advanced user going from nvidia to ati .....

SoFGR

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 14, 2007
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Hi there, I'm thinking about getting a 5870 on launch to replace a gtx260 that i paid 70 dolllars for on march ( my 4850 was having stability issues due to very ineffective stock cooling so i RMA'd the card back to the store and bought the gtx260 192 on discount ).

I always used ati cards with ATT tools and not even bothered with installing CCC, thing is that ATT is no longer supported by Ray Adams right ? I would like to know if there are any registry tweaks / CCC options related to the adjustments mentionted below, my os is windows xp sp2 mind you, I see my self running a dual boot setup with windows 7 in a few months once they hit retail though.

1) flip queue size ( aka max frames to render ahead ) : I really want this set to 1 or 0 for direct3d games in order minimize input lag, what should i change in the registry/driver.inf ?

2) game profiles : Seperate AA/AF settings for every game in my collection are essential, for example in forceware I have BF2.exe set to use application level AA and sumpersampling while in hl.exe games i have it set to run with 8x AF and 4x AA forced by the drivers

3) color space + rgb setting : I plan to use my HDTV for a little bit of media playback and gaming at 1920*1080, thing is that i have to configure my card's rgb setting to 16-235 (limited) for everything ( desktop games videos etc ) because my TV (like many others) has problems with crushing blacks in the 0-255 range, I would also like to know if there's any practical way of switching back and forth between ITU 601 and 709 so SD and HD content will be displayed as it should be.

4) hdmi -> hdmi audio : does it really work ? is it adjustable ? I want to use my tv's speakers but if I could feed them with the analog output of my x-fi instead of the video card's audio signal it would be even better, If i don't install ATI's hdmi audio drivers will the card stll be sending a null audio signal throught hdmi like nvidia cards do ? ( http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034612921#post1034612921 )

5) enforcing AA in games that don't "officially" support it : like bioshock S.T.A.L.K.E.R gears of war and UT3, my nvidia does it but is possible to do that with an ati card too ?

6) any experiences with batman arkham asylum 1.1 ? does this tweak really work ( http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1332123&postcount=1 ) ? will i be able tear cloth with my batarang and see smokes (sounds kinda stupid i know ) just like i can on the demo with my current card ? I know that my c2d E6600 @ 3.3ghz will propably not cut it but since this is a third person game that I'll be playing on my couch with a 360 controller I wouldn't really be bothered by occasional 15-20fps drops. According to this thread the "simulated" physx effects on cpu are less accurate and make the whole game unstable, http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1451584

7) what's the equivalent of nvidia's supersampling transparency AA ? back in 2006 I found an experiemental AA method on rage3d forums, it was called EATM + Alphasharpening, it looked promising because it made alpha textures like fences and foilage in BF2 oblivion HL2 look MUCH better while the performance hit was minimum compared to adaptive quality AA, is this method still supported by current ATI cards or will I be stuck with adaptive ?

Will i still need to install ATT in order to apply any of the above tweaks ? if yes can CCC + ATT work at the same time without any conflicts ? come on ati users please share your knowledge :D
 
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c'mon guys 129 views and not a single reply ? I know my english is not that good but still this isn't rocket science,I believe anyone with some experience on ATI cards should be able to provide me with some extra infromation, this is [H] right ? Don't tell ne that 90% of the members just put in the card download the drivers and play without tweaking anything first, WHERE THIS WORLD IS GOING TO ??? :p :p
 
to be fair i viewed it because i had to same situation you do. so i responded...though it's not a useful one :D
 
Profiles are available (not as straightforward as nvidia's though), forcing AA works, and afaik there is only adaptive AA for all those alpha textures, but the performance hit is negligible for most games.

As for the rest, no idea.
 
Don't tell ne that 90% of the members just put in the card download the drivers and play without tweaking anything first, WHERE THIS WORLD IS GOING TO ??? :p :p

to be fair how would i know what needed tweaking if i didnt play with it first?
 
judging by your 2nd post over in the home theater section, I'll take it you really want an answer. I've currently got an X1900 Pro running on windows vista, so I'm speaking from that, and some assumptions based on what I've read. Certainly there are people on these boards with your cards and I'm sure sooner or later someone will come by with the exact answers your looking for.

