11 réponses à ce sujet

[Xaltar81]

Before I installed the patch I was running the game at 1920x1080, max settings with forced max AA and AF and max quality setting in Catalyst CC and the game looked great. I was averaging about 40FPS with a peak of 60 (vsync) and low of about 25 duning intense combat with loads of enemies and spell effects.

Now, I fire up the game after patching and AA was set to off (dispite being forced at driver level), no problem, bump it up to x8 in game and WTF?!?! it applied some sort of blur effect like an old CRT with bad focus. I tried resetting to defaults on my drivers, reinstalling drivers (full removal and reinstall) and still the same. Not to mention I am now getting 25FPS average dropping as low as 12 in medium to small battles.

System specs:

Athlon 64 x2 5050e (yes, its a bottleneck but I have had no issues untill now)
Asus M3N78-EM motherboard
4GB Crosair XMS2 DDR2 667
Radeon HD 5850 1GB (Direct3d driver version :  6.14.10.076) beta driver

Windows XP 64 SP 2
AVG 9 free edition

Everything worked fine on the last patch with the ocasional problem with load times after 6 - 7 hours play.

Hope this helps you guys fix the problem.

Modifié par Xaltar81, 09 décembre 2009 - 02:21 .

[Valaskjalf]

8x AA here. no change after the patch. AF turned off - using trilinear instead since i couldn't tell the difference. Default settings in CCC - using DA settings only.



your video card is totally overkill for that processor.



Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16

Asus P5Q Pro (P55)

2x2GB G.Skill DDR2 1066 @ 5-5-5-14

MSI Radeon HD 4850 - 6.10 driver



Windows 7 64

MSSE

[Duckman33]

You're using a beta video card driver. Try using an official release driver and see if the issue persists. More than likely if you call technical support and ask about this issue they will tell you the same thing. How do I know? I do tech support for a living and that would be my first suggestion to you.

[Aesir Rising]

From the way the top post is written, I don't think we're talking about a tech or patch issue, but rather we have a misunderstanding about what forcing AA does to an in-game setting.



It does nothing. Never did and never will - to any game.



"Now, I fire up the game after patching and AA was set to off (dispite being forced at driver level), no problem, bump it up to x8 in game and WTF?!?! it applied some sort of blur effect like an old CRT with bad focus."



What did you expect to see reflected in the in-game option panel when you set your driver control panel setting?



So to be clear, disable AA in the game if you're going to force it on at the driver level. If you apply the option at both the driver level and within the game options, you'll be AAing an AA'd scene. Which, is technically an option if you want to do it, but I would expect the image to look overly-filtered ("blurry" as you say) and with a drop in performance. Just like you observed.



In most instances, I think you'll find that both performance and image quality are improved if you just use the in-game settings. Have the driver set to Application Preference (or however it's phrased within the Catalyst panel).



In some (rarer) instances, you'll want AA disabled within the game, and forced on at the driver level to get better image quality (but likely at slightly reduced performance vs an in-game option).



I've yet to see a game where forcing it on at the driver level and having it enabled within the game resulted in a good-looking image. It may have a use in still shots taken but when things are moving around, I think you're taking a double-hit to performance (by applying AA to a scene that is already AA'd) and causing blurring when things are moving around. But it's up to. Just from what you wrote I think you expected to see AA enabled within the game just because you forced it on within Catalyst.

[Kourd]

If you force it at the driver level the card's drivers simply ignore what the game tells it to AA and uses it's own method. So no, there wont be a speed hit, but yes, your in game settings aren't gonna change the appearance of anything. At best setting it to off in game might give you like a 0.001% speed increase since the game's no longer sending out any AA calls at all to the driver.



Also ATI has something, I think it's called AI in their drivers that dictates if your card should use any game specific optimizations for the game. See if that got changed at any point too.



Been a while since I've owned a radeon.

[Xaltar81]

Aesir Rising wrote...

From the way the top post is written, I don't think we're talking about a tech or patch issue, but rather we have a misunderstanding about what forcing AA does to an in-game setting.

It does nothing. Never did and never will - to any game.

"Now, I fire up the game after patching and AA was set to off (dispite being forced at driver level), no problem, bump it up to x8 in game and WTF?!?! it applied some sort of blur effect like an old CRT with bad focus."

What did you expect to see reflected in the in-game option panel when you set your driver control panel setting?

So to be clear, disable AA in the game if you're going to force it on at the driver level. If you apply the option at both the driver level and within the game options, you'll be AAing an AA'd scene. Which, is technically an option if you want to do it, but I would expect the image to look overly-filtered ("blurry" as you say) and with a drop in performance. Just like you observed.

In most instances, I think you'll find that both performance and image quality are improved if you just use the in-game settings. Have the driver set to Application Preference (or however it's phrased within the Catalyst panel).

In some (rarer) instances, you'll want AA disabled within the game, and forced on at the driver level to get better image quality (but likely at slightly reduced performance vs an in-game option).

I've yet to see a game where forcing it on at the driver level and having it enabled within the game resulted in a good-looking image. It may have a use in still shots taken but when things are moving around, I think you're taking a double-hit to performance (by applying AA to a scene that is already AA'd) and causing blurring when things are moving around. But it's up to. Just from what you wrote I think you expected to see AA enabled within the game just because you forced it on within Catalyst.

