ATI's drivers start to suck again

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by Deathlike2
What I understand from BigBertha is a pretty simple case of miscommunication... which probably is the case...


Huh? You would call 6 months worth of complaints on your #1 forum and fan site, then your patch does not even address the issues because you claim that "we can't reproduce the issue" a mis-communication? Ok....

[Sazar]

Originally posted by BigBerthaEA
Since nVidia does not sell cards directly to consumers like ATI does, then of course they offer no Tech support for their drivers. They DO offer support for their AIB partners as well as the publisher/developer community.

However, please don't tell me that they don't offer support for game issues that they are aware of. Links 2003 (a game which I own but do not play) began having terrible rendering issues with nVidia cards on every driver version that came after the 40.41 drivers (any version before that ran the game just fine). There would be rendering delays of 30 seconds to 2 minutes between shots that normally took 1-5 seconds. This went on for six months and users complained very vocally to MS (the developer of Links Golf) on this issue. Six months after the game released, MS released their only patch for Links 2003 and the patch did not address the nVidia issue at all, among other things the community complained about. The response from the Links development team was they they "could not reproduce the rendering issue". IOW, we aren't fixing it.

Since I have some contacts at nVidia, I took it upon myself to see if I could help the Links Golf community. I took the issue up with the Product Manager for GF4 products at nVidia. he responded immediately that they had never heard of the issue at all and his driver team was completely unaware of anyone from MS trying to contact them about it. nVidia managed to get a few copies of the game and their driver team began to work the issue. Within a couple of weeks the driver issue was resolved. Links users became aware of the fix and they thanked nVidia, not MS for getting the fix to them. They also thanked me for stepping to help out on a game I don't even play anymore. My motivation was simply to help fellow PC gamers get a fix to their game that they were not going to get from their publisher/developer. It gave me a great sense of satisfaction to know that I helped some people enjoy a product that they had quit playing.

I realize this is probably an isolated case, but I am just trying to point out that in some cases a company will support fixing an issue if they know about it.

its a pity ati did not get ANY credit for finding a workaround for the faulty implementation of agp8x standard on mobo's that THEY were blamed for eh :D

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by Sazar
its a pity ati did not get ANY credit for finding a workaround for the faulty implementation of agp8x standard on mobo's that THEY were blamed for eh :D

Yes, I agree with you there.

I hope Terry Makedon gets credit for fixing the water rendering issue with Catalyst and Tiger Woods 2003. he has told me that they have reproduced the issue and should have a fix for that in an upcoming Catalyst release. Kudos to Terry and ATI for that!

[Deathlike2]

I'll take what I said back.. it would look like MS completely ignored the issue and failed to contact NVidia about the problem... although it does sound just typical MS support.. it's a real problem to say the least... that some companies don't make the effort to contact the manufacturer to solve the problem...

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by BigBerthaEA
Since nVidia does not sell cards directly to consumers like ATI does, then of course they offer no Tech support for their drivers. They DO offer support for their AIB partners as well as the publisher/developer community.

However, please don't tell me that they don't offer support for game issues that they are aware of. Links 2003 (a game which I own but do not play) began having terrible rendering issues with nVidia cards on every driver version that came after the 40.41 drivers (any version before that ran the game just fine). There would be rendering delays of 30 seconds to 2 minutes between shots that normally took 1-5 seconds. This went on for six months and users complained very vocally to MS (the developer of Links Golf) on this issue. Six months after the game released, MS released their only patch for Links 2003 and the patch did not address the nVidia issue at all, among other things the community complained about. The response from the Links development team was they they "could not reproduce the rendering issue". IOW, we aren't fixing it.

