like switched to not only different LOD, but sometimes it seems like to a completely different type of grass (taller/smaller/different color/ take your pick).

But i had this issue ever since i run ArmA for the first time, so i guess this is not what you are talking about?

edit: but the grass problem seems to be related to its LODs, because when i set terrain detail to highest, then it gets better (still some switching, but not that apparent).

You have enough Frame Buffer to handle High settings (still dependent on screen rez and VD) with your 5970.

[Ripsaw5165 10]

How do you discover what amount of Frame Buffer your card has? Is there a way to determine the Frame Buffer on my HD 4650 card? Sounds like the 10.4 drivers might be better for my 4650 (?...)

One other question, if you can... if one applies the beta patch, is there a way to unpatch or remove the beta patch besides doing a complete re-install of the game if for instance the beta patch introduces something undesirable and you want to fall back to the 1.54 version?

[kklownboy 43]

How do you discover what amount of Frame Buffer your card has? Is there a way to determine the Frame Buffer on my HD 4650 card? Sounds like the 10.4 drivers might be better for my 4650 (?...)

Basically its your Video RAM amount.

One other question, if you can... if one applies the beta patch, is there a way to unpatch or remove the beta patch besides doing a complete re-install of the game if for instance the beta patch introduces something undesirable and you want to fall back to the 1.54 version?

Betas can be just deleted. They do not affect the current .exe version. They(betas .exe) are ran instead. Go into the Beta forum and chk it out.

[duckmeister 10]

I dont have that issue with 10.8/10.9/10.10 hotfixes.

And the LOD issues are on all cards NVDA too. The LOD issues are fixed in the BetaOA patches. Also LOD issue will happen if you havent enough FB for the Rez/IQ your using.

No you should use the 10.10c.

The older drivers are for the older 4xxx cards But I am on the 10.10c's and the latest Beta 74630 and the game is great. Haven't had any lod issues (CFX 4870x2's)

You have enough Frame Buffer to handle High settings (still dependent on screen rez and VD) with your 5970.

I have a 5970, so I have more than enough VRAM for "very high" at 1600x1200. Also, I'm not one for trying the beta patches, so I guess I'm waiting until the next official patch comes out. I'm very glad to know that it's fixed in the beta patches, though.

[Rich_R 1087]

Decided to go back to the 10.4 drivers. Aside from the texture and LOD problems with Arma 2, I saw the same pinkish hue others complained about on the ATI forums.

Heres the thing, downloaded the 10.10 profiles and saw the OA benchamrk jump by 4 fps. Interesting.

[Nutlink 10]

Decided to go back to the 10.4 drivers. Aside from the texture and LOD problems with Arma 2, I saw the same pinkish hue others complained about on the ATI forums.

Heres the thing, downloaded the 10.10 profiles and saw the OA benchamrk jump by 4 fps. Interesting.

To get rid of the pink hue all you have to do is open up CCC, then go to the top right where it says Options, then select Preferences, then Restore Factory Defaults. Then adjust to whatever you normally use. This seems to work for everyone so far, myself included.

[thedudeabides 40]

To get rid of the pink hue all you have to do is open up CCC, then go to the top right where it says Options, then select Preferences, then Restore Factory Defaults. Then adjust to whatever you normally use. This seems to work for everyone so far, myself included.

Nice one, worked like a charm. Thanks for the tip

[5133p39 14]

You have enough Frame Buffer to handle High settings (still dependent on screen rez and VD) with your 5970.

What exactly do you mean?

I know my question is probably irrelevant to the problems ppl are trying to solve here, so please forgive me, but i dont understand what you are saying - i have also only 1GB of memory - same as Ripsaw5156, so why do i have "enough frame buffer" and he does not?

[Rich_R 1087]

To get rid of the pink hue all you have to do is open up CCC, then go to the top right where it says Options, then select Preferences, then Restore Factory Defaults. Then adjust to whatever you normally use. This seems to work for everyone so far, myself included.

