My findings with two new cards - ATI 5850 / Nvidia 460GTX

[phil stanbridge]

Quite interesting stuff so I'll share my findings.

The latest Cat drivers (10.7) were unstable for me in Shock Force, so I went back to 10.5 - these performed better graphically than 10.7 but I was experiencing crashes during saves and in the campaign! Not so with the 10.7's. Food for thought for all those suffering crashes. It may be the card drivers!! Unfortunately, I was experiencing terrible texture tearing with the 10.7s which is why I downgraded my drivers. Then the 10.5s would lead to crashes. So a very mixed bag. I could have gone on testing drivers, but I changed my card instead.

The Nvidia on the other hand is a breath of fresh air. Certainly not perfect I'll add, with the annoying flashing textures problem but it's not as severe at the ATI problems in my opinion. One thing I would add as a significant plus, the game is so much smoother with the latest nvidia drivers. I had about 20 minutes between testing the game using ATI and then on the Nvidia. I couldn't believe how much better it was playing. Totally smooth scrolling. The ATI would almost judder in comparision - as if it was struggling to manage the textures, with any driver I tried. Take into account that both cards are almost the same in terms of raw performance. Also take into account the Nvidia is newer, cheaper and quieter. I think it's a no brainer if you are in the market for a next gen card. I just hope to god Nvidia see fit to fix the flashing texture problem for us!

[jcmil]

I am thinking the 460 will suit my next gfx upgrade.

Just curious, did my attempt at a fix in the nvida driver thread work for you?

Something in the registrys' openGL settings is key to the profiles function I think. If it does improve it then I would hope someone would be able to pinpoint the switch & write a fix into a patch for the game....

[phil stanbridge]

I only got the card today mate so I will have a look and see. But I'm really pleased with the overall performance in Shock Force.

[phil stanbridge]

I tried your nhancer file - it has definitely improved things to a degree. There isn't any flashing as such, but I'm not sure I like it regardless. It does something else that I cant put my finger on. Image quality appears saturated maybe? Also, because it is a bodge rather than a fix I don't think the lighting side of things is working as it should now. For example, a great example of this is the riot mission in the British campaign which I am on now. I get no flickering flashing light textures during play (WEGO) so in theory it has worked, but is has 'dummed' down some other things as a result. Just my opinon of course - perhaps you can still work on it? It's a very difficult call. I'll remove it and try it again. See which version I prefer.

Actually, I think the only way I can remove it is to uninstall? There is no applet in Win 7, makes it difficult to know what is going on.

[jcmil]

I set it up for my 9800 to improve image quality, but the 400 series will be different in a lot of ways I'm sure. Try turning off the non opengl settings eg enhancements & texture filtering 1st & see what happens.

I think this might help - change

compatibility - Conformant Texture Clamp to 'hardware'

optimizations - texture filtering to off

My main feeling is that it kills the global flashes but as you say something isn't quite right. But for me it is a whole lot easier to bear than the map-wide star-shell rifle fire....

I find I don't actually need to totally uninstall just del or deactivate a profile & then import other profiles. nHancer will also reset profiles.

That way I can continue to mess with it w/out it messing about elsewhere - you can stop it loading with windows too.

The key thing for me has been getting some registry keys written by the earlier driver builds so that nHancer can activate that instruction set in the newer drivers.

Interesting that the driver for openGL can still be accessed with that config tho. Shows the driver still has the commands embedded even if NVDA has turned them off & the newer cards still respond.

I am probably gonna grab a 460 soon, as I like the bang for buck, esp as you can SLi em & outperform the high-end card for less $s. When I do I can start reconfiguring the profile for that GPU. (If you don't solve it 1st).

Wondering why no-one more technically advanced in driver architecture hasn't used my ground-work....

Thanks for the feed-back - it seemed like I was the only one interested in testing it!

[c3k]

jcmil,

Although this is far beyond my skill level, I appreciate the work you've done. Hopefully someone can run with the ball and create a good CMSF/nvidia workaround.

phil standbridge: I am about to purchase a 5850 card (regardless of CMSF). However, I am wondering if you've tried the latest 10.8 drivers? It now being September, I'm sure the 10.9's are around the corner, as well. If so, what were your results?

Thanks,

Ken

[phil stanbridge]

Hi, the last drivers I tried were 10.7 which were terrible to be honest. I ended up installing the 10.4's which were significantly better. The 460 seems to be the better card for SF, but if you've read my findings in the other thread on this forum you'll see that it is a mixed bag. I am experiencing serious crashes which is probably (read more than likely) related to the new Nvidia drivers Problem with a new card is that is needs new drivers. Whether or not Nvidia sort this out in terms of SF is probably quite slim. In that respect the 5850 is the better card - as it can run with older drivers.