Bill Z Bubba

KonekoChan,
The equivalent card to the X800XT on the Nvidia side looks to be either a single 7800GT or SLI-ed 6800Ultras. If you have the AGP version, several folks are going for the 7800GS. If you have PCI-E, then the 7900s are looking sweet.

TheHeroGuy,
I'm not seeing anything in my CCC that would affect standard windows icons. If you're on an LCD, make sure that you are set for the optimal resolution. My 24" wide runs at 1920X1200 on desktop and in games. (Except for games that can't handle it, then I just suffer with fuzziness. If you're on a CRT, I'm not sure what to tell you.

That black screen business...

I find it bizarre. With the HDR effects disabled, there should be, at least based on my current understanding thanks to Wraith's input, no issues what so ever with FSAA either controlled by the game or by the driver.

Yet we get black screens when allowing the game to manage FSAA.

Makes me beging to wonder what else is being pushed through the p-buffer like the HDR effects are. Or if this is something else entirely.

But I can conjecture all day long. Until some representative from Cryptic comes in and gives us an udpate, I'm shooting in the dark as much as I was when I thought CoH/V used SM3.0.

And I refuse to get that kind of egg on my face again.

Anyhoo... if you want FSAA to function as it should, set it in the CCC, and disable water, bloom and depth of field in game. I have yet to have it fail on me set up like this. (I disable FSAA and AF in game, but it's probably unecessary to do so as the CCC SHOULD over ride any in game settings. SHOULD be the operative word.)

Unless you enjoy your eyes bleeding, yes, you want a higher refresh rate. 75Hz is comfortable. There are some items you'll have to take care of:

First, you must determine if your monitor can handle your current resolution at a 75Hz refresh rate. If it can, great. Go for it. The actual performance hit you will take is negligible at worst.

Then you will need to make sure that your video card driver has refresh rate override enabled, same as desktop. This will force any game you run to also be at 75Hz, thus getting around the complete stupidity of Microsoft, and their decision that all full screen 3D should run at 60Hz.

Lastly, make sure that the resolution and refersh rates are set to same as desktop in the game options.

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At that high resolution, no FSAA is needed. Seriously. And high quality water is awesome.

Remember, you are using 6.4s

I strongly recommend disabling Vert refresh.
Also turn off triple buffering

Aniso beyond 4 X has no highly visible improvement, but causes performance drop.

I use 4X / crisp textures, it's wow nice looking. Try it. Really.

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I've tried life without FSAA. It's crap. I'd be happy to post some screenies to prove it if you like. If you enjoy watching a world with jagged edges, yes, even at 1920X1200, then go for it. I can't.

With Vertical Refresh disabled, I get tearing due to the speed at which I move and spin my camera angle. My turn rate is punched up to 650% in game options. Triple Buffering is enabled specifically because Vert Ref is.

I can live with 4X AF, as I agree, in CoH/V, you only notice the difference in specific areas, like cobblestone roads.

Why are you using Crisp when it states in the in game description that it wil have negative effects on cards that support AF? But I'll give it a whirl.

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Can't change LCD refresh.

Character quality at 200% may be hurting performance a good bit. I use 95 % world/100% character.

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Technically, you can. I was able to punch mine to 75Hz at the desktop level by lowering the resolution, but it's a pointless thing to do as it doesn't increase the redraw rate.

Character Detail is supposed to only affect the distance at which characters are drawn. I want to see the voids, quantum gunners and other players as far out as possible.

Well [censored].

I was at work when I wrote the above updates. I get home, get everything set up as I have in the guide, and what happens? The rendered image in game, NOT my menu windows as they're fine, but the actual image is totally black.

Drop FSAA to 2X and it's ok. Or not. Sometimes 2X works in game, sometimes it also causes black screen issue.

So I run to a mission, in the hope that maybe zoning in game with the proper settings will fix the issue...

Nope. I load to a completely black screen. Ok, let's find the culprit time. Exit game:

Current settings are as above with in game FSAA at 4X and AF at 8X. Found in the CCC that I had disabled Fast Writes again late last night, enabled fast writes, rebooted.

Back into game, AF is still at 8X... but lo an behold, FSAA is back to off.

Why? Anyone? Cuz I'm at a loss. Set it back to 2X: black screen, menus still fine, 4X same thing.

Turn off FSAA, image immediately renders.

