The shader fixer of CMFI also works in the CMBN.

[Zane]

Thank's Steve for that info.

That's the way I will go if I decide to test those shaders from CMBI Hot fix.

Tonight I have been running some test with my Fraps program. I removed

the Hot fix shader's from my Z folder and did some testing on some Q.B

I had saved. The Alt-R was working again. using the version 2 shader's

When I turn On Ver 2 shaders It just kills my FPS. Down to 6 or 7 FPS

switch them off and it jumps back to a 20 to 30 FPS. and even higher with the Shadows and Trees turned off. I did the test on a day QB and a night QB FPS I can live with. One other thing I notice even with the shaders off my FPS drop's way down when I approach water. Move away and the FPS jumps back up.So right now I think I will not worry about the shader's in version 2.

and Just leave them off. And have a decent FPS even with the trees on.

Thank's Guys for all the advice on the Shader's

Regard's

Lane

[Guest]

Thanks for the feedback. The FX series has a lot of strikes against it, not least of which is that the tech is nine years old and Nvidia dropped official support for it four years ago. It also had very bad shader support to start with - its architecture, software, and hardware were all not well designed for them.

I'm glad that the game runs well with shaders off, though!

Edited to add: AND the optional shaders require a much more modern card than the stock 2.0 shaders. The optional shaders are for folks with new-ish video cards, just for future reference for anyone that reads this. The hotfix shaders are not a "fix" but an improvement in shadows and a couple other areas for new video cards only, and are purely optional.

[simast]

Phil,

While the hotfix'ed shaders look and behave somewhat better on my GeForce 460 GTX, the shadows are still the real FPS killer for me. Any plans to optimize the shadows in the future patches?

[Zane]

Thank's Phil,

For that info on Shader's I won't feel bad if I leave them off.

Have a good one.

Regards

Lane,a senior from the Midwest age 76.

[Quintus Sertorius]

I'd just like to say thanks for this thread. The ATI shaders in the CMFI hotfix work great on my CMBN v2.0. I've got a MacPro with OSX 10.6.8 and a Radeon HD 5770, BTW.

[phil stanbridge]

If you have recent (ish) hardware and are still struggling with framerates you could always try overclocking a little. It can be surprising how much a minor overclock helps.

[Guest]

Phil,

While the hotfix'ed shaders look and behave somewhat better on my GeForce 460 GTX, the shadows are still the real FPS killer for me. Any plans to optimize the shadows in the future patches?

Yep, although the current shadow system is already about as inexpensive as dynamic shadow systems get. So we'll tweak around the edges and try to improve things, but I don't think there'll be a huge performance leap with shadows. Shadows are expensive; shadows outdoors from thousands of potentially moving objects are even more so.

As I've mentioned before elsewhere most games can use tricks with these things that we can't really get away with due to the amount of camera freedom we allow. Never say never, but there's basically no faster place to go short of not having real shadows. So... that's a heavily qualified "yes". We always want to improve performance; shadows at this point are not low-hanging fruit.

If shadows are very expensive on your system, the stock 2.0 shaders may actually be faster. The "hotfix" shaders aren't really fixes, per se, they're optional shaders that improve the visuals of shadows and some other things, using some newer hardware capabilities to keep the performance cost down. If they're not performing well on your system the stock shaders *may* be faster.