Since I have some contacts at nVidia, I took it upon myself to see if I could help the Links Golf community. I took the issue up with the Product Manager for GF4 products at nVidia. he responded immediately that they had never heard of the issue at all and his driver team was completely unaware of anyone from MS trying to contact them about it. nVidia managed to get a few copies of the game and their driver team began to work the issue. Within a couple of weeks the driver issue was resolved. Links users became aware of the fix and they thanked nVidia, not MS for getting the fix to them. They also thanked me for stepping to help out on a game I don't even play anymore. My motivation was simply to help fellow PC gamers get a fix to their game that they were not going to get from their publisher/developer. It gave me a great sense of satisfaction to know that I helped some people enjoy a product that they had quit playing.

I realize this is probably an isolated case, but I am just trying to point out that in some cases a company will support fixing an issue if they know about it.

Ok, the obvious problem here is this. We the people have to complain to the game devs and hope they either fix the problem themselves(if it's their code) or tell NVIDIA about it(if its the drivers that are buggy). There is no recourse for normal people to inform NVIDIA of bugs in their drivers, that is the whole problem. Not everyone has contacts like you do and can talk directly to someone at NVIDIA and make them aware of problems so they can fix them.

I totally understand why NVIDIA doesn't offer support of its own, as I said in my original post. However, when board vendors are simply using the NVIDIA reference drivers it seems that the times dictate that consumers need to be able to report driver problems. Otherwise, as it is now, it is basically report to someone and pray that the problem goes away. By your own testament, if you had not intervened the Links2003 problem would never have been solved :( If the problem could have been reported to NVIDIA in the first place then I wonder if things would have been different or not.

[Sazar]

Originally posted by BigBerthaEA
Yes, I agree with you there.

I hope Terry Makedon gets credit for fixing the water rendering issue with Catalyst and Tiger Woods 2003. he has told me that they have reproduced the issue and should have a fix for that in an upcoming Catalyst release. Kudos to Terry and ATI for that!

give them credit when the issue is fixed :) and not before I say :D

kudos for working on it... but till the fix is public and people do not have the problem with it anymore... credit will be likely with held :)

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by Sazar
give them credit when the issue is fixed :) and not before I say :D

kudos for working on it... but till the fix is public and people do not have the problem with it anymore... credit will be likely with held :)

Oh I agree 100%, but for the purpose of this thread, I felt like throwing a bit of good karma towards Terry and ATI for acknowledging the issue and taking it to task to fix it...

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by K.I.L.E.R
I never tried the demo so I can't comment. In the full version, nVIDIA still haven't fixed up the screen flashing problem. I temporarily fixed it up on my NV20, not sure how. I think disabling AA was the culprit for fixing the problem.

If you can get your hands on the latest patch and the full version, please try it out. Can anyone else try it out?

I found Blood 2 full game and downloaded it from abandonware website and downloaded Blood 2 v2.1.233 patch. I noticed it has menu flashing problem and checked forum for solution, I managed to turn VSync by App to off. The game run perfect so it shame here are no more patches to fix tiny VSync problem.

I remember years ago lots of people had problem with Unreal, when Epic released the final patch, some people still have problem, Last year I found some sort of conversion tool in Unreal fan site that port Unreal game levels to Unreal 2. I ran Unreal game on Unreal 2 engine, it has very stunning graphics :D and I played from start to end of Unreal game, Unreal looked very much better with improved graphics on Unreal 2 engine than Unreal 1 engine.

I think it will do the same thing with Blood 2, maybe here somebody already has conversion tool that will port Blood 2 levels to either NOLF engine or NOLF2 engine with improved graphics and maybe it will run on the next JACK engine later this year. I hope somebody will have NOLF conversion tool to port it over on very wonderful NOLF2 engine :D

[Kruno]

I think all the good DOS games should be ported to a newer engine.

I love those old games. I sitll play OMF 2097. Someone should make a similar project like Exult for it.

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
I found Blood 2 full game and downloaded it from abandonware website and downloaded Blood 2 v2.1.233 patch. I noticed it has menu flashing problem and checked forum for solution, I managed to turn VSync by App to off. The game run perfect so it shame here are no more patches to fix tiny VSync problem.

