guachi Posted February 14, 2000 Share Posted February 14, 2000 I got a new graphics card as a late Christmas present last week. Due to a hard drive crash I had to replace it and my motherboard. My old card was a Matrox G200 8MB card. My new card is a Diamond Stealth III 540 Xtreme 32MB card. On paper it looked like a good upgrade and at $100 it was a gift my parents could afford. Unfortunately, its graphics quality (in CM, at least) is way below my old card. Faster, yes, but also crappier looking. The biggest problem is that the ground textures look atrocious - all blocky and stuff. My old card had smooth ground textures for objects close up and blockier ones for the more distant objects. If any one has any idea why my new card looks so crappy and what I can do about it I'd appreciate it. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 02-13-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ol' Blood & Guts Posted February 14, 2000 Share Posted February 14, 2000 Hey, I've got a Diamond Viper V770. Your problem is within the settings in your display properties. The card should've come with a "Tool-Set" to tweak setting on the card. I was playing around with mine and it turned out like you said, blocky (pixelated) ground. It should be in your MIPMAP settings. That adjusts your Picture Quality to System Performance. It should be in your Direct3D settings. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guachi Posted February 14, 2000 Author Share Posted February 14, 2000 I don't think I have the features that you are describing. I went to Display Properties - Settings - Advanced - Diamond3D. Under this are three buttons - Direct3D, Advanced, and OpenGL. The latte rtwo are always greyed out. The only options under Direct3D are 3D Turbo Gauge, Fog Table, and Sync to Vertical Refresh. I have no idea what these functions are supposed to do because I can't find an explanation anywhere. Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Beman Posted February 14, 2000 Share Posted February 14, 2000 guachi, take a spin through www.diamondmm.com, the web site for Diamond. There they have all the latest drivers. These drivers will also install the Diamond InControl Tools set, which will give you a GREATLY increased tweaking ability for your card. The only problem is I've heard that the InControls will do bad things to your hard drive if you either uninstall them or try to install another video card driver overtop of it. DjB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guachi Posted February 14, 2000 Author Share Posted February 14, 2000 The problem is, whatever functionality InControl Tools has I apparently can't find it. I went to the Diamnnd site and the InControl Tools there were no newer than my version. The only functions I can change are the three that I listed before. The only relation this has the CM is that the only reason I got the card was so that CM would run faster and prettier. Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dschugaschwili Posted February 14, 2000 Share Posted February 14, 2000 Looks like a driver problem to me too. Have you tried reinstalling DirectX after installing your video drivers? I've heard this often helps. Apart from that, could it be that there are still parts of your old G200 drivers hanging around in your system? If yes, you should try to remove them completely. Dschugaschwili Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted February 15, 2000 Share Posted February 15, 2000 Don't know if I have any answers here, but.. Looking around Diamond/S3's website I found the following info on your card. - The OpenGL & Advanced buttons being grayed out are normal for the current set of drivers according to the FAQ (no options exist yet). - If you install Direct X 7/7.0A then your InControl Tools 99 features will disappear (again according to the FAQ). It doesn't sound like Diamond has any plans at the moment to change this. So if you do reinstall Direct X (as previously suggested) you may want to make sure it is v. 6.1A (which is built into Windows 98 2nd Edition - 4.10.2222A). - Unfortunately your dilemma is directly related to what options Diamond/S3 give you in their software. You InControl Tools is probably the only way to adjust your image quality (without a LOT of hacking around in the driver). My suggestions (guesses) are to: 1) Turn ON VSync. This is geared towards gamers in 3D games where they get "tearing" of the image (two horizontal halves) because of large changes in the image (as they move around). Turning ON Vsync slows down your frame rate to make sure your display is fully drawn (in video memory) before displaying. This probably doesn't affect your image quality problem with the textures however. 2) Turning FOGGING ON. I assume this is the Direct 3D fogging effects. I don't think that CM is using them, but what the heck. 3)Turn OFF or SLOW DOWN the 3D Turbo gauge. I'm not sure what this feature is, but it may be related to the the S3 Savage4's texture compression. This may be the closest thing you have to affecting your texture quality. Supposedly the texture compression is lossless, but apparently it may not be in CM's case. The following URL is a BETA driver for the S3 Savage4. It may have even less features than the Diamond software, but it may be worth trying to see if it fixes your texture problem. http://www.s3.com/customer_caretechnical_supportdriversbetaS3_Graphic_AcceleratorsSavage4_%28395%29.htm Hope something here helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolColJ Posted February 15, 2000 Share Posted February 15, 2000 Makes sure you get the latest drivers, also try the Nvidia refernce drivers. Sounds like the D3D quality settings (all Nvidia chip cards have this in their drivers) has been set to good quality as opposed to Best quality..might explain the blockiness. ccj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolColJ Posted February 15, 2000 Share Posted February 15, 2000 opps - its a diamond stealth....ummm yeah diamond have crap drivers, and stealth is no that great ccj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindan Posted February 15, 2000 Share Posted February 15, 2000 many people seem obsessed with Diamond-cards. they have the crappiest drivers around, cause huge problems with many systems (AMD for example, several mainboards) and are not faster than other cards with similar chipsets. I prefer an ELSA card over a Diamond card any time. Very good drivers, excellent support, fast, reliable.(..and it's German ) Had good results with Creative Labs and Guillemot, too. Diamond means trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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