So for all you alt-tabbers out there, I'm sorry, run in windowed mode. By the by, the one time that I did get 2X to work in game, it still looks like crap. Allowing the game to manage fsaa does NOT produce the proper lack of jaggies when compared to allowing the driver to handle it.

Devs,
I was under the impression that ATI users were going to be getting some info regarding the current crap state of communication and support from/with ATI. Still waiting.

Hey folks. Some items have come to light that have prompted me to change opinions on a few settings.

Here's some info that will max the performance while maintaining your eye-candy quality when playing CoH/V.

In Game:
Resolution AND 3D Resolution Scaling: Same As Desktop (I currently run 1920X1200)
Refresh Rate: Same as Desktop (I'm running a Dell 24" Wide LCD, so currently at 60Hz. On LCDs, refresh is meaningless as an LCD redraws each pixel as needed, where a CRT refreshes the entire screen based on the Refresh Rate. To my knowledge, there is no way to increase the factory set redraw rate of an LCD)
Advanced Graphic Settings: Enabled
Particle Physics: Enabled
World Texture Quality: Very High (If you can handle the loss of eye candy, lowering this will offer a performance boost.)
Character Texture Quality: Very High
World Detail: From 50% to 200% (This setting has a major impact on FPS. Setting it at 50% will give you far greater performance, especially in CoV. I currently run this at 50%)
Character Detail: 200%
Max Particle Count: 50000 (You can lower this for some performance gain)
Vertical Sync: Enabled
FSAA: 4X (This is changed from the prior guide. It was brought to my attention that lockups and/or graphical anomalies were occurring with alt-tabbing when letting the Catalyst Control Center manage FSAA and AF rather than allowing the Application decide.)
Shadows: Disabled (Prior to this update, I ran with Shadows enabled, but the performance hit compared to the fuzzy blob at a character's feet just didn't pan out. If Cryptic ever adds serious shadow effects, as with a light source through a tree showing each leaf in shadow, then I'll turn this back on.)
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High (It has been brought to my attention that older cards have serious FPS hits with this setting on high, so play around with it.)
Water Effects: None (Water on Low does NOT break FSAA, as it is not going through the P-Buffer, but it WILL cause a heavy FPS hit when in cave or sewer maps.)
Depth of Field Effects: Disabled
Bloom Effects: None


In Catalyst Control Center:

Under Display Options:
3d Refresh Rate Override: Same as Desktop

Under 3D settings:
Anti-Aliasing: Let Application Decide
Anisotropic Filtering: Let Application Decide
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled (Your mileage on this may vary depending on your card. Test on and off for extended game sessions to determine if this is of benefit to you. I currently have it enabled for testing purposes.)
Mipmap Detail Level: Full to Quality
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always On
SmartShader: None
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled (Huge performance hit)

API Specific:
Direct3D:
Enable geometry instancing: yes
Support DXT texture formats: yes
Alternate pixel center: no
OpenGL:
Triple Buffering: yes
Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth: no

VPU Recover: Disabled

For AGP users ONLY:
Under SMARTGart: Leave everything at default.
Fast Writes: At the time of my last guide, disabling Fast Writes gave me a considerable performance boost, but occasionally caused lockups when clicking on Contacts/Info menus. At the time of THIS writing, I'm not seeing the performance boost I was, so something has changed in the driver.

All other settings can remain at default values.

Other notes:

If your monitor has a DVI input port, use it as you will get a cleaner image with less graphical weirdness.

That's a great point. How about it, Statesman? Does this warrant a freespec before Issue 7 goes live? That would certainly making testing Issue 7 easier, since when we copy our characters over they will already have a freespec ready to go...

So about those defense debuffs....

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...You already owe one to everybody who took Whirlwind...

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You do relize Whirlwind was being abused? It was never ment to unroot animations and such. The power was just poorly designed to act as Repel/Repulsion Field. It should of just animated the player to spin for a few seconds, then have a graphic like Repulsion field or Hurricane to indicate the toggle is active.

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To be fair, that really isn't the players fault. They were using the power as it was put in place.

However, we won't be getting a respec before I-7 because now we know we are getting one then.

Until I-7 goes live, well... suffer or don't play the toons that need respecing.

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I'm not worried over whether there's one's coming WITH i-7, that's just common sense.
We need one for THIS patch

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I certainly wouldn't gripe about it, but it isn't going to happen. Not with I-7 a month away from live.