1) flip queue size ( aka max frames to render ahead ) : I really want this set to 1 or 0 for direct3d games in order minimize input lag, what should i change in the registry/driver.inf ?

also known as Vsync? If the game doesn't have a setting and you leave CCC stock the games only going to buffer once.

2) game profiles : Seperate AA/AF settings for every game in my collection are essential, for example in forceware I have BF2.exe set to use application level AA and sumpersampling while in hl.exe games i have it set to run with 8x AF and 4x AA forced by the drivers

Source has a nice GUI to turn on 8X AF and 4X AA, it'l go up to 16X both, and thats alyays more elegant than trying to force it in hardware, so why not just do that?

4) hdmi -> hdmi audio : does it really work ? is it adjustable ? I want to use my tv's speakers but if I could feed them with the analog output of my x-fi instead of the video card's audio signal it would be even better, If i don't install ATI's hdmi audio drivers will the card stll be sending a null audio signal throught hdmi like nvidia cards do ? ( http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034612921#post1034612921 )

AFAIK without the drivers installed the audio contacts are high impedance --but even if they're not, if you just run the DVI cable out, and buy a $5 DVI to HDMI cable from mono price, you'll get that high impedance.

5) enforcing AA in games that don't "officially" support it : like bioshock S.T.A.L.K.E.R gears of war and UT3, my nvidia does it but is possible to do that with an ati card too ?

no game officially "supports" having AA forced on it at a hardware level. The video card drivers sits under the rendering API that the game is using, and thus when you "force" AA your forcing the ROP's make their multiple AA passes. Evedentally on the newer cards in windows 7 forcing AA doesn't yet work, --but It works for my X1900 in windows vista. stalkers in game UI supports AA too.

6) any experiences with batman arkham asylum 1.1 ? does this tweak really work ( http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1332123&postcount=1 ) ? will i be able tear cloth with my batarang and see smokes (sounds kinda stupid i know ) just like i can on the demo with my current card ? I know that my c2d E6600 @ 3.3ghz will propably not cut it but since this is a third person game that I'll be playing on my couch with a 360 controller I wouldn't really be bothered by occasional 15-20fps drops. According to this thread the "simulated" physx effects on cpu are less accurate and make the whole game unstable, http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1451584

In this one instance I think physics is probably a write-off, meaning yeah, you might not get those cool physics effects in batman, but certainly going forward I think physX is going to lose market share and developers will write their own physics protocalls in openCL or DirectCompute, both of which are supported by ATI and Nvidia.

7) what's the equivalent of nvidia's supersampling transparency AA ? back in 2006 I found an experiemental AA method on rage3d forums, it was called EATM + Alphasharpening, it looked promising because it made alpha textures like fences and foilage in BF2 oblivion HL2 look MUCH better while the performance hit was minimum compared to adaptive quality AA, is this method still supported by current ATI cards or will I be stuck with adaptive ?

They come up with fancy names for these theoretical new sampling methods, but TBH I've never seen the huge improvements the marketing jargon would have you believe --just take a look at [H]'s IQ tests.

edit: what the hell is wrong with the timestamps on these posts?
 
1) also known as Vsync? If the game doesn't have a setting and you leave CCC stock the games only going to buffer once.



2) Source has a nice GUI to turn on 8X AF and 4X AA, it'l go up to 16X both, and thats alyays more elegant than trying to force it in hardware, so why not just do that?




3) AFAIK without the drivers installed the audio contacts are high impedance --but even if they're not, if you just run the DVI cable out, and buy a $5 DVI to HDMI cable from mono price, you'll get that high impedance.



4) no game officially "supports" having AA forced on it at a hardware level. The video card drivers sits under the rendering API that the game is using, and thus when you "force" AA your forcing the ROP's make their multiple AA passes. Evedentally on the newer cards in windows 7 forcing AA doesn't yet work, --but It works for my X1900 in windows vista. stalkers in game UI supports AA too.



