[CP5670]

Okay, I finally got my computer working again after RMAing half of the components; it was pretty messed up for the last few weeks, which is why I have not been around here recently. The hard disk and memory were both bad and had to be replaced, but the one good thing was that Maxtor replaced the 160GB drive I sent in with a similar but 200GB model for no charge.

I am planning to upgrade the processor and graphics card. For the latter, I'm thinking of either the Geforce 6800 GT (the BFG one) or the radeon X800 XT (non-PE); that is, when they become more widely available. Anyway, I was wondering if either of these cards have problems with FS2 open, particularly the ATI one. It looks like people have been complaining about ATI's newer 4.5+ drivers breaking specular mapping on some cards, which would be pretty annoying. The Geforces, or some of them anyway including mine, seem to have the fuzzy font issue under certain conditions in D3D, but that is much less of a problem than losing specular lights would be. Once you get used to the specmaps, the game looks ugly without them.

The X800 XT seems to be faster than the 6800 GT though and I am ready to spend some more money for the speed (not really considering the 6800 Ultra because it won't work with my power supply) but I certainly don't want to sacrifice FSO compatibility or be indefinitely stuck with an old driver version. I currently have a geforce3 that works almost perfectly with FSO but chokes with many newer games, so it would be frustrating if I got one of these cards for newer games only to find that FSO doesn't work properly anymore.

(not intending this to be a ATI vs nvidia flamewar; just want to know if any of the new models have issues with FSO)

[WMCoolmon]

You've used the GeForce font fix?

[CP5670]

That gets rid of the random underscore things and chopped up bits but the text is still a bit dim and fuzzy compared to what it's like on OGL or with Glide in the original version. (this is all with AA disabled)

[Bobboau]

go with ATI, the 4.5+ drivers are causeing some problems, but they should go away when we start usieng vertex shaders.

has anybody talked to them abut this?

[RandomTiger]

It looks like Im going to get a 6800 Ultra and Im sure some other coders will end up with X800 cards so any issues with either are likely to be resolved fairly quickly.

[WMCoolmon]

Heh, there's a novel way to get bugs fixed...buy coders new video cards.

Incidentally, a friend of mine ran into a bug in the 6/25 build that his desktop would stay at 1024x768; 3.6 would automatically switch back to 1600x1200.

This was using a Radeon 9600 in Windows XP.

[CP5670]

hmm, it looks like there is no normal XT for AGP, only a platinum XT. There are some (reputable) places selling that one for around $460 which is about what I intended to pay anyway, although I'm going to wait until they actually have some in stock.

Does this driver thing occur for everyone that has an ATI model? It seems that a lot of people are complaining about ATI cards and Neverwinter Nights (my brother has that game, although I never got around to playing it), but almost all of those people also have VIA chipsets and have also been having issues with those. Do the ATI drivers mess up something by themselves or only in combination with something else?

[Bobboau]

the only issue we've had with ATI drivers was recently when they did something that disabled the specular chanel, some probly thoguht they figured out a cool new way to save some power or something

[Trivial Psychic]

Cat 4.7 officials are out today.  I heard that some 4.7 beta still had the shinemap probem, but you never know.