I remember years ago lots of people had problem with Unreal, when Epic released the final patch, some people still have problem, Last year I found some sort of conversion tool in Unreal fan site that port Unreal game levels to Unreal 2. I ran Unreal game on Unreal 2 engine, it has very stunning graphics :D and I played from start to end of Unreal game, Unreal looked very much better with improved graphics on Unreal 2 engine than Unreal 1 engine.

I think it will do the same thing with Blood 2, maybe here somebody already has conversion tool that will port Blood 2 levels to either NOLF engine or NOLF2 engine with improved graphics and maybe it will run on the next JACK engine later this year. I hope somebody will have NOLF conversion tool to port it over on very wonderful NOLF2 engine :D

[Pafet]

...Last year I found some sort of conversion tool in Unreal fan site that port Unreal game levels to Unreal 2. I ran Unreal game on Unreal 2 engine...

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! LINK NOW!!!! :mad: please??:D



back to topic, almost all of the slowdowns reported are the game engiens fault. Z-fighting happens on nVidia also sometimes. a lot of the bugs reported are not critical or rare.
a bug report like this is great if you have problems and don't want to start looking through games forums for your problem.

the stuttering problem sound scary... is it that common?

oh yeah, Blood 2 rocks! :afro:

[infowar]

as i understand it, the ATI "stuttering" problem is related to proprietary texture compression that is lossless, extremely efficient, but ofcourse doesnt work right 100% of the time and causes the stutter problem. ofcourse, the huge savings in memory usage/bandwidth could be a big part of why ati cards benchmark so high. i dont see why this isnt considered 'cheating'. i would much rather have my FPS game run smooth as butter with slightly lower still image quality that's only visible when zooming in several times, rather than have my game hicup and stutter while i'm walking around or aiming the rail gun.

[euan]

Originally posted by infowar
as i understand it, the ATI "stuttering" problem is related to proprietary texture compression that is lossless, extremely efficient, but ofcourse doesnt work right 100% of the time and causes the stutter problem. ofcourse, the huge savings in memory usage/bandwidth could be a big part of why ati cards benchmark so high. i dont see why this isnt considered 'cheating'. i would much rather have my FPS game run smooth as butter with slightly lower still image quality that's only visible when zooming in several times, rather than have my game hicup and stutter while i'm walking around or aiming the rail gun.

Uh?

Have you any basis what so ever yo back up this amazing claim??? :confused:

[The Baron]

Originally posted by euan
Uh?

Have you any basis what so ever yo back up this amazing claim??? :confused:
Sure sounds like FUD to me...

[infowar]

im pretty sure i read that explanation on rage3d posted by catalyst maker himself. seems like a plausible one to me, but if anyone else thinks they can explain it better, please feel free. it deffinately is a real problem that ati representitives have admited to several times in driver release notes and rage 3d technical support posts, whatever the cause of it is.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by infowar
im pretty sure i read that explanation on rage3d posted by catalyst maker himself. seems like a plausible one to me, but if anyone else thinks they can explain it better, please feel free. it deffinately is a real problem that ati representitives have admited to several times in driver release notes and rage 3d technical support posts, whatever the cause of it is.

Link?

[sbp]

r300 is buggiest graphics hardware to date with drivers to "match"
Even worse than the S3 Savage 2000 aka the goatblower? :rofl

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Pafet
AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! LINK NOW!!!! :mad: please??:D


I been searched for the file on my hard disk and couldn't find it, it is frustrated to find it on internet, it seem vanished. :mad: I hope someone who read this still got the tool.

To run Unreal on Unreal 2, you need to install Unreal 2 first and then install Unreal 1, so without the tool, I guess all you have to do is to load Unreal 2 editor console and input commands in the console to execute on Unreal folder to run the game or maybe it will need to execute the models, textures and maps to run.

