The Fog: ATI or NVidia? What works?

[Steiner14]

Is the old fog-problem on ATI-cards solved? Do cards of both manufacturers show fog now?

[Mike Churchmoor]

Not just the fog:

In near future I will upgrade my old geforce 6600 gt to either gf 8600 gt or to radeon x1950 pro. Which one is running cm:sf better will be crucial. Does ati-cards still have 'issues' with cm:sf compared to gf-cards?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

You'd be wise to stay away from ATI regardless. Their drivers suck and often have issues.

[Steiner14]

Originally posted by Elmar Bijlsma:

You'd be wise to stay away from ATI regardless. Their drivers suck and often have issues.

Is that based on CMSF experiences?

The X1950Pro has an excellent price/value ratio now and is also closest on my radar.

[Redwolf]

Just google ATI driver problems. The moment you want to play any game that is a little older ATI screws you.

Driver release testing at NVidia involves going down the API and asserting that the API features work (well, before the Vista drivers, but they probably come around with those once the older drivers go out of maintenance).

Driver release testing at ATI involves playing the current top 10 games and forgetting about everything else. In particular, API features including but of course not limited to the DirectX 5 fog tables are just ignored. As a result, older games don't work right. And CMx1 was far from the only game affected, far.

Now, the question you want to ask youself is not "does CM:SF work with ATI today?". You want to ask yourself "in 2011, when I fire up CM:SF again, will it work with ATI?". The answer to that question is: it will be much less likely than with Nidia.

And the price/performance ratio you assume is obviously derived from technical data, not real-world game performance. In that category NVidia has ATI completely by the balls by now.

People are not stupid, you know? ATI is in serious danger of getting out of the high-end market. And that happened while they had the faster cards for the better price during the time when they declined. Why is that? Because people are not stupid. They get fooled once and then they buy NVidia, even if it costs more. And today they don't even cost more.

[MikoyanPT]

Originally posted by Mike Churchmoor:

Not just the fog:

In near future I will upgrade my old geforce 6600 gt to either gf 8600 gt or to radeon x1950 pro. Which one is running cm:sf better will be crucial. Does ati-cards still have 'issues' with cm:sf compared to gf-cards?

The radeon x1950 pro should run the game better because has better directx9 performance.

The Geforce 8600GT is directx10 compatible if running with Vista.

I bought a x1950 and Vista, when middle range Directx10 cards became better and cheaper, and Directx10 games became common i will swap the card.

People buying the expensive Directx10 cards GF 8800 and Radeon 2900 are getting screwed by the drivers, these drivers need time to mature.

For people asking about ATI drivers and reliability, in my experience with my ATI radeon x1950pro i have great performance with games like Medieval Total War II, Supreme Comander, Call Of Duty II, Warhammer Mark of Chaos, Theatre of war etc. and never had a driver issue with it.

In my old pc with a GF6600 i am running ToW with no problems but in much lower resolution and lower framerate of course.

In my experience the ATI x1950pro is cheaper and better than the new GF8600 and Radeon2600 generations of directx10 compatible cards, running a directx9 game obviously.

[ July 24, 2007, 06:14 AM: Message edited by: MikoyanPT ]

[MikoyanPT]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

Just google ATI driver problems. The moment you want to play any game that is a little older ATI screws you.

Driver release testing at NVidia involves going down the API and asserting that the API features work (well, before the Vista drivers, but they probably come around with those once the older drivers go out of maintenance).

Driver release testing at ATI involves playing the current top 10 games and forgetting about everything else. In particular, API features including but of course not limited to the DirectX 5 fog tables are just ignored. As a result, older games don't work right. And CMx1 was far from the only game affected, far.

Now, the question you want to ask youself is not "does CM:SF work with ATI today?". You want to ask yourself "in 2011, when I fire up CM:SF again, will it work with ATI?". The answer to that question is: it will be much less likely than with Nidia.

And the price/performance ratio you assume is obviously derived from technical data, not real-world game performance. In that category NVidia has ATI completely by the balls by now.

