Guest Stuart J. Vincent Posted December 30, 2001 Share Posted December 30, 2001 I have just installed Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT 64MB video card on my computer. Computer: Pentium II 500 256MB Ram Win98 os Direct X 8.1 Latest Driver from Hercules site The new drivers and Direct X solved the problems listed in the troubleshooting section (regarding text display), but I have encountered another problem that I can not find an answer to. If I press esc. to get back to the desk top, when I go back to CM the lower 2 thirds of the screen flicker and all the graphics are corrupt. The top third is OK. Any one have any suggestions for the cause and how it might be resolved. [ 01-06-2002: Message edited by: Sgt. Grunt ]</p> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 30, 2001 Share Posted December 30, 2001 I have a computer with a Prophet 4500 and I didn't run into this problem with the 9.031 drivers. If you ESC or ALT-TAB again does the problem remain when you return to CM ? What resolution and refresh rate are you running at ? Is there a difference between your desktop resolution and the resolution you run CM at ? When you go back to the desktop what app do you run and is it already running ? Are you overclocking your video card at all ? What motherboard do have and have you installed the chipset drivers for it ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stuart J. Vincent Posted December 31, 2001 Share Posted December 31, 2001 Schrullenhaft, It still causes the same problem if I ESC or ALT-TAB again. I am running CM at the smae resolution as the desktop 1024x768. There are no other applications running on the desktop. No I'm not overclocking the video card. I have a Chaintech 6BTM mother board, but I don't have the lastest chipset drivers. I will download them and give that a try. I have done some tests and found that the problem is being caused by checking Enabling Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing in the Advanced options, but if I don't have this option checked the smoke and building graphic in the game appear through hills when they should be hidden. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted December 31, 2001 Share Posted December 31, 2001 The one problem that I've run into with the Kyro II's is that any object that is in front of a transparent object (typically a building) will appear transparent in the portion that clips the view of the transparent object. Typically you'll see this at view level 1 with say an AFV in front of a building. The portion of the AFV that clips the view of the building will appear transparent. I have typically stuck with most of the default settings for the card. I can't remember off hand which settings would cause CM to crash, but there were certain settings that if enabled would crash CM. There were only one or two of them. I'll have to review the settings again tonight and let you know what I've found out. I also have a paper with a pretty good descriptions of all the settings. I believe that new drivers will be out in about a month or two, though I have no idea if they'll address some of the minor graphical glitches seen in CM. [ 12-31-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]</p> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denisetrac Posted January 1, 2002 Share Posted January 1, 2002 Greetings Schrullenhaft, last summer I throughly enjoyed my Prophet 4500 until all the problems with CMBB. So I shelved it awaiting a better fix/driver/etc., and use a G2 GTS. I've just checked in and found the post I'm replying to. How did you ever get the 4500 to work? I tried the fixes posted at that time and got nowhere. It's a great card for everything but CMBB in my experience last summer. What happened? Tracy 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 1, 2002 Share Posted January 1, 2002 Using DirectX 8.1 and the 9.031 drivers seem to work fine in CMBO except for one problem. The transparency problem listed above is the only problem I've run into (and the simultaneous enabling of some features). On a VIA chipset based motherboard I was able to run fine with Win98SE, WinME, Win2K and XP and they all looked the same (with the same problem). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 2, 2002 Share Posted January 2, 2002 If you have 'Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer' checked and any of its option settings checked CMBO won't load up the 3D screen. I've tried all three combinations just recently with WinME, but none of them work. Ironically this setting is for compatibility purposes by storing/loading the depth/stencil buffer externally (off of the video card). These compatibility settings also happen to reduce performance. I have no idea how the game would have been able to completely load (3D screens) with these settings enabled (unless there is a common BIOS setting I have on my machines that is causing the problem). You can change these settings while the game is loaded, but they won't take affect until you reload CM. