[Nix]

Unless you have the 7800 with 512 MB onboard framebuffer, every card is gonna struggle with FEAR.  Framebuffer DOES matter, but for FSO in particular, 128 should be plenty.  Having more onboard memory Does make a difference for the newest of the new, and Doom 3 if you want to count it.  128mb WAS adequate, that is if you're running Crytek's engine, the Vengeance Engine, Unreal's 2004 engine... but if you want to crank up the details in a more modern engine such as Doom 3, FEAR, or Quake 4, you're going to need more framebuffer to get around the little jerks and skips that you'll get with a 128mb card.  The larger the textures are, the more memory you're going to need to store those textures without slowdown and constant paging from hard disk to RAM to framebuffer.  This was clearly evident with DX:IW and JohnP's high-res texture packages.  The stock textures were way low-res and ran OK when it was released.  Putting JohnP's textures in which may have been twice the size and resolution of the stock textures, caused major performance hits, because there just wasnt enough room for the textures on the card.  Games today are needing more and more framebuffer in order to keep the quality of graphics high. Expect to see this more and more in the future.

[freespacegundam]

Does OpenGL have problems with newer versions of FSOPEN?  I tried it out last night and it worked fine except that the engines of certain fighters became blocks, as well as the energy bolts from my weapons.

[deftonesmx17]

Your 9800 Pro is more than enough for FSOpen. I have a 9800 pro and I can play FSOpen just fine even with 6xAA and 16xAF forced in the CCC. The thing I wonder is, what speed is your DDR ram. Is it PC2100, PC2700, PC3200, etc? Is it dual channel or single channel?

[Nuclear1]

I've got a GeForce 5700LE 256MB that runs FS_Open seamlessly (though this is without adv_effects)

[freespacegundam]

Ugh, now things are just getting ugly.  I've been playing through the main FS2 campaign again, and I'm on the mission at the Knossos where the NTF are trying to enter the portal.  Everything runs fine and dandy for a while, then suddenly I get an error message and it closes out.  I'm running it in D3D8, which was what I normally ran it on, with launcher 5.3, FSOPEN version 3.6.8. 

In answer to your question, I believe the RAM is only Single Data Rate, I'll have to check on the speed.

[CP5670]

3.6.8? That isn't going to be out for a while. Do you mean the 3.6.8 media VPs?

Try using OGL with the latest 2/20 build in the CVS thread, which seems to work pretty well aside from a few minor issues. ATI cards have to use OGL to get specular mapping anyway.

Does OpenGL have problems with newer versions of FSOPEN?  I tried it out last night and it worked fine except that the engines of certain fighters became blocks, as well as the energy bolts from my weapons.

It's actually D3D that has a few problems with newer versions. OGL is generally preferable with these. By "blocks" do you mean the white squares? I think that bug was fixed quite a while ago.

I wouldn't worry about having too little memory on video cards simply because all the cards that can actually use the extra memory come with it, but there are lots of bogus low end cards out there that have a ton of memory (and a very high price) to fool ignorant buyers.

Heh. Glad I got my AGP 6800GT last summer. Prevents the temptation of upgrading while in college.

Actually if you have an A64, you may want to try putting the card on ebay. There are plenty of suckers there who will pay a lot of money for it. If it goes for as much as mine did last month ($320), you would have enough to buy both an EVGA 516 (souped up 7800GT) and an A64 PCIE motherboard to go with it.

[Grey Wolf]

I'm trying to prevent temptation here, CP. Pointing out that stuff doesn't contribute to my goal.

[deftonesmx17]

Ugh, now things are just getting ugly.  I've been playing through the main FS2 campaign again, and I'm on the mission at the Knossos where the NTF are trying to enter the portal.  Everything runs fine and dandy for a while, then suddenly I get an error message and it closes out.  I'm running it in D3D8, which was what I normally ran it on, with launcher 5.3, FSOPEN version 3.6.8. 

In answer to your question, I believe the RAM is only Single Data Rate, I'll have to check on the speed.

I would suggest using OpenGL mode. I find it to run much better than D3D.