People are not stupid, you know? ATI is in serious danger of getting out of the high-end market. And that happened while they had the faster cards for the better price during the time when they declined. Why is that? Because people are not stupid. They get fooled once and then they buy NVidia, even if it costs more. And today they don't even cost more.

In my humble opinion the high end market (at the moment totaly dominated by nvidia) is used to rip off money from customers that willingly or unwillingly became beta testers for a new card generation.

In the ToW forum people with GF 8800 videocards are getting major troubles with drivers.

This directx10 generation needs time to mature and solve drive issues. Even middle range cards are to expensive for the performance they actualy deliver.

Nvidia GF7600GT or ATI Radeon X1950pro are now reliable cards with good performance and low price.

[Steiner14]

Redwolf,

interesting post.

My own experience was, that i bought a GF5600 only to see fog in CM again. Indeed, i never had any issues with Nvidia cards.

But i don't want a DX10 card!

So what Nvidia-card could i look for, to get the power of a x1950Pro at the same price?

I have found nothing.

[Vern_S]

AMD now owns ATI... Give it a little time and maybe they can get ATI's after market support where it should be like Nvidia.

[SgtMuhammed]

So will there be fog or not? My Nvidia 7600gs should show it right?

With CM1 I didn't even know there really was fog till I upgraded to an Nvidia card with my old system. The first time I played after the upgrade I though there was something wrong with my system.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I wasn't talking CMSF specifically but more in general.

I play all sorts of games and while I'm told ATI have a marginal performance edge (on paper) a quick read on the average forums would enlighten you in the advantages of nVidia. ATI complaints outnumber nVidia complaints by a wide margin.

On CMSF fog.... who knows? Fog is not a feature commonly associated with your typical Syrian battlefield. I'll look into it for you.

But nVidia is the BFC favourite so you should be fine. Not that ATI users are SOL, you guys should be okay too as long as it's a vaguely decent card. But IIRC Steve did say that ATI shadows weren't as good as NvIdia.

[Stryker]

Well I've pre-ordered and I'm running Vista32 with an 8800GTS. Keeping my fingers crossed. I've had the computer since Feb and it runs "all" my games from older (Battles in Normandy, Steel Panthers, Civ3, Squad Battles: The Proud and the Few) to newer (Company of Heroes, Forge of Freedom, Oblivion) without any issues. Where possible I run at 1920x1200 with most features maxed. It's amazing. However, the only game I can't run is the CMx1 engine! I'd highly recommend the card, but I got mine with a new system. I think many of the reported problems with the 8800's are with overclocking, home built, and upgraded systems.

[MikeyD]

I am so NOT a techie its not funny, but I've got CMSF running very nicely on my bootcamp partitioned mac (running Windows) with a 256 ATI card. Haze graphics are fine and dandy. Shadows? I kinda like 'em but I've never seen the game running off another card so there's no telling if this is how its supposed to look.

From earlier dicussions I think they're mostly concerned with lower-end ATI cards, seems the quality difference between the two ATI products is pretty substantial.

[ July 24, 2007, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Steiner14]

MikeyD,

did you say haze? There is haze? Lot's of haze possible?

And is there fog, too?

[Steiner14]

double post

[ July 24, 2007, 11:09 AM: Message edited by: Steiner14 ]

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Haze in two different flavours. No fog.

[SgtMuhammed]

What about sand/dust storms? Any representation of limited vis?

[Yskonyn]

I was a NVidia fan for a long time and jumped over to ATi (the X1950 Pro to be exact) after having a GF6600GT for quite a while. I made the jump mainly because of the best price for the hottest card and I am still dependant on AGP.

The GF6600 performed great for the little card (128MB version) and was rock solid.

The new ATi card gave me a few poblems at first, but it was mainly because I didn't read the manual well enough (DISABLE Fast Writes in your BIOS if applicable and be sure to disable it in the SMartGart driver settings as well. This is not mentioned in the manual anywhere but if not done will make the card extremely unstable!).