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we discovered that we couldn’t pull the change out without jeopardizing the I7 release schedule. Right now, QA (at NCSoft and Cryptic) is working away at I7 and shaking out bugs. If we were to roll back this change, our teams would need to put I7 aside and retest the current build. I made the decision to stay the course instead.

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Great... just Great... then you can "Make the decision" to give us a "Free-spec" with this patch so we won't be totally gimped between now and when I-7 finally goes live. Debuffing defenders already have enough hardships to endure, a month or more of sucking b/c you guys messed up the development scheduele. ...You already owe one to everybody who took Whirlwind...

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CuppaJo has already stated that a freespec will be delivered shortly after I-7 goes live. You should read the dev digest more before making demands.

Statesman,

Thank you very much for a great explanation of the changes in ToHit Debuffs.

Now please explain why Defense Debuffs did NOT get dropped to Schedule B when Defense Buffs are Schedule B? Aren't folks using Enzymes in Defense Toggles and getting more of a buff than they should be? (33% rather than 20%?)

Even if the Defense Debuff portion of the three part enhancement HO is only giving a 20% buff, why aren't normal SO defense debuff enhancements equal to their buff counterparts?

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and some will never draw(/insert artform here) awesomely no matter how hard they practise.


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Totally disagree. This kind of thinking is what cripples a lot of my 3d students. I'm not sure where in society it comes from, but I'd like to start a one-man mission to stamp it out!

You can do ANYTHING you want. All you have to do is practice and be willing to learn.

EVERYONE CAN LEARN TO DRAW!!

I honestly seriously believe that. And I've taught people how to draw before (and model in 3d and paint textures and animate) so I have a real reason to believe it.

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QFT. With enough hard work and self-discipline, anyone CAN do anything. I try to teach the same concept when I'm helping others on the tech end of the spectrum.

There's an old quote that I agree with: "Anything I can do, you can do and more."

I can't draw. But I CAN swap troubleshooting for artwork. Same thing in my mind. I'm getting the job done.


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If there's no such thing as talant, then anyone could be an Einstein simply by reading a lot of physics books, and engineering and science schools would be graduating thousands of geniuses a year.

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Talent only speeds up the process to genius and ability. Yes, given enough time, I could gain Picasso's level of ability and insight. Same goes for Einstein or Hawking. Might take extending my life a few decades, but I could get there. We all could. The point being, the only thing that stops anyone from anything is one's self.

The mind and its abilities are infinite, as is our capacity for laziness.

The_Conduit,

I PMed you a recommendation for a card, but if those are out of your pricerange, here's what I'd do:

Get rid of the "-useTexEnvCombine" flag. Go into the game.

Disable completely FSAA, AF, Shadows, Bloom, Depth of Field and Water.
Set World Detail to high and 50%.
Set Shader on Medium. (If this looks TOO bad, put it back on High.)

In your ATI driver advanced settings, disable Let Application Decided for FSAA and AF (if you haven't already) and set them for 2X/2X.

See if that helps any. It's really going to comedown to adjusting each setting to what your eyes can handle, in balance with what your video card can comfortably push.

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Been using this, defintely ups my frame rate, but having problems with my system crashing now. What should I do? I'm running a Radeon 9800 Pro, 1 gig of ram, on an Athlon 3400+

--Jed

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Turn back on Virtual Memory if you turned it off. It should only be off if you have MORE that 1GB of RAM. If that doesn't fix it, PM me with ALL of your in game and in driver settings as you have them now.

I don't play Bill Z enough. Brutes are great, but nothing has compared to the feeling of pure scrapperlock that I can attain with claws/sr.

To be honest, I'm more civilized that anything these days. But I still have moments, like with any wild animal, where my savage side comes out and overrides all my training.

Lallendos,

You raise some good points.

It is true that unless you have visual tearing, or if you are running benchmarking tests, you shouldn't enable vsync. (And yes, triple buffering should always be enabled IF you enable vsync and ONLY IF you enable vsync.)

However, at higher resolutions, like the 1920X1200 that I am forced to run out, tearing does occur unless I enable vsync. The other plus with vsync is for folks with high end GPUs that are running at lower resolutions. By locking the hori and vert refresh, you free up more graphical processing for other items.

My rule of thumb has been: CRT, set refresh to 75 at desktop, in game, and within driver with Ref-Rate Override. LCDs stay at 60 since refresh means nothing to an LCD.

