graphics bugs with ATI 4800 series (4850/4870/4890)

[electron-libre 10]

I had this issue.

I own a HD4890 1G.

When I was setting the value from very high to default, the artefacts appeared. (In ARMA and ARMA2)

So I downgraded to Very High again.

But I managed to fix it.

I installed catalyst 9.6

I 've restarted the game after setting the VM to default.

I dont know wich of these two action is the one that did the trick.

But you should try.

First install latest ATI dirvers.

Second restart the game AFTER setting the VM to default.

[householddog 10]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.

For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.

Could be, but then the pci bus is used for more than just loading textures.

Another test I did was stay in the same area. Just running around. I don't get the problem this way. I am pretty sure the pci bus is still used for this.

Anyway I put it in the bug tracker.

---------- Post added at 09:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:26 PM ----------

I had this issue.

I own a HD4890 1G.

When I was setting the value from very high to default, the artefacts appeared. (In ARMA and ARMA2)

So I downgraded to Very High again.

But I managed to fix it.

I installed catalyst 9.6

I 've restarted the game after setting the VM to default.

I dont know wich of these two action is the one that did the trick.

But you should try.

First install latest ATI dirvers.

Second restart the game AFTER setting the VM to default.

Will give it a try, later. Too much time spent testing. Need to do some playing now. :) If others want to give this a try go ahead.

BTW can you post up your arma2.cfg file contents?

[thr0tt 12]

Have you tried doing shift - FLUSH when you get the problem to see if flushing the textures then gives you a start again point till it fills up ?

I tried it when I was using 256 Aperture and it seems to reset the 'timer' before it failed again. Can't be doing that while flying ;)

[householddog 10]

Sorry didn't know about that command.

I imagine it would work though.

How do you do it exactly?

BTW is there a reference site for all these types of commands?

[thr0tt 12]

while in game hold SHIFT and hit the - key (minus) then just type flush (there is no command line for you to see) but if sucessful you wilkl get a message saying flushing textures.

Theres a list somewhere...

[electron-libre 10]

language="German";
adapter=-1;
3D_Performance=93750;
Resolution_Bpp=32;
Resolution_W=1680;
Resolution_H=1050;
refresh=60;
Render_W=1920;
Render_H=1200;
FSAA=0;
postFX=1;
HDRPrecision=8;
lastDeviceId="";
localVRAM=1067663360;
nonlocalVRAM=1878523904;

[Skeptic 10]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.

For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.

I solved this by going from 9.4 on XPSP3 32bit to 9.5 cat on Windows 7 64bit. I'm back to XP now and will test.

AGP Aperture does not apply to PCIe cards.

LINK

What is AGP Aperture size?

Author: W1zzard

Date: 2004-05-16 03:55:36

How big should I set AGP Aperture size in my BIOS?

First of all, AGP Aperture memory will not be used until your video card's on-board memory is running low. That means it will usually not impact your gaming performance because developers are trying hard to not exceed the on-board memory limits.

The bigger your video memory, the smaller your Aperture Size could be. However with later games requiring more and more texture memory a good number seems to be 128MB Aperture Size for all cards with 64 MB to 256 MB Video RAM.

Setting the Aperture Size to HUGE values will not increase performance because this merely sets the maximum amount of physical memory that can be used. It only makes the GART Table bigger because every 4K page has its own entry, no matter if allocated or not.

Setting the Aperture Size to too small values could result in running out of available texture memory especially on a low-mem video card. It is also possible that developers make use of the GART's features by creating textures as 'non-local'.

If you experience in-game stuttering try playing with the size of your Aperture.

What is it from a technical point of view?

When using an AGP card the video memory on the graphics adapter is mapped into the 4 GB memory address space (above the region of the physical installed memory). Any accesses to this memory region are directly forwarded to the video memory, greatly increasing transfer rates. However in earlier days of video cards graphics memory was rather limited and ran out quickly (a single 32-bit 512x512 MIP-mapped texture consumes ~1.5 MB) so AGP added a mechanism to use the system's main memory as additional storage for graphics data such as textures. This is what the AGP Aperture is. Usually directly below the mapped video memory the system reserves a contiguous space of addresses the size of your Aperture (no physical memory will be consumed at this time).

When free video RAM is running low the system dynamically allocates 4K sized pages of system memory for use as AGP Aperture Memory. The problem with this dynamic allocation is that in many cases the pages are spread in a non-contiguous form throughout the physical memory. Accessing these pages directly would hinder performance because of scattering/gathering requiring extra logic. To get around this limitation the GART (Graphics Address Remapping Table) which is implemented in hardware in the Northbridge's Memory Controller Hub provides an automatic physical-to-physical mapping between the scattered pages and the AGP Aperture. See the following illustration:

[householddog 10]

I solved this by going from 9.4 on XPSP3 32bit to 9.5 cat on Windows 7 64bit. I'm back to XP now and will test.

AGP Aperture does not apply to PCIe cards.

Cool let us know. Also, if you could check if it uses the full 1GB on the card. With XP that is. Use atitray tool (if you didn't know already)

Yeah I thought it was a driver issue. I was just seeing if there was a way to get it working on 9.6.

BI is going have a lot of angry Steam users on 9.6 though.

I think he was mainly talking about the bandwidth. 5 in the morning here, though, so i am not reading straight.

To be honest I am no hardware expert. I am a pretty good troubleshooter though. Arma has taught me a lot this week about graphics etc.

Anyone know any got tutorial sites that cover it in a more systematic way?

[kklownboy 43]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.

