ATI 5.10A drivers... ATI takes crown over nVidia in D3/Q4

[CashMoney]

Hate to ruin things (especially since it's my first post), but those timedemo results are useless, at least as far as actual game play performance is concerned.

Go make a demo (netdemo or demo) and make sure you fire off a rocket/nade or two and stand somewhere you can see a shadow/your shadow. Timedemo it and watch how the shadows are gone, the projectile smoke is missing and likely a few others things I'm just not noticing*. In my own personal testing I seem to be getting about an average of 20 extra frames in the timedemo compared to what the frames actually were when I recorded the demo. I get 40-45 frames per second, top of map by gl on Over The Edge when in game. Same settings, but timedemo a recording of the same thing, I get 60-65.

Perhaps this is why they never included a demo with the game?

*on a side note, I'd be happy to get those frames with those visuals, because with the exception of the projectile smoke, pretty much everything else looks the same as my mp settings anyway

[RedAlley]

Its basically just something to test out drivers and see how much things improve when we make a tweak.

[Bacon]

what kind of laptop are you running?!?!

i get 57fps at 1024 on a desktop

P4 3Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, ati x600

[bitWISE]

Hate to ruin things (especially since it's my first post), but those timedemo results are useless, at least as far as actual game play performance is concerned.

Go make a demo (netdemo or demo) and make sure you fire off a rocket/nade or two and stand somewhere you can see a shadow/your shadow. Timedemo it and watch how the shadows are gone, the projectile smoke is missing and likely a few others things I'm just not noticing*. In my own personal testing I seem to be getting about an average of 20 extra frames in the timedemo compared to what the frames actually were when I recorded the demo. I get 40-45 frames per second, top of map by gl on Over The Edge when in game. Same settings, but timedemo a recording of the same thing, I get 60-65.

Perhaps this is why they never included a demo with the game?

*on a side note, I'd be happy to get those frames with those visuals, because with the exception of the projectile smoke, pretty much everything else looks the same as my mp settings anyway

So that explains why the posted rates are so high. I've actually never ran a timedemo but my average in game is around 30-40.

[CashMoney]

It's worse than I thought. Just made another demo (to make sure I didn't have it wrong) on Bloodworks. Ran around the map after picking up all the weapons. Fired off all the weapons, looked at various things on the maps, etc, about 45 seconds. Played it back and ...

Some flickering overhead lights have eletrical sparks falling and one even has a purple bolt of electricity that fires off now and then - gone; flickering light is there but it has no effect on the shadows and the other effects are simply not rendered.

Every weapon discharged - no disharge; get the muzzleflash, but no rail trail, no smoke from rockets or grenades, no lightning, no buckshot, no hyperblaster bolts, no nails, you don't even get the sparks flying when you run a gaunlet against a wall. No explosions either; when a rocket or nade explodes they just dissapear from site, no 'firey' cloud.

I averaged about 30-40fps on Bloodworks during that run, yet timedemo tells me 79.

[Psyche911]

I haven't run a demo either. But my FPS have drastically changed with this update.

[eviscuno]

It's worse than I thought. Just made another demo (to make sure I didn't have it wrong) on Bloodworks. Ran around the map after picking up all the weapons. Fired off all the weapons, looked at various things on the maps, etc, about 45 seconds. Played it back and ...

Some flickering overhead lights have eletrical sparks falling and one even has a purple bolt of electricity that fires off now and then - gone; flickering light is there but it has no effect on the shadows and the other effects are simply not rendered.

Every weapon discharged - no disharge; get the muzzleflash, but no rail trail, no smoke from rockets or grenades, no lightning, no buckshot, no hyperblaster bolts, no nails, you don't even get the sparks flying when you run a gaunlet against a wall. No explosions either; when a rocket or nade explodes they just dissapear from site, no 'firey' cloud.

I averaged about 30-40fps on Bloodworks during that run, yet timedemo tells me 79.

you obviously have zero clue as to what timedemo's are actually used for.

[eviscuno]

holy shit, that hotfix jumped my fps 10-15 higher

x700 pro

[MKJ]

a comparison between a card that was released 2 months ago and a card that wont be released for another 2 months

hmmmm

[Oeloe]

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/DLRedirect.asp?fileIDExt=effbafd134873f47f49c740581fb1854&accountID=737&deptID=894

Thx for the link. I'll test this with my Radeon 9800 Pro. I'm also curious if all of those graphics FX really aren't played in timedemos.

[reefsurfer]

Im never below 45 fps on my graphic card in Q4... and except from the "bad spots" in the maps it constantly flickers on 63 fps.

