cbelva Posted August 11, 2004 Share Posted August 11, 2004 I am a compaq laptop with a strange Radeon video card. When I play CMBB I get the slow down (esp when clicking on infantry unit)which appears to be related to the z-mask being enabled. I am unabe to disable it from the control panel for my video card. Also, the ATI tweak does not support my video card. Can someone give me a manual way to disable the z-mask. I did a search and found a post on this, but the solution won't work with my system. The video card is a Radeon IGP 345M. Thanks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted August 11, 2004 Share Posted August 11, 2004 Hmmm... The Radeon IGP should, at its core, have standard Radeon video drivers to my knowledge, so it's strange that the Rage3D Tweaker doesn't work with it. Does the Rage3D Tweaker have problems launching or do the problems start when attempting to install the tweaker ? If it installs, then you may want to keep it there temporarily since it may provide some registry settings you can modify later. Anyway... I don't have a Radeon installed in front of me, so I've pulled this info off another website ( OC FAQ Forum with some minor changes). In order to use this info you'll need to be comfortable using 'regedit' to edit the registry. Specifically you'll be adding an entry: From the Start Menu go to run and type in 'regedit' to launch the Registry Editor. In here you'll need to browse for the registry entry resembling this:- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{Windows driver code}\0000 The value of {Windows driver code} will very from system to system so you must find the correct one. Admittedly I don't know what the code will be for your system or if exists in this exact location for the Radeon IGP drivers; and there may even be more than one entry here. Hopefully if there is more than one, the one you need to edit may have the most entries populated within it (the others may be mostly empty in comparison). The official Catalyst drivers do not contain the key entries you're looking for, i.e ZMaskEnable, by default (unless you've installed tweaking software) so you'll have to create them yourself and then enter the values to disable them. Once you've navigated to the proper place in the registry you'll need to add a value. From the Edit menu select New > String Value (I'm not absolutely sure on this, but I believe this should be a String value, otherwise it may be a Binary Value). Your cursor will be in a new field to type a name, type in ZMaskEnable. With this still highlighted go back to the Edit menu and this time there will be a 'Modify' menu item. When you select this it will bring up a dialog box and in here you'll type a 0 (zero), which should disable the ZMask. Exit from the registry editor (your changes were saved when you entered them) and eventually reboot for this to take effect. If Rage3D Tweak was installable, hopefully it has left behind some of these registry settings to modify (rather than forcing you to create them by hand). However it may not add the registry entries until you run it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbelva Posted August 12, 2004 Author Share Posted August 12, 2004 Schrullenhalf, I want to say thanks again. I followed your instructions and it seemed to be working. I don't have the slowdowns now when I select the infantry. And it does seem a little faster than before. Thanks again, Charles 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted August 12, 2004 Share Posted August 12, 2004 In general, don't buy notebooks with ATI video chips. ATI doesn't delivery any generic drivers for these chips, so if your manufracturer doesn't deliver new drivers anymore you are screwed forever. Learned that lesson some years ago... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbelva Posted August 12, 2004 Author Share Posted August 12, 2004 Now you tell me :mad: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted August 13, 2004 Share Posted August 13, 2004 My opinion of ATI is so low I would think it is a good idea to make a sticky thread out of it. The desktop situation is bad enough but the notebook support is nonexistent. Maybe you should ebay it off while it is still near its original value? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted August 13, 2004 Share Posted August 13, 2004 One problem with all of this... ATI is, by far, the dominant graphic chip you'll find on laptops. The only other chipset that is near enough in terms of graphic horsepower is the GeForce FX Go series. They're offered on far fewer laptops though, severly constricting your choices. The GeForce FX Go series also doesn't have direct support in many of the drivers released by Nvidia. Typically you'll need drivers from the laptop manufacturers (which are made by NVidia, but customized by them and under contract for the laptop company), just like the ATI ones. However sometimes it is easier to find a hacked Nvidia desktop driver that will work with the Go series chipsets. The same is sometimes available for the Radeon Mobilities. In my mind neither chipset is really better than the other. The fog-table support and occasionally fewer bugs for the Nvidia Go FX 5700 would be my choice when it comes strictly to graphics options. However ATI is leading in terms of the number of laptops that use their chipsets and the actual graphical horsepower of those chips (if you go with higher end models). If you do decide to get another laptop, be aware that a number of laptops are not using dedicated memory for the video. This is true of the ATIs and it is hard to tell which ones may be using 'shared memory' and which ones may have dedicated VRAM (since the same chip family can have either configuration). Nvidia doesn't used shared memory to my knowledge. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted August 13, 2004 Share Posted August 13, 2004 If you want NVidia, one choice is the Alienware notebooks, the newest ones even allow you to change the graphics boards. Toshiba, HP, Acer and Sony all offer NVidia-equipped based notebooks. Finding one is as easy as going to newegg.com and use the search interface with the termn "nvidia" in the text fields and notebooks as the category. Yes, NVidia notebook chipsets never have shared memory, ATI does have at least one chipset with shared memory. While it is true that NVidia drivers as downloaded from NVidia do not like to be installed on other vendor's notebooks, a simple manual install or registry tweak does the trick. For the ATI ones it is (apparently) impossible. The support difference is also obvious in the Linux drivers, which when downloaded from NVidia support all notebooks without any tweak and support all cards NVidia 3D card from TN2 on. ATI has much more restricted support, cutting off older cards very early and don't support new ones. Not to speak of TV-out, FreeBSD and similar missing features for ATI. While Windows users don't have to care about these drivers they should care about what kind of long-term support the vendors is showing, and there's a strong indication right there. ATI supports what is currently for sale, hardware-wise and game-wise. NVidia supports what is out these, even if not for sale anymore. ATI is further guilty of delinerately mismarketing older chips under newer names. This is how I ended up with a Mach64 based notebook in 2000. They were marketing both Mach64 and rage based chips as "rage mobility". I looked at the notebook, when home and looked up "rage mobility", and at the time they only listed the rage based chips. So I bought the notebook, only to realize it was Mach64-based because they used the designation for both and denied the existence of the earlier chip on their website. Remember you can never change the video board and if the driver support ceases you are screwed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Vyrdolak Posted August 15, 2004 Share Posted August 15, 2004 My video card seems to be on the way out. When I tried to start CMBB this morning the screen developed a green wash and the mouse froze; when I rebooted it was set to 16bit 640x480, and the desktop went off the screen's edge. What are some cards to avoid? All Radeons? (I'm not using a desktop). TIA 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Vyrdolak Posted August 15, 2004 Share Posted August 15, 2004 Never mind, there are plenty of archived posts on this subject. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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