ATI 4850/4870

[odjob 0]

Thought we should have a thread about these new cards  

I got a Saphire 4870 and using the 8.6 drivers. Havent tinkered to much with Arma yet but its an improvement over my "old" 8800gts 640mb. Running 1680x1050 with all on high exept aa on low gives me ~35fps in a heavy DAC battle.

Anyone tried the beta driver from ati?

E6600 @3.0

2 GB

P5B Dlx wifi/ap

Saphire 4870

X-fi

Vista32

[Nowyoudie 0]

I have the same board as yours. I'm biting the bullet on a 4870 as soon as I can, but the gosh darned taxes on Newegg rape the total cost.

[cjph 0]

Hi

I read on another thread (GTX 280 iirc) that nubbin77 had got a 4870 and would post back their results once they had had a chance to use it.

I'm an 8800GTS 512 user - keen to see if the faster memory and compression algorithms help with the LOD delays, which I have had since a 7800GS and 8800GTS 320. Drives me nuts . . .

cjph

[nubbin77 0]

I recently got a 4870.  It took me about 3 days of tinkering with driver settings and in game settings, but I'm finally getting to where this card is running acceptably (sp?).

I'm using the 8.7 betas, not having any issues (other then some slowness with texture switching when switching locations (like in cutscenes) but that's pretty minor and only lasts about a second.

I upgraded from an 8800GTX which served me well for the most part (using vista 32).

At first without changing any settings in Arma, my frame rates were horrible... way worse then before, like half of what I was getting before... not a good start.

When I first installed the card (after uninstalling old drivers etc), I had a couple issues which took me a long time to deal with.  

My hard drive was thrashing nonstop for almost 3 days...starting with a virus scan (ok, sure no problem, let that run over night).  That was day 1.  Then the next day the HD was going crazy doing other things... had to look through my process and resource usage - computer was going crazy for days, I figured I had a trojan or something so I got new AV and spyware removal software.  I ended up clean... anyway after 3 days my HD activity finally came back to normal.   Seems odd that vista decided to do whatever the hell it was doing after installing this vid card....

In any case after it settled down, the frame rate was ok, nothing to write home about.  While consistent with my 8800gtx, maybe slightly better, there was an annoying little I don't know how to describe it, almost like the refresh rate was too low.    

In any case, with a lot of tweaking I now feel like its on par in terms of frame rate with the 8800gtx.  The visual quality is superior on this card.  This is where I am not sure that the FPS is only equal to the 8800GTX because the visual quality is better? or is it because I am CPU bottlenecked and it won't get any better for me until thats updated.

My specs are

Asus commando Board (P965)

E6600 at 3.2 ghz

4 GB ram

raptor 150

X-fi

Overall, I'm not thrilled with my purchase.  $300 for a little bit better visual quality was not what I hoped for.  I wasn't expecting a lot, I just figured this card might help me with some of the frame rate dips that I have in certain areas and that this would generally smooth out the overall experience.  

Oh well.  at least I have the start to a new build.

EDIT - also, as I haven't had an ati card since my 9700, I am not up to speed on what are good tweaks for the card. Are there any guides related to ATI cards - particularly any ones that focus on tweaks for arma? If there are settings I come accross that are helpful, I will post them.

One weird thing I have happen is if I set the AA in the drivers, it doesn't matter - the AA is only affected by how I set it in Arma. And AA is having a big effect on my frame rates, which seems stupid to me as this card should easily be able to provide good AA at my resolution (s/b able to do it almost "free")

1280 by 720.

[odjob 0]

Im also on Vista32, i read (somewhere?) that turning of Vistas "indexing" would help with stutters as it keeps reading the hd at random (it seems?).

Well i turned mine off and it seems alot better, i havent done any long sessions yet tho.

To turn indexing of: Controlpanel/Admin tools/Services/Windows Search.

I have Swedish Vista so some items in path might have different names

[froggyluv 2130]

In any case, with a lot of tweaking I now feel like its on par in terms of frame rate with the 8800gtx.  The visual quality is superior on this card.  This is where I am not sure that the FPS is only equal to the 8800GTX because the visual quality is better? or is it because I am CPU bottlenecked and it won't get any better for me until thats updated.

My specs are

Asus commando Board (P965)

E6600 at 3.2 ghz

4 GB ram

raptor 150

X-fi

Overall, I'm not thrilled with my purchase.  $300 for a little bit better visual quality was not what I hoped for.  I wasn't expecting a lot, I just figured this card might help me with some of the frame rate dips that I have in certain areas and that this would generally smooth out the overall experience.  