NEVER had any problems with nvidia.. so i guess im a fanboy.

[shadd_]

a comparison between a card that was released 2 months ago and a card that wont be released for another 2 months

hmmmm

nov 5. for the x1800xt.

x1800xl are in shops now.

[alright]

I was skeptical, but by just installing these drivers I gained 8-10 FPS in the ggl-timedemo.

x800XL

[CashMoney]

you obviously have zero clue as to what timedemo's are actually used for.

To benchmark the game and get an idea of average frame rates by use of a pre-recorded demo run? Which, if some of the visual elements are being dropped is going to have no significance on actual gameplay or to a lot of the tweaking you may do to your config files.

Keeping on topic, I never recieved any frame rate increase from these drivers, however my card is being incorrectly id'd by the drivers as an X850 Pro (It's an X800GTO). Fingers crossed that's the cause and it's correctly id'd in the 5.11's (or another beta).

[Freakaloin]

Heres a link: http://firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4 ... efault.asp

I know its hard to take nVidia fanboys... but its true.

rofl...MORON ALERT!!!...

[Grudge]

Keeping on topic, I never recieved any frame rate increase from these drivers, however my card is being incorrectly id'd by the drivers as an X850 Pro (It's an X800GTO). Fingers crossed that's the cause and it's correctly id'd in the 5.11's (or another beta).

Your X800GTO may very well be a X850Pro. The GTO isn't a "real" model by itself, rather re-labeled X850Pro or XT. They have only disabled a pipeline quad and downclocked it. That's why the drivers thinks it's a X850Pro.

[DRuM]

5.10a gave me a 10-15 fps boost on a 9800 Pro.

Really? I have a 9800pro and am still on cats 5.4! I'll give this a whirl.

[vesp]

hm... before using these hotfix drivers, Q4 had annoyiong white flecks all over textures and models, after using the hotfix driver I still get flecks, but they are Red, and only occur over "active" areas like doors.

strange and annoying, hope the new drivers out early november actually work properly.

(card is 9800XT)

[CashMoney]

Your X800GTO may very well be a X850Pro. The GTO isn't a "real" model by itself, rather re-labeled X850Pro or XT. They have only disabled a pipeline quad and downclocked it. That's why the drivers thinks it's a X850Pro.

Yeah, and pretty sure it makes no odds either way; just the name it will effect in this case since the GPU's are the same (won't stop me hoping tho) but the non alpha's recognize it as a GTO. And yes, it is an R480 core under the hood

[R00k]

hm... before using these hotfix drivers, Q4 had annoyiong white flecks all over textures and models, after using the hotfix driver I still get flecks, but they are Red, and only occur over "active" areas like doors.

strange and annoying, hope the new drivers out early november actually work properly.

(card is 9800XT)

When I was playing on my 9600XT, before I upgraded, I got those white flecks a lot on the MP maps too.

[shaft]

This patch made a ~10fps difference in that ggl timedemo for me.

[r3t]

I tried the patch (5.10a) with my 9800pro and it made things worse, not better. I didn't run a timedemo but single player performance was considerably worse, much more choppy, and there were some rendering errors. Most notably in the rendering of smoke and steam (like it was being dithered to 16bit color or something). I'll wait for the official release

[DegreeZ]

Why the fuck arn't those 5.10a drivers installing correctly? I install them, then restart my pc and it says that they have not been installed.wtf?

[MidnightQ4]

hm... before using these hotfix drivers, Q4 had annoyiong white flecks all over textures and models, after using the hotfix driver I still get flecks, but they are Red, and only occur over "active" areas like doors.

strange and annoying, hope the new drivers out early november actually work properly.

(card is 9800XT)

typically this is memory errors, sounds like maybe you overclocked your card a bit too much?

[f00dl3]

The display driver "hotfix" did fix the issue I was having with zooming in in Quake 4, however, it was not worth it as it caused my Windows XP GUI to lag considerably on my x800 Pro. Ended up uninstalling the "Hotfix" and reverting to my previous Catalyst 5.1 drivers that support XP SP1.

Hate to say this, but this driver set must have been made for the people who wish to expose themselves to the Microsoft .NET and Windows XP SP2. I think ATI is making bad (or good? it allows them to monitor their users more with DRM) moves requireing all their users who wish to update their drivers to switch to XP SP2 & .NET.

Personally, I find SP2 rather "insecure" as it exposes you to a technology called Digital Restrictions Management, which allows money-hungry corporations to have remote access to home user's computers to do what they wish. This technology will eventually lead to Microsoft being able to charge annual subscription fees to their software product users.