CM & ATI Radeon 9700/9800

[Wild_Bill]

Has the issue with CMBO/CMBB ATI Radeon cards not being able to display fog been resolved with the latest 9700/9800 board? I'm looking to upgrade the venerable old GeForce3 for something cutting edge, but I'm not too thrilled with the GeForceFX cards taking up two slots and making more noise than a small hurricane.

Thanks.

[Schrullenhaft]

NO.

I don't expect this issue to change with any newer Radeons, now or in the future. This is basically an issue with the video drivers rather than the hardware. Actually most newer video cards have to 'emulate' fog-tables in order to support them. However ATI has never bothered to do this with their drivers on the PC (however RAVE drivers on the Mac apparently do support fog-table emulation). ATI has instead chosen to deliver fog effects via 'vertex fog', which would require that CM be reprogrammed in order to support this method of fog. One reason that ATI has gone with vertex fog is that fog-tables can be a bit of a performance hit (and there may be some other ATI-specific issues too). Despite this speed improvement, in my opinion fog-tables look a bit better than vertex-fog at least in the sceenshots I've seen (this may not be univesally true and it's a very subjective judgement).

So for CMBO, CMBB & CMAK ATI video cards will probably never show fog on a PC. With CMX2 being programmed in OpenGL (I'm not sure yet if this will be the case for the PC version, but definitely the Mac version), fog effects may get programmed as 'vertex fog' routines which should hopefully work properly with both ATI and NVidia cards.

[Thomas Norton]

Hello WB. I too am looking to upgrade, now that the 9800 is out (and the 9600). I have followed the "fog" issue for some time, and I have not seen it resolved for the ATI. Still, with the price going to be going down on the 9700s and the 9500 pro, I think I am going to have to give up on the fog, because everything else these cards do show, are so much better, from what I can see in all the reviews.

I see my local BestBuy has four 9800s out, so I am going to guess next upgrade is about two months away.

Have you checked Sharky Extreme for the 9700/9500 performance with the new updated drivers? It should make CMBB move at a good clip.

Tom

[Wild_Bill]

Thanks for your input guys!

I really don't have a problem with slow frame rates for CM with my GeForce3, as it seems to handle the game just fine, but I'm looking more at other games that I'm interested in coming down the pipe. I may just wait to see what nVidia's next revision of their chip looks like, maybe they'll have optimized their chip so that it runs cooler and has better performance.

[Sgt. Beavis]

Originally posted by Wild_Bill:

Thanks for your input guys!

I really don't have a problem with slow frame rates for CM with my GeForce3, as it seems to handle the game just fine, but I'm looking more at other games that I'm interested in coming down the pipe. I may just wait to see what nVidia's next revision of their chip looks like, maybe they'll have optimized their chip so that it runs cooler and has better performance.

The new N35 chip is scheduled to be released around May 14, if I remember correctly. I've read that this one will correct some of the problems the FX 5800 ( I think that's the current high end card) has.

Then again, a faster 9800 Pro with 256 (!) MB of memory is supposed to be relased this summer.

[phil stanbridge]

The is correct, however, the DDRII variety of 9800 won't be readily available everywhere and it will cost the earth. Also, FWIW, the up and coming games (at least until 2004) won't make the most of the 256mb card, with the only exception (I can thnk of) being DoomIII. With all this in mind, it hardly seems worth the £400 or so the card will demand..

What we need are better drivers for both Nvidia and ATi cards.