[otheipion]

Originally posted by infowar
r300 is buggiest graphics hardware to date with drivers to match
That is simply a ludicrous thing to state. R U from Digit-life or what? :rolleyes:

[Sazar]

Originally posted by infowar
as i understand it, the ATI "stuttering" problem is related to proprietary texture compression that is lossless, extremely efficient, but ofcourse doesnt work right 100% of the time and causes the stutter problem. ofcourse, the huge savings in memory usage/bandwidth could be a big part of why ati cards benchmark so high. i dont see why this isnt considered 'cheating'. i would much rather have my FPS game run smooth as butter with slightly lower still image quality that's only visible when zooming in several times, rather than have my game hicup and stutter while i'm walking around or aiming the rail gun.

wow... I must be one of the lucky ones not to have been bitten with the stutter bug.. in 2 iterations of the 9700pro gpu :)

naturally what you say can be proven or backed up ?

or are you really peter glaskowsky looking to redeem himself ?

[Hanners]

Originally posted by infowar
as i understand it, the ATI "stuttering" problem is related to proprietary texture compression that is lossless, extremely efficient, but ofcourse doesnt work right 100% of the time and causes the stutter problem. ofcourse, the huge savings in memory usage/bandwidth could be a big part of why ati cards benchmark so high. i dont see why this isnt considered 'cheating'. i would much rather have my FPS game run smooth as butter with slightly lower still image quality that's only visible when zooming in several times, rather than have my game hicup and stutter while i'm walking around or aiming the rail gun.

:crosseye: :bs:

Welcome to the crazy world of infowar...

[Pafet]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
I been searched for the file on my hard disk and couldn't find it, it is frustrated to find it on internet, it seem vanished. :mad: I hope someone who read this still got the tool.

To run Unreal on Unreal 2, you need to install Unreal 2 first and then install Unreal 1, so without the tool, I guess all you have to do is to load Unreal 2 editor console and input commands in the console to execute on Unreal folder to run the game or maybe it will need to execute the models, textures and maps to run.

didn't find it too.
but look what I did find (http://www.dragonballu.com/index.php) :eek:

[infowar]

i just searched rage3d looking for ANY explanation of the stuttering issue to give a link and couldnt find one. i am sure i read something like i just posted on there a while ago. my post was not meant as fud or disinformation, as i posted before feel free to post whatever you think the real explanation to the problem is. r300 as buggiest card ever was meant as somewhat of an exaggeration, but it deffinately does have some problems that tend to get overlooked in forum posts and reviews. for now i am happy to have nvidia in my computer.

[raysusan]

nothing is perfect:rolleyes:
so far no problem for me yet:D
this is the first time i own ATI
but i still have my ti4600 in my 2nd comp

[creedamd]

Originally posted by infowar
i just searched rage3d looking for ANY explanation of the stuttering issue to give a link and couldnt find one. i am sure i read something like i just posted on there a while ago. my post was not meant as fud or disinformation, as i posted before feel free to post whatever you think the real explanation to the problem is. r300 as buggiest card ever was meant as somewhat of an exaggeration, but it deffinately does have some problems that tend to get overlooked in forum posts and reviews. for now i am happy to have nvidia in my computer.

have you ever even owned a 9700pro? I had the ti4400 and upgraded to the 9700pro and haven't looked back since, they aren't even on the same playing field. The ti4400 is to the 9700pro as the geforceMx is to the geforce3.

No stuttering, no problems. Just image quality at a good speed.

[Hanners]

Originally posted by creedamd
have you ever even owned a 9700pro? I had the ti4400 and upgraded to the 9700pro and haven't looked back since, they aren't even on the same playing field. The ti4400 is to the 9700pro as the geforceMx is to the geforce3.

No stuttering, no problems. Just image quality at a good speed.

No, he hasn't, his last card before the Ti4400 was a Radeon 8500.

To be honest I think even I'd be singing nVidia's praises after moving from an 8500 to a Ti4400. :p