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stuart J. Vincent Posted January 3, 2002 Share Posted January 3, 2002 Thanks for your help, I'll just have to live with it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denisetrac Posted January 4, 2002 Share Posted January 4, 2002 Thanks very much, I'll make sure I've got directX8.1 or better and go download the driver you've noted. I too have the VIA KT266a chipset. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 4, 2002 Share Posted January 4, 2002 OK... I've got the following to work without problems (but the options will reduce your performance and options). The 'External Depth/Stencil Buffer' will not work if FSAA is enabled. If FSAA is enabled and you try to enable the external depth/stencil buffer, then CM will not load up the 3D screen. I tested this with WinME, DirectX 8.1, Kyro drivers 9.031 running at 1024x768 @85Hz in 16-bit color. In the 3D Optimization tab (Display control panel > Settings tab > Advanced.. button > 3D Optimization tab > Direct3D tab) I have the following settings (not all are necessary): 'Control Full Scene Anti-Aliasing' is set to 'Application Specific Anti-Aliasing' (necessary), which means that FSAA is OFF. 'Force Trilinear Texture Filtering' is checked (not necessary). 'Enable Soft Edges on Cut-out Textures' is checked (not necessary). 'Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer' is checked (necessary) with the sub-options of 'Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing' checked (necessary) and 'Enable Depth/Stencil Buffering Loading' checked (necessary). This combination of settings allows transparencies to work properly, but sacrifices speed (since the buffer is external to the card) and you can't use FSAA. The two other settings I have may improve the image quality on screen a little. I haven't really experimented much with the other settings, but the major issue here is that you can't have the External Depth/Stencil Buffer enabled when you have any FSAA functions enabled. With none of these settings did I run into any kind of menu corruption when ESC'ing or ALT-TAB'ing out of CM and back. It's possible that a certain set of settings may cause this problem (VSync off ?), but I don't know what they are. Apparently new drivers are due in a few weeks (they were supposed to be released before Christmas, but some delays cropped up). If we're lucky PowerVR will fix the necessity of enabling the external depth/stencil buffer for transparencies to work as expected, which should increase the speed and compatibility with FSAA. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrashb Posted January 5, 2002 Share Posted January 5, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft: OK... I've got the following to work without problems (but the options will reduce your performance and options).[...]'Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer' is checked (necessary) with the sub-options of[...]<hr></blockquote> Thanks again, Schrullenhaft. I now have the full beauty of my mods, and the game is still 'fast enough'. Your explanations are welcome: I now understand what some of those otherwise obscure settings do. I'll try the new drivers when they're released. [edit] I had to match the CM screen resolution to the WinXP screen resolution. Otherwise, leaving (esc/alt-tab) the game and returning scrambled and blinked .5 to 2/3 of the screen. Now it works properly. [ 01-06-2002: Message edited by: aaronb ]</p> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stuart J. Vincent Posted January 6, 2002 Share Posted January 6, 2002 Schrullenhaft, Thanks for your last post, it solved the flickering problem. I had been running with a 32 bit colour desktop, switched to 16 bit and I can Esc. or ALT-TAB out of CM and when I go back in no flickering. Thanks Again and lets hope the new drivers sort out the external buffering. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrashb Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 Just installed the 14.28 drivers - no change. Haven't measured frame rates yet, but first impressions are no change there either. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 Yes, I've checked out the 14.28's too and they don't fix the problem as of yet. Hopefully there'll be another set coming, but I don't know when since it took them awhile to get this set out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
murph2 Posted February 6, 2002 Share Posted February 6, 2002 The last I heard from Videologic around June last year was they weren't responsible for the problems IIRC. This was after the DisableCopyBlt3D enabling to correct the main problems with text etc. was noticed and passed on to them. I seem to recall them saying that games which require this setting were incorrectly porgrammed wrt 3D. This didn't stop them adding the DisableCopyBlt3D=1 key to the reg file with all subsequent drivers though, because of the above I don't hold out much hope for a driver fix. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrashb Posted March 18, 2002 Share Posted March 18, 2002 15.20, and still have to do the z-buffer off-card. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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