512mb is default setting

1GB is veryhigh

2GB is cool

4GB is e-P

For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.

Your 512mb "Aperture" is like PCI-E 2X....

The bandwidth of 16X is huge. 8X is good upto 1600/1200 at veryhigh/max filltering. You will want more at higher Resolutions, or you have to go with out filltering/AA.

A ati3850agp is a HD2600/2900pro i would think they would max out with nice fillrate @1024/768 . If you compare to crysis @1900/1200 ,no AA ,medium=18fps

Hello nurse!

[thr0tt 12]

Running at 1024x768 gives me exactly the same error with massive screen corruption... where does that fit in the theory ?

[kklownboy 43]

Running at 1024x768 gives me exactly the same error with massive screen corruption... where does that fit in the theory ?

with the same setting? What is your MB? your running a PhenomII x4?

And your GART driver is? Bios? Did you have to flash your MB to get the AM3 to post?

Edited June 18, 2009 by kklownboy

[thr0tt 12]

Before you comment, this is the ONLY game in my collection of most of the new and old PC games (mainly FPS's) that has this issue. GART is 3.77 as any later it blue screens and ASRock say use 3.77.

It would be so easy to say 'ah its your mobo' becuase I can't replace it at the moment... I await your startling reality check and solution to all my woes... wouldnt it be funny if patch 1.02 fixed the problem...

Specs: ASROCK AM2NF3-VSTA | AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE 3.2GHz | Sapphire HD3850 AGP (Latest Cats) CCC | Corsair - TWIN2X4096-6400C5 4 GB |Samsung 2232BW 22" LCD | X-Fi Ultimate Gamer (5.1) | LiteOn DH20A4P DVD-RW | Saitek Cyborg Evo Joystick | M$ Windows XP Pro SP3

[kklownboy 43]

Ok 3.77, and your Bios?

We can only hope 1.02 has some new fixes to help us where its needed.

[thr0tt 12]

Bios is Version 3.0, the latest for this board.

[householddog 10]

Ok 3.77, and your Bios?

We can only hope 1.02 has some new fixes to help us where its needed.

Its not his bios I have a completely different board and processor. Same issue.

Do some testing before making unsupported claims please.

THanks

[nesponge 0]

another ATI user here (4870) with the same issue...

Had to stop playing ARMA1 for the same reason

going to try the fix now :)

EDIT: nope... still got problems. I'm going to try downloading and installing the latest drivers (9.6)

Edited June 19, 2009 by nesponge

[householddog 10]

another ATI user here (4870) with the same issue...

Had to stop playing ARMA1 for the same reason

going to try the fix now :)

EDIT: nope... still got problems. I'm going to try downloading and installing the latest drivers (9.6)

How much vram on the card?

[nesponge 0]

512mb

EDIT: latest drivers do not help

[thr0tt 12]

I wish someone could sticky the issue, the more people who get the game the more people will have this problem that only effects a small percentage of users so we will start getting loads of posts describing the same problem.

So far some 'workarounds' exist but don't fix the problem, its not an overheating problem on the majority of folk as we have tested the temps.

[nesponge 0]

it seems to be a memory problem of some kind...

Interestingly ARMA 1 and 2 are the only games I have any problem with on my system... even if it turn out to be ATI's problem.

[householddog 10]

The reason I think its a memory problem, is because ati changed something in the memory management. Then this problem occurred. Not an ATI problem IMHO. Games should be programmed to be somewhat device independant.

Nesponge, the advice I gave was for cards with 1GB memory. For a 512 card try Medium or even Low video memory. My mistake. I didn't mention that before. Will edit my posts.

Either way it doesn't look like Arma has very good memory management at all.

Edited June 19, 2009 by householddog

[nesponge 0]

tried it on "Default"

This does not stop the artifacting but does indeed make it less frequent and will sometimes correct itself temporarily.

I will try the lower settings and see if that helps... many thanks

[kklownboy 43]

Its not his bios I have a completely different board and processor. Same issue.

Do some testing before making unsupported claims please.

THanks

i am sry for crapping on your thread, and starting a workup on his computer, my query wasn't for your issue so much but his issue's. With out a doubt veryhigh works better than default or lower for my ATi cards. 2X 4870x2's. I have seen similar tendency's in ARMA1. As for his issue he is most likely saturating his PCI/apg bus, hence the gart(agp driver) bios questions. And can try stuff like "fast writes" ect... Edited June 19, 2009 by kklownboy

[thr0tt 12]

I appreciate the suggestions but I have enabled and disabled about everything and tested including sidebanding, fastwrites, AGP 4x/8x, underclocked, overclocked, increased power to memory, agp, increase PCI latency, removed drivers, tried no CCC, tried fan control 100%, tried with case off, tried standing on one leg, everything in game to low, 1024x768, everything to very high, running in high priority, running in lower priority, trying single, dual and all 4 CPU's, increasing AGP from 66-86Mhz, reducing down to 33Mhz, turning off DEP, turning on DEP enabling selection process, disabling LAN, disbaling Firewall, disabling Antvirus, checking power consumptio, temps, magnitic fields bounding the earth so next thing to do is to encase my machine in 6-8" lead incase there is and sort of interferrence causing this issue in just THIS game.

Did I miss anything ?

And the great news is the 1.02 patch appears to have little in the way of fixes but the 'important' option to disable blur effect wtf ? Looks like me and the other 'few' will have to suffer while the next option to disable somthing is added, yay.

Edited June 19, 2009 by Thr0tt

[kklownboy 43]

veryhigh is working great.

Edited June 19, 2009 by kklownboy