Oh well.  at least I have the start to a new build.

EDIT - also, as I haven't had an ati card since my 9700, I am not up to speed on what are good tweaks for the card.  Are there any guides related to ATI cards - particularly any ones that focus on tweaks for arma?  If there are settings I come accross that are helpful, I will post them.  

One weird thing I have happen is if I set the AA in the drivers, it doesn't matter - the AA is only affected by how I set it in Arma.  And AA is having a big effect on my frame rates, which seems stupid to me as this card should easily be able to provide good AA at my resolution (s/b able to do it almost "free")  

1280 by 720.

Wow thats kind of disappointing

One of the most worst feelings is getting a new video card only to have it under-perform your last card. Kinda like getting a hot new girlfriend who lacks any erhm... cough... skills.

I doubt it's your cpu as I had a lower e6400 Oc'ed @3.0 running with an 8800gt,2 gig ram, Commando and after ironing out a couple kinks ran Arma pretty damn fast.

How are your other games running? Very curious as I've been watching the VGA battle like a hawk trying to decide myself.

[nubbin77 0]

Other games are running consistently as before (I play mostly older games though - like supreme commander, I just bought the orange box cheap because I was a fan of the original HL and I never bought any of the HL2's, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Stalker). So the 8800gtx was pretty solid for those games as it was - never bothered to benchmark though because they all played smoothly.

With the new card, they all still seem to play well, except again I got a couple odd stutters within HL2, that I wasn't getting with the 8800. I don't know if this is all driver or setting related because I just really don't feel like I spent enough time playing with it yet - and I AM using beta drivers. So I don't want to condemn the card or anything because other people have been very successful with it in other games. Its just, I play arma more then anything else and I was really just hoping to be able to either turn all the settings up and get similar performance as before, or keep them the same and not really ever get a slowdown (except for the missions with lots of units or course as those are cpu dependent).

As I play around some more and get more up to date drivers I'll post back again. I did defrag again last night, but that didn't seem to have much impact either. At least my HD isn't going beserk any more.

[ModaFlanker 0]

Whenever I've played games that have a huge world that you can travel in [as opposed to scripted, shoebox world games where they don't have to worry about you straying too far from what they have laid out for you]...

There has always been the frame rate killer...

WW2 Online comes to mind... you're supposed to be able to go anywhere on the battlefield in Europe without having to load new zones. Newer cards sometimes helped, but there always was that minimum framerate that was extremely hard to make a dent in.

If you look at other games on the market I don't think you'll be as disappointed in the card.

Maybe what you can look forward to is ArmA 2... which will use multiple cores on your CPU [ArmA is single threaded only] and hope that makes the significant difference you are looking for...

About that time ArmA 2 will have to compete with OFP 2... and so as consumers we get to choose what direction we prefer.

[Silves 0]

nubbin77, are you shure that all files from nvidia drivers are out of your system? Sometimes switching from ATI to Nvidia or the opposite, can cause some issues if the old driver is not properly erased.

[nubbin77 0]

Well I did what I know of to get rid of my older drivers.

I suppose I could do a search for "nv".

I know about driver cleaner, but would rather not pay for it. If there are any other tips I should know about regarding removal of old drivers, I'm all ears.

Believe me I am aware of the technical limitations of Arma and OFP, I've been playing since the demo for OFP was released.

There is nothing wrong with the card, I want to be clear about that to everyone. My point was that there wasn't a tangible benefit going from an 8800GTX to the 4870 for Arma. So if anyone is thinking about making that upgrade FOR ARMA, my advise is not to bother. If going from something lower level then an 8800 then it quite probably will be a good upgrade. In addition, like you said if playing other games, then its also a good upgrade - for the most part reviews show ~ 50% improvement over the 8800gtx. So I was hoping to get ~25% improvement in Arma. It just didn't materialize for me. Not the end of the world. I'll keep the card, because I hope to get some newer games this year (like the new Stalker). I could give a rats ass about crysis, which seems to be everyone's benchmark.

Seriously, everyone gives arma a hard time because its not "optimized" or doesn't run well. But for crysis... well that's ok. So people forgive a games performance issues for looking pretty but having little gameplay - but if its not pretty, but offers a full world of possibilities.... Oh well I guess you can't change people.

[rowdied 44]

Well I did what I know of to get rid of my older drivers.  

I suppose I could do a search for "nv".  

I know about driver cleaner, but would rather not pay for it.  If there are any other tips I should know about regarding removal of old drivers, I'm all ears.