The single channel ram might be your main culprit as it is creating a bottleneck.

[freespacegundam]

3.6.8? That isn't going to be out for a while. Do you mean the 3.6.8 media VPs?

Try using OGL with the latest 2/20 build in the CVS thread, which seems to work pretty well aside from a few minor issues. ATI cards have to use OGL to get specular mapping anyway.

Does OpenGL have problems with newer versions of FSOPEN?  I tried it out last night and it worked fine except that the engines of certain fighters became blocks, as well as the energy bolts from my weapons.

It's actually D3D that has a few problems with newer versions. OGL is generally preferable with these. By "blocks" do you mean the white squares? I think that bug was fixed quite a while ago.

OpenGL causes the white squares for me, D3D seems to have no problem with this new version.  I did a fresh install, and that seemed to fix most of the problems, but OpenGL does not like this version for some reason.  And actually I am using the 2/20 build, it just comes up as 3.6.8 so I goofed.  I am using the media VPs though.  I still have some sticking issues, but nothing too serious.

Is the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro supposed to be able to handle OpenGL?  That's what I have, but it doesn't work right, at least as far as FSOpen is concerned.  This is all making me wonder if I shouldn't just buy more RAM and make it a gig, or replace the RAM I have now with dual channel, that might solve some of the problems.

[deftonesmx17]

The 9800pro is fine in OpenGL for me. I am using the latest (6.2) CCC drivers. I am also using goober's 02/20/06 release with the delta 3.6.8 media vp's.

What resolution are you running when using OpenGL? I use 1024x768 with 6xAA and 16xAF forced in the CCC and all is well. The game runs smooth and I have not noticed any white squares. 

As for upgrading to dual channel RAM, you will need to make sure your MOBO supports it. Since I feel we have covered most bases here, maybe you have a slow HDD?

[freespacegundam]

I can't speak for my hard drive, but I'm running it in the same resolution and I get the square problems.  I've tried updating the drivers numerous times, its as up to date as it can possibly be.

6xAA and 16xAF forced in the CCC and all is well. The game runs smooth and I have not noticed any white squares.

Do you mean you're running it in 1024X768x16?  Forgive my ignorance but I know more about the computer than I do about graphic modes.

[deftonesmx17]

I was referring to 6x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering

[WMCoolmon]

To do a "fresh install" of FS2, move everything but

• *_fs2.vp
• *.exe
• data/players/*
• and the fred documentation (data/freddocs?)

to a different directory.

[freespacegundam]

I was referring to 6x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering

I see, I have begun to make said changes now, here goes.

edit: Didn't change a thing, the poor thing stutters even worse now and still has the boxes. 

To do a "fresh install" of FS2, move everything but

*_fs2.vp

*.exe

data/players/*

and the fred documentation (data/freddocs?)
to a different directory.

I took the liberty of saving only my mods, special vps, and my missions by moving them to another directory.  I then uninstalled and reinstalled the game, but thanks for future reference.

[Nix]

Go grab Driver Cleaner from Driverheaven and reinstall your Cats.  Be sure to follow the instructions included with Driver Cleaner to the letter, and you'll be able to rule out a corrupted display driver installation.  Since you're not running a Pentium 2 system, the HDD and RAM speed should NOT be an issue here.  Also, are you putting in specific settings in the CCC panel?  If you set everything for Application Prefrence, you should be able to get around a lot of the problems.  Certain engines absolutely HATE to be forced into a different mode.  Battlefield 1942 is a perfect example of this, as if you forced any kind of setting in the CCC, it'd be all garbled and goofy in-game.  Set everything regarding both D3D and OGL to defaults, and use the OGL rendering mode in FSO, and when you can, get Driver Cleaner and reinstall those Cats.
Another thing, are you using official cats or omegas?  If you can, use official ATI drivers.  Omega/Zeropoint drivers absolutely suck IMO.  I used to like omegas, but I cannot reccomend them today. 

[Descenterace]

I wouldn't go that far.. I have 2GB of ram and a Radeon 9800 and right now I'm finding I have to tune down my graphics for games like Need For Speed Most Wanted and FEAR to be able to play them at a smooth rate.