GOOD Power supply is a must for the new generation vidcards. Eventhough you can have a 550W power unit, it's really the sustained (not peak!!) Ampere value that will define your power quality. Under power your vidcard and you'll definately get problems.

Lots of users reporting problems with the X1950 were using crap PSU's.

Driver wise I don't have any problems whatsoever with ATi's set. It's a solid as NVidia's so as far as I am concerned Elmar's points in quality differences don't really stand. (Nothing personal, my friend! ).

I guess its like (and always has been) a matter of choice and similar fanboyism like what happens over and over between AMD and Intel.

If anyone wants to go for the X1950 Pro, I'd say go for it, but make sure you have a proper PSU, because this thing sucks AMPs like a leech!

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Vern_S:

AMD now owns ATI... Give it a little time and maybe they can get ATI's after market support where it should be like Nvidia.

Absolutely nothing has changed with regards to ATI's video drivers, chipset driver, chipset documentation. The teams working on that at ATI did obviously not have any changes forced upon them when the merger happened.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by MikoyanPT:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mike Churchmoor:

Not just the fog:

In near future I will upgrade my old geforce 6600 gt to either gf 8600 gt or to radeon x1950 pro. Which one is running cm:sf better will be crucial. Does ati-cards still have 'issues' with cm:sf compared to gf-cards?

The radeon x1950 pro should run the game better because has better directx9 performance.

The Geforce 8600GT is directx10 compatible if running with Vista.

</font>

[rune]

Redwolf,

Going to disagree with you here, one major difference since AMD bought out ATI... AMD is losing money big time, and unless they pull a miracle on the processor side of things, who knows how long they will be around? Other then that, agree with you.

Rune

[MikoyanPT]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by MikoyanPT:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mike Churchmoor:

Not just the fog:

In near future I will upgrade my old geforce 6600 gt to either gf 8600 gt or to radeon x1950 pro. Which one is running cm:sf better will be crucial. Does ati-cards still have 'issues' with cm:sf compared to gf-cards?

The radeon x1950 pro should run the game better because has better directx9 performance.

The Geforce 8600GT is directx10 compatible if running with Vista.

</font>

[MikoyanPT]

Originally posted by Steiner14:

Redwolf,

interesting post.

My own experience was, that i bought a GF5600 only to see fog in CM again. Indeed, i never had any issues with Nvidia cards.

But i don't want a DX10 card!

So what Nvidia-card could i look for, to get the power of a x1950Pro at the same price?

I have found nothing.

If you don´t like ATI, you have the Nvidia Geforce 7600GT, it is almost as powerfull as the Radeon x1950pro (you will not notice the diference) it´s even more cheaper and it requires less power (electric) to operate.

I don´t understand why people are so worried with CM:SF requirements, it´s certainly not the most demanding game in the market. Oblivion, Crisys, Unreal Tournament 3 are demanding games, CM:SF is not.

Any midlerange videocard in the market should handle CM:SF properly.

But if you buy a 500 dolars top notch card, get ready to some driver issues.

In a final thought regarding ati, i am not impressed with their new generation cards, and don´t think AMD will do any good to ati because all they want is invest in the integrated grafics solutions and motherboard chipsets.

[Cameroon]

My personal gfx card of choice right now is the NVIDIA 7950 GT (512 MB version).

It's what I recommend to my friends that aren't getting Vista or don't care about DX10 yet.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by MikoyanPT:

I don´t understand why people are so worried with CM:SF requirements, it´s certainly not the most demanding game in the market. Oblivion, Crisys, Unreal Tournament 3 are demanding games, CM:SF is not.

Any midlerange videocard in the market should handle CM:SF properly.

Actually, CM:SF can bring any system down on its knees depending on the scenario (and graphic settings). Make a 4km x 4km map full of detail and pour in several battalions, and I'll be damned if your rig runs it smoothly once hell breaks loose. However, a normal sized scenario should run without problems on a mediocre system.