Seriously, everyone gives arma a hard time because its not "optimized" or doesn't run well.  But for crysis... well that's ok.  So people forgive a games performance issues for looking pretty but having little gameplay  - but if its not pretty, but offers a full world of possibilities....  Oh well I guess you can't change people.

Try driver cleaner pro, it's free and works wonders.

And I agree with you on crysis, just as many bugs as ArmA when it came out. Seems like arma is everyones favorite whipping boy and ofp2 is going to be the shit beacause they talk the talk and show prerendered cut scenes and it is already 100 times better than arma. What a crock of shit!!

[LFO 0]

i upgraded from an x1950pro to an hd4850. no problems, i always thought that the later ati-drivers run better with ArmA than the nvidia ones.

i could raise AA (box) from 2x to 4x (AF 8x) and still have better fps. max frames are by and large cpu-limited on my machine, but min frames (schmalfelden heavy/ north sahrahni) roughly doubled (from 11-15 to 30-35 in the most dense vegetation).

it might be of some interest for people switching from nvidia to ati that for the best possible image quality you should switch catalyst ai "off". unfortunately the ati AF will still be worse compared to nvidias, but far better than AI "low" or AI "high" settings. you will experience an fps drop though.

btw: when switching from one graphics vendor to another it is really recomended to use driver cleaner. i once got all kinds of weird results switching from nvidia to ati.

edit: i'm using the 8.6 hotfix drivers. i heard that they have slightly better performance than the 8.7 beta.

[nubbin77 0]

Thanks LFO, that's helpful information.

[odjob 0]

edit: i'm using the 8.6 hotfix drivers. i heard that they have slightly better performance than the 8.7 beta.

Yup, im also getting better performance with 8.6 hotfix drivers.

Anyone else on Vista(32) tried to switch off indexing (Windows search)? Since i did not only Arma but my hole system overall feels more responsive.

[Lepardi 0]

edit: i'm using the 8.6 hotfix drivers. i heard that they have slightly better performance than the 8.7 beta.

Yup, im also getting better performance with 8.6 hotfix drivers.

Anyone else on Vista(32) tried to switch off indexing (Windows search)? Since i did not only Arma but my hole system overall feels more responsive.

I always disable it right after formatting, the only thing it does is slow your HDD in order to get little faster searching for files from HDD.

[volkov956 0]

I got a HIS 4870 I dont seem to get the Texture Popping Like did with my 8800GT so I am happy .

Using ATI Beta 8.7 never tried the 8.6w/hotfix yet

[Gertling 0]

Hi, 1st post from me!

After struggling with ArmA and a 8800gt for 7 months, i heard about the new HD 4870 and bought one straight away, and you know what?

Finally i can play ArmA without nasty crashes minutes into the game!

Yay!

I tried everything under the sun (and then some!! ) to get ArmA to run properly with my 8800gt, but to no avail. I had the latest drivers for every bit of hardware, got a new case to help with cooling, got a bigger PSU to ensure sufficient power, got a new mobo to ensure the memoryhandling was ok, etc, etc

But i still got the same nasty crashes thats been reported by other users: a complete freeze with screen turning red(ish) and sound looping resulting in me having to hard-boot.

So finally i can enjoy this game in all it's Triplehead2go-TrackIR glory without having to worry about crashes every other minute!!

Anyway, now over to the point of my post, hehe.

Could someone please explain what settings to use in the ATI control center (and in-game for that matter) to make sure I'm getting the most out of my new card for ArmA?

nubbin77 reported "It took me about 3 days of tinkering with driver settings and in game settings, but I'm finally getting to where this card is running acceptably "

I'm curious as to which settings these were?

I'm running these drivers btw.

Any tips appreciated!

Cheers,

Gertling

[ricnunes 0]

Recently I bought an ATI 4850 and so far I'm very happy with it. It's a huge diference from my previous ATI 1600XT and I can play the ArmA with almost everything on max (and I can run STALKER with everything set on maximum).

The only problem that I'm having with my ATI 4850 while playing ArmA is that while I play with very good FPS I sometimes have ocasional micro-stutters. They don't affect gameplay very much but are a bit annoying and I didn't have this problem with my previous ATI 1600XT.

Currently I have the official 8.6 drivers installed and I did tried the 8.6 Hotfix version for 4000 series but they seem to perform a little worse than the official 8.6 in my PC. Tired also the Beta 8.7 but then were even worse.

I currently run ArmA with Texture, Object, Terrain and Shading in Very High, Postprocess Effect in Low (I hate those Blury Effects, that why I run in low, running in Very High doesn't have any impact in the game's FPS), Anisotropic filtering and Shadow Detail in High, Antialiasing in normal and Blood in High.