But the graphics texture RAM isn't nearly as important as the rate at which the GPU can process information and the rate at which data can be shuffled around the card. The speed of the RAM and GPU is more important than the quantity of texture RAM.
The 9800 uses DDR1. Plus, it's getting old; it simply does not have the throughput of the current generation of cards. Modern graphics cards have 3 or 4 times the pixel processing speed of the 9800.
It's not the quantity of RAM, it's the speed of the GPU.

As for needing 512MB of texture RAM to play FEAR at highest detail, that's just rubbish. I've got a 256MB GF7800GTX and FEAR happily runs at maxed out settings. I don't think any games can even make use of a full 512MB of graphics RAM anyway.

[Nix]

Yes, you have the 7800 series Geforce card, OVBIOUSLY it's going to be faster than the 9800 ATI card, more pipes, faster core and memory clock (by far) and such.  For older cards that aren't as fast as yours, more framebuffer is needed in order to process the textures properly, otherwise it's constantly paging from system ram through the bus to the card.  Newer cards today might, *MIGHT* be able to get away with less memory than older cards, due to how fast it will process whats in RAM, but at the time of release, for Doom 3, you'd need 512mb of ram to run efficiently with the cards that were available at the time, as well as the day FEAR was released.  I agree with you that the faster the core processor on the card, the better the performance, but on an older card, which freespacegundam wanted, you'd need a larger framebuffer in order to get better performance on an R360 Core. 

[CP5670]

A large framebuffer will not do anything for performance if the GPU is not fast enough to take advantage of it, except at settings where both cards are getting single digit framerates. There are several old articles out there showing this with the 9800 pro 256MB and the 512MB versions of the X800XL and 6800 ultra. As I said, when buying a new card, the last thing you need to worry about is the amount of memory. Just about anything you can buy will come with at least as much as it can use effectively.

FEAR is simply a performance hog and doesn't run that well on anything but the X1900 cards and dual card setups. It runs decently for me at 1600x1200 (no AA and soft shadows off), but in some areas the framerate just drops like a brick for no reason.

Also, 512MB was never needed for D3's ultra quality mode, despite what id said. The 6800GTs at the time had a pretty small performance hit over high quality, although UQ looked almost identical to HQ so it wasn't really worth it.

[Descenterace]

when buying a new card, the last thing you need to worry about is the amount of memory. Just about anything you can buy will come with at least as much as it can use effectively.

Exactly.

Also, what's with this incorrect use of the term 'framebuffer'? A very tiny amount of graphics RAM is used for storing rendered frames. Even 1600x1200 128-bit rendering only uses 30MB of memory to store one frame. That memory is mostly used as texture RAM, and AGP and PCI-E are both fast enough to upload textures in realtime[0].
Putting 512MB on an older card would have no effect. Besides the fact that the cores just couldn't handle that amount of RAM, the limiting factor simply was not the memory. Graphics memory is a cache to reduce the amount of data passed across the AGP/PCI-E bus. That bus has not really been  much of a bottleneck since the advent of AGP 8x (this may have to do with the presence of 64MB+ being standard since then). Even prior, it wasn't that restrictive since the GPUs of the day were the other limiting factor.
Doesn't matter how you argue it, there is no requirement to have more than 256MB on a current-day graphics card. Maybe in a few months we'll be seeing games that do use that much memory, but not now. Two years ago there was no need for more than 128MB.
Quantity of memory simply isn't the bottleneck.

• The reason for switching from AGP to PCI-E was not upload bandwidth (AGP 8x was never really used to its full potential) but full-duplex capabilities.

[CP5670]

You're right, I meant memory. I was getting annoyed at the framebuffer limitations with supersampling modes while trying to get AA working in FSO and that word somehow was stuck in my head.

The X1800XT and X1900XT/XTX cards actually do benefit significantly from 512MB in a few games (Q4 and COD2), but those already come with 512MB standard and no other current cards get much of an advantage with the extra memory.