What I am talking about is that after the patch I can't set AA at all. I had it set ingame (aplication control set in CC) once and it looked as it did prior to the patch but after tabbing out of the game and back in it reverted to being blurry all over again and by blur I mean as though gausian blur had been applied to the whole screen or like looking at it with the wrong glasses on not at all like AAAA if such is even possible, I have never seen it work and it shouldn't. If you force AA and AF at driver level it ignores your ingame setting (or its supposed to at least) Still, setting both to on is just asking for issues. I can see how my previous post was confusing though, it was late and I was tired With the CC set to aplication controll I have the same problem, with it set to off in game and forced at driver level I have no AA at all in game dispite being forced at driver level. Basicly AA is not working no matter what combination of settings I use.

I did try the latest WHQL certified drivers too, that was the first thing I tried. I thought I mentioned that in my previous post but I see I only half mentioned it hehe. No more posting at 3am for me....

As to the card being overkill, I know lol, I have a Phenom II x4 on order.

Thanks for all the replies guys, I have AA set to off both at driver level and ingame for the time being and my FPS are better, a little lower than before (and I had AA and AF set to max before) but more than playable. I'll try using driver cleaner and reinstall the WHQL drivers again to see if that helps. Its not a big issue but one I felt worth mentioning. Everything worked perfectly before the patch and not it doesn't.

[mael_storm]

Some thoughts when I read this thread:

1) setting AA in CCC and in-game will NOT AA the rendered scene TWICE! AA can only be done once, you will never AA something twice. That's stupid and the reason why there's settings like 2x, 4x, 8x.

2) The blur you are experiencing is most likely due to ATI's CFAA (Custom Filter AA). Under the AA slider in CCC, there's a pull-down box that allows you to select Box, Wide Tent, Narrow Tent, and Edge-Detect (this last one only when the AA slider is 4x or 8x). Box is equal to no CFAA, Wide Tent and Narrow Tent use a blur effect to smooth edges; it works, but is yeah, well, blurry. Edge-Detect was introduced in the HD4xxx series and is actually pretty good. On paper it should allow you to gain more AA samples without the impact on performance. If this is visibly the case? I don't know. You can see the CFAA level when you move the slider with the different filter settings.

3) When setting a driver override AA in CCC, you do exactly that: you override the in-game setting with your own. Unless ATI has implemented a special AA algorythm for the game, you use the engine's AA, always, no way around that. That's exactly the reason why in every UT3 engine game, there's no AA in DX9 mode, whatever you do. It's just not there.

4) to see the difference in CFAA modes, there's a plethora of articles on the net. This is the first one that popped up: http://www.xbitlabs....-hd4850_19.html



Hope this helps!



PS: Adaptive anti-aliasing (transparency AA for NVIDIA) anti-aliases edges which aren't done with normal AA. this doesn't always work, it depends on ATI's implementation if there's any effect with a certain game.

[Xaltar81]

Yeah, thanks mael_storm, thats what I thought. I have it set to edge detct 8X (24X samples).
I think I have found the problem though. I had a bit more time to look at it today and tried messing about with settings. I turned off frame buffer effects and the blur was gone. I think whats happening is that the game engine is loosing its DOF sorting and applying blur to everything. Another issue is that CCC driver setting are not overriding the engine settings (all my other games work as expected). So yeah, I don't think its my drivers or settings. I have now tried 3 different drivers, only one of wich is beta and I still have the same issue. I have found a way to get it working but I need to do it every time I open the game or tab out. I have to dissable frame buffer effects and put them back for the DOF sorting to work. This is a patch caused bug, I'm sure of it. Please people, don't come in here and say things like "its fine for me, you must be doing it wrong". I am not writing this as a complaint but rather to make Bioware aware of a bug, be it on my system alone or widespread. I am using a very new GPU with as yet unperfected drivers so this is to be expected. When dealing with bugs like this there are a huge number of variables, 100s of other people my have my GFX card for example but they will all be using different components in conjunction and then factor in driver version and OS and you quickly see how problems like this are impossible for any dev team to forsee.

[edit] I can provide a screenshot of the problem if needed but I think my explanation should cover it. It is a duplicable problem, its persistant. I'm almost 100% certain its DOF messing things up seeing as its only the rendered image thats blurred, all toolbars, icons and such are still clear and crisp.

Modifié par Xaltar81, 09 décembre 2009 - 02:19 .

[Aesir Rising]

I made the assumption, which from the responses would appear incorrect, that ATI Catalyst had a similar capability as nvidia Forceware, where in Forceware you have the option to set AA to "Enhance application setting". With that option enabled, you set AA both in-game and at the driver level. If ATI doesn't provide that, I was mistaken. I am used to them each having exactly the same tech, under different names.

Edited to add - Oh, and to complete my thought, with nvidia AA "enhance application setting" enabled things usually look blurry or I would say over-filtered.  Just like with ATI CFAA.

Modifié par Aesir Rising, 09 décembre 2009 - 02:24 .

[Xaltar81]

Its fine, these things can be confusing even to profesionals. I have been writing hardware reviews for years and am a moderator for a tech site and I still blunder in grand style every now and then

[mael_storm]

You're welcome

[Xaltar81]

Update. After a complete uninstall, a pass of Driver Sweeper in safe mode and reinstalling the latest official ATI drivers for XP64 the DOF sorting error is gone.

[edit] Problem solved. Thanks to everyone for the help and suggestions. I have re-enabled catalyst AI and that seems to have resolved my performance hit  Back to playthrough 6

Modifié par Xaltar81, 09 décembre 2009 - 08:00 .