About Fast Writes: I refuse to suffer the performance hit I'm seeing with Fast Writes On. But what you said about dual-channeling the RAM and Fast Writes was interesting. I can't see leaving my RAM in single channel, but I'm more than willing to go test it out and see what difference it may make.

Again, I only experience the Contact screen lockups with the Cat 6.3s and Fast Writes Off. As soon as I rolled back to the 6.2s that problem went away.

Yes, High Water is pretty. No denying that. But it did kill my FPS in sewer missions, so that's out. Tack on the fact that High Water, DoF and Bloom all kill FSAA with ATI cards, and it's doubly a no go. I CAN'T live with jagged edges, even at 1920X1200. Totally ruins my gaming experience.

I hadn't heard that about VPU Recover. I'll tack that on to the testing I'm about to do.

So thanks for more items to look at. Good stuff.

I have no intention of arguing the merits of a kin/son build. I bet that'd be a hoot to play.

You make a good case, but I'm pretty sure that over X period of time, my sonic/energy blapper is going to out-damage you. Youv'e got nothing in your repetoire to keep up with energy punch, bone smasher and total focus.

As for the no defense side of things, I'll have tough and body armor stacked (around 24%dam-res to s/l), CJ for a touch of defense, 3slotted health, power thrust to keep enemies out of melee range and stun to stop enemies from hitting me in the first place. Looks like I'll be able to fit in Aid Self as well. (My very first character that will be allowed to take it.)

Oh great, so now I'm contradicting myself...

Sorry bout that:

I honestly don't notice any difference between 4X and 8X AF. So I err on the side of performance and now have mine at 4X.

Adaptive Antialiasing will cause a huge performance hit from what I've bee reading, so disable it.

As always, I hope this helps make a better gaming experience for you.

Beyond moving Masterminds up higher on the Attack line, it looks good.

My MM is only 16, but I've run with a couple of 40s, and their damage output is obscene.

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My dad plays, and he's 52. Whenever people are talking about their ages, it's like he has an automatic 'I win' button.

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We've got a 52 yr old in our VG/SG. He and his wife play.

Funny story:
I was feeling old the other night, so I decided to take a poll of the 6 people that were logged into the VG.

As it turned out, I was the youngest in the whole bunch.






And I'm 33.
I love this game.

Good stuff, Ginsu_Master. Did you notice any difference in your overall average FPS between fast writes on and off?

BlaqueStar,
Yes, having Fast Writes OFF increases performance. BUT, I had lockups with it off while running the 6.3s. With the 6.2s, I get no lockups.
Pulled from a google search:
"Fast writes allows the CPU to send data to the Graphics card without having to go through RAM, making it a far more optimal approach. That said in reality most benchmarks done on this have shown it to be of little actual benefit, in some cases performing slower, not to mention on other systems it causes stability problems."

GreyDog,
I sent a PM in about the lockups with 6.3s and that PM was in turn forwarded off to another dev. I haven't heard anything since.

KidQwik,
Yes. 6.3s are garbage as far as I'm concerned. There was a 6.3 thread in the tech forum where I first brought my lockup concerns.
I've since rolled back to the 6.2s and haven't had the problem since. (Same issue: Contacts, character info, etc would lockup CoH/V client, and sometimes whole system.)

KidQwik,

I get the exact same issue. Now when I zone, I wait 2 seconds before moving so that I don't experience it. I've always assumed it was a client issue rather than a system problem.


DarkOasis,

I used to have gamma issues on my old CRT. Now that I'm on a LCD with DVI, I haven't had a single gamma related issue. Are you able to reset the gamma by going into the options and clicking on the gamma slider? Not even really moving it, just clicking on it? The best fix I found for this was to set the gamma in game at the default, and then adjusting the gamma for 3D apps within the CCC way up.

I wish I knew what the real cause of ATI's gamma issues are.

Fast Writes Off only locked me up with the 6.3s. Still haven't had a single lock since rolling back to 6.2s.

Thanks for the kind words, BlaqueStar.

About alt-tabbing: I wish I knew what was going on here, as I'm able to alt-tab without issue. Normally I never do so, but since folks have brought this to my attention, I've been doing it more and more trying to find the solution. Sadly, since I can't get it to break, I can't figure out a fix.

The delay when bringing up contacts: Since folks with Nvidia cards also experience this, I'm left to believe that it's a client issue that only Cryptic can fix. I still get it as well.

If anyone does find a solution to these items, please share.