ATI Radeon Fog support !

[Schrullenhaft]

This was mentioned in passing on the CMSF forum in a thread about people still playing CMx1 games.

The Catalyst 7.10 drivers (Windows XP) SUPPORT FOG TABLES ! This has been a LONG requested feature that Radeon users were missing when it came to CMBO, CMBB & CMAK. And now it's finally supported in the drivers.

Now the caveats... I tested this in Windows XP with a Radeon 9600. The Catalyst 7.10 drivers do not work with Radeons below the 9500 series. So if you have a Radeon 9000 or 9250, etc., you're out of luck since support of those Radeons stopped with the Catalyst 6.11 driver and nothing newer. Also, I don't know how well this driver will work for those who may be using Vista (and there may be other graphical issues with the CMx1 series and Vista). Windows 2000/Me/98 also won't have a solution here since the Catalyst drivers stopped at 6.2 with those particular OSes.

So if you're running Windows XP and a Radeon that is a 9500 series or higher (9600, 9700, 9800, X600, X700, X800, X1x00, etc.) then you may have the fog that you've been missing. There is a possibility that the fog-table support in the 7.10 Catalysts may not be available for every Radeon model out there. Some on-board Radeon Xpress chipsets may not support this feature (unknown). Also some Mobile Radeon chips may also lack fog-table support.

For those who are running a Radeon in a laptop, you may want to try using the DH Mobility Modder that allows you to use a newer Catalyst driver with your Radeon Mobility chipset (instead of being tied to the drivers that the laptop manufacturer releases - often several revisions older).

[Redwolf]

Are you sure that XP is supported and 2000 is not? That's unusual, usually these share drivers.

Good news for those of use with laptops with Radeon 7500 and 9200

[Schrullenhaft]

It does seem a bit strange that Windows 2000 won't see this benefit by using the newer drivers (since it is basically the same architecture). However if you go through the menu selections for downloading the drivers, selecting Win2K will only give you a max of Catalyst 6.2. Perhaps the 7.10/7.11 drivers may work or it may be an issue with .NET and some OSes (which should only be necessary for the control panel).

Unfortunately I don't think that the Radeon 7500 and 9200 will see this benefit either. Again, using the AMD website selections to get the appropriate driver results in a maximum Catalyst version of 6.11 for the older Radeons (below 9500). I'm not sure if the DH Mobility Modder will make a difference in this regard or not if the chipset is a Mobile Radeon.

[Redwolf]

I was sarcastic about the 7500/9200. I think notebooks are the primary example why vendors should not deprecate older video "cards" - because you might not upgrade no matter how much you'd like to.

So those people who said that AMD will straighten up the ignorant slackers at ATI were actually right.

[Colonel J Lee]

Schrullenhaft: does the ATI 9600 cards (that support fog tables) work with Vista?

[Myles Keogh]

Schrullenhaft:

I just wanted to give you a belated thanks for passing this info along.

I wanted to update my old ATI X300, but was clueless about what card to buy. However, a lot of research and your post helped seal my decision to buy an ATI X1650 Pro PCIE. Yes, it is an "older" card, but I don't have Vista so I did not need a DirectX 10 compatible card. Further, I also did not need a super powerful and ultra new graphics card to play the games on my system. The most graphics intensive games I own are CA's Total War series and Ubisoft's Il-2 1946, and they ran fine with my X300.

However, I missed my fog in CMBB and CMAK which I lost when I installed those games on my my "new" PC with its X300. (Playing Bulge scenarios with the CMETO mod just didn't feel right without the fog!) Thus, I used your post about what cards would support the fog tables as a way of picking the right card. With my new card and the Catalyst 7.11 drivers (which also hit a "sweet spot" for Il-2), the fog is back in all its CM glory! So thanks for your assistance.