I saw that fix, but couldn't get around the LOD and texture issues, so there really was no point to fix the pink hue.

The point of this story (and every driver release since 10.4) is the disappointment with ATI over the quality of drivers. This is the first time owning an ATI card (or in this case two) for gaming and my amazement at the hardware they've pulled together with the resulting performance is ruined by the driver support. This comes from both the drivers themselves and how difficult ATI makes it to install.

Not only am I very happy for those that are using the 10.10's, but envious of the performance boosts. But with my system throwing up the texture and LOD problems, I'll just carry on with the 10.4's.

Thanks for your input though.

[Ulanthorn 10]

Hello,

I noticed that on my AMD 6000+ dual core CPU with Sapphire 4870 1Gb I get much less LOD switching when using the command line parameter "ex-Threads=3" in the shortcut.

the driver version makes no difference, I update monthly (but may stop doing so now since there are no more changes in the new drivers that affect older 4xxx cards)

[Richey79 10]

Finally updated from 10.4 to 10.10 (every other time I tried to do it, it trashed my machine and somehow told my bios to look for the active partition on the wrong harddrive - thanks ATI :angryfire: Yes, I know to clean out the old drivers and install using cmd). Didn't bother with b or c, because I got the impression they were solely for the benefit of the new '6' series cards.

Doesn't really seem any worse in regards to LODs etc. Maybe the framerate is a bit smoother. I've got 6 gigs of RAM and run without a page file. For the first time I'm now occassionally getting a black 'receiving' screen. CrossFire seems to sometimes throw a wobbler and drop a frame - maybe it's something to do with not using vsync. I don't have to use -flush too often with more recent builds of OA/ATI drivers.

I'm not running into enough issues to go through the hassle of stripping the drivers and going back to 10.4.

ATI 4870 x2.

my amazement at the hardware they've pulled together with the resulting performance is ruined by the driver support. This comes from both the drivers themselves and how difficult ATI makes it to install.

I don't seem to remember their drivers being nearly this troublesome before 10.5, apart from issues with individual games (which are to be expected). ATI seem to have a mindset of only really supporting a card series until the moment the next one is released these days, in their rush to compete properly with NVidia. I don't expect to get significant performance enhancing driver updates anymore for my card, but I also expect them to test that their drivers are actually going to install properly and not break what was previously working well.

Edited October 30, 2010 by Richey79

[kklownboy 43]

...

.. and run without a page file. For the first time I'm now occassionally getting a black 'receiving' screen....

run with a Page and it should go away.

[bangtail 0]

Yah, please, people who tell you that running without a PF is ok are seriously misinformed.

In very specific situations,maybe, but as a general rule, it should be enabled.

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

Yah, please, people who tell you that running without a PF is ok are seriously misinformed.

In very specific situations,maybe, but as a general rule, it should be enabled.

i was one of them that adviced turning off pagefile's.

that was bevore the -exthreads=4 command.

and it worked, the gameplay was much better (no stuttering)

but since the -exthreads=4 command it doesnt work anymore

u will get out of memory issues instead.

[bangtail 0]

i was one of them that adviced turning off pagefile's.

that was bevore the -exthreads=4 command.

and it worked, the gameplay was much better (no stuttering)

but since the -exthreads=4 command it doesnt work anymore

u will get out of memory issues instead.

It makes Windows unstable because certain programs don't function properly without it (among other things).

I've never had to disable my PF to get decent performance in ArmA 2 and that's on any system I've ever run it on (they aren't all as high end as the ones in my sig).

[Ripsaw5165 10]

i was one of them that adviced turning off pagefile's.

that was bevore the -exthreads=4 command.

and it worked, the gameplay was much better (no stuttering)

but since the -exthreads=4 command it doesnt work anymore

u will get out of memory issues instead.

AFAIK, valid values for exThreads are as follows:

0 -- turn off all threading

1 -- thread files only

3 -- thread textures and files

5 -- thread geometry and files

7 -- thread all (geometry, textures, and files)