So I would like to know if someone is having these same problems (Micro Stutters)? And if yes, did someone managed to solve this problem?

Thanks in advance for replies.

[Supernova 0]

Read this : http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=588&pageid=1

[odjob 0]

The only problem that I'm having with my ATI 4850 while playing ArmA is that while I play with very good FPS I sometimes have ocasional micro-stutters. They don't affect gameplay very much but are a bit annoying and I didn't have this problem with my previous ATI 1600XT.

Since you are now running with higher settings more data needs to be in the graphics memory, i belive that the micro stutters appear when new textures etc is loaded into the graphics memory.

I see this also with my 4870, if i for example from the editor place a unit in paraiso and run around it stutters a little bit at first, but becomes better after awhile when most textures has been loaded.

[ricnunes 0]

Since you are now running with higher settings more data needs to be in the graphics memory, i belive that the micro stutters appear when new textures etc is loaded into the graphics memory.

I see this also with my 4870, if i for example from the editor place a unit in paraiso and run around it stutters a little bit at first, but becomes better after awhile when most textures has been loaded.

Actually I'm running at a resolution of 1280x1024 (my TFT monitor resolution) which isn't that high (for today standards).

But the symptoms that you describe seem to be exactly the same that I experience with my 4850. I don't think that they are normal since for example a friend of mine which owns a Nvidia 9600 is running at similar (and even higher) graphic settings as I am (and my friend runs at a resolution of 1900 x 1200) and doesn't experience any micro stutters.

Really what you mention makes sence and it's what I'm currently experiencing, which is the textures of some objects seem to take a bit too long to load which seems to happen at the same time as when the micro stutters happen but after the textures of an area seem to completly load, NO micro stutters seem to happen again (in that same area and in case the player doesn't leave the area).

So this makes me wonder if this problem isn't related to drivers? Afterall there still aren't any dedicated (certified) drivers for our video cards (4850/4870) available yet. There are only certified drivers up to the ATI 3000 series video cards.

[echo1 0]

So this makes me wonder if this problem isn't related to drivers? Afterall there still aren't any dedicated (certified) drivers for our video cards (4850/4870) available yet. There are only certified drivers up to the ATI 3000 series video cards.

ATI has a bit of a reputation for having driver issues, even with some of their older designs. However, if what youre saying about the lack of 4000 series drivers is true, I'd say that that is the caues of a lot of the problems that people would be experiencing. It takes a while for manufacturers to get out stable drivers for their products (this is true of any piece of hardware, but particularily of graphics cards by both nVidia and ATI). Give it a month and good drivers will dramatically increase your performance.

[ricnunes 0]

Yes, I hope that's true.

But in the meanwhile if someone has the same experiences that I have and managed to solve them, please post here the solutions used.

Thanks in advance for replies.

[manzilla 1]

I have a problem after I upgraded to the 4870. The AI will not respond to my directions and more. Say for instance I start up a mission as leader of a team of AI. Then I issue the first command, it appears on the screen and I hear myself give the command but nothing happens. All commands after the first neither are spoken or appear on the screen and nothing happens.

I'm gonna open a thread about this when I have time, since I do not know for sure whether the video card is the culprit. All I know is that I had serious problems with my 8800GTX, which I posted about countless times in the main v1.14 troubleshooting thread, that were never addressed so I tried the new ATI 4870. After this the AI won't listen or even move and commands won't issue.

I just tried a complete ArmA Gold + v1.14 reinstall and the AI still don't budge.(The problem even occurred when I tried just plain Atari ArmA Gold right out of the box, post fresh reinstall.

It's really the strangest thing I've ever seen. I've been playing ArmA non-stop since first Atari US release and never had this problem. I'll have to try a few more driver updates and if the problem still occurs I'll start a new thread.

Until then, if anyone who reads this post and has seen/heard about this problem please let me no. Any feedback is welcome.

I'll be back.

[Lepardi 0]

So this makes me wonder if this problem isn't related to drivers? Afterall there still aren't any dedicated (certified) drivers for our video cards (4850/4870) available yet. There are only certified drivers up to the ATI 3000 series video cards.

ATI has a bit of a reputation for having driver issues, even with some of their older designs. However, if what youre saying about the lack of 4000 series drivers is true, I'd say that that is the caues of a lot of the problems that people would be experiencing. It takes a while for manufacturers to get out stable drivers for their products (this is true of any piece of hardware, but particularily of graphics cards by both nVidia and ATI). Give it a month and good drivers will dramatically increase  your performance.

These days ati driver support is even better than nvidia's.