5)In this one instance I think physics is probably a write-off, meaning yeah, you might not get those cool physics effects in batman, but certainly going forward I think physX is going to lose market share and developers will write their own physics protocalls in openCL or DirectCompute, both of which are supported by ATI and Nvidia.



6)They come up with fancy names for these theoretical new sampling methods, but TBH I've never seen the huge improvements the marketing jargon would have you believe --just take a look at [H]'s IQ tests.

edit: what the hell is wrong with the timestamps on these posts?

1) flip queue size or max frames to render ahead takes part when you DISABLE vsync, but anyway since i don't think this option will be available in CCC i'll just install ATT in order to change ti from 3 to 1

2) You didn't understand, of course I enable AF+AA from the game options if I can but many older games do not have these options so i have to force them by drivers

3) wait a minute, are you saying that when using the DVI port of the video card it will NOT try to output any kinda of audio signal like nvidia cards do ? I already own a dvi -> hdmi cable for my hdtv but the stupid video card manages to send a null audio signal over the cable automatically muting my TV's analog sound input

4) ingame AA in stalker is not true AA, more like than a picture smoothing effect like the one used in GRAW2, ti makes jaggies look less evident but it also blurs the whole picture, something like edgeAA in crysis, anyway since i won't be dumping xp anytime soon i guess i'll be ok

5) Yea all that stuff you said is nice but i still want smokes and rippable cloths in batman !! :p guess i'll have to try the tweak and see for my self if the cpu can handle it.

6) oops I forgot about edge detect AA, thanks for the article i'll give it a good read soon
 
thing is that ATT is no longer supported by Ray Adams right ?
Wrong. Took me a while to figure this out, because the official homepage at Guru3D only has the last non-beta release, which is two years old...

But Ray Adams is still developing and supporting it. You can get the latest beta from the ATT forum. Despite being labelled betas, they seem as stable as they ever were...
 
* bump !

any feedback from 5870 owners yet ? does ATT work ok with 5xxx cards ?
 
I get my 5870 today and I'll be playing around with it at about 6pm today. I'll post my findings. Wanting to see smoke/steam in Batman isn't silly actually. If I see steam vents or pipes, I expect to see some steam come out of some of them. I expect cloth to tear at some point, and if I bump into things that are lighter than I am and it's not bolted down, it should move (this part was missing from the game). Luckily the gameplay is so good that I'm willing to live without the added effects. I do think it's gay of Eidos to go the PhysX route for effects that don't look THAT much better than what I've seen in games using CPU based physics.

About that audio issue, does your TV have the abilty to use a different audio input when using HDMI? I run HDMI to my Denon receiver which allows me to mix and match inputs. I'm pretty sure my Nvidia card was outputting a 2CH audio signal because my receiver reported a 2CH signal, but there was never any audio. Passthrough didn't work for me from my Audigy 4 Pro to my Nvidia card using the two wire cable. I used optical out from my card to the receiver and that's how I transmitted the audio signal. I'll let you know if I have better luck tonight with my 5870.
 
I have used HDMI-->HDMI on my 5870 and DVI-->HDM in my 4890. Audoi comes though with no issues and it plays through my TV. Blue Rays look and sound great.

You can select what audio source/output to use. When you have an ATI DVI-->HDMI adapter or HDMI cable plugged direclty into the 5870, you have a new audio source to select from, ATI HDMI Audio. If you wanted to use your X-Fi, you would need to select that as the source instead of the ATI HDMI Audio.

I used a non-ATI DVI-->HDMI adapter on my 4890 and there was no audio but video was perfect.

I hope this helps.
 
@ tesfaye : yes according to this thread my gtx260 outputs a null audio signal to the HDTV when using my 5M DVI-> HDMI cable http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t88391.html too bad I can't find a wait to disable it in the latest forceware

There is a seperate audio-jack for HDMI2 on my TV
rear-connections.jpg
I'm using a standard 3.5mm male to male 5M minijack going from the analog out of my x-fi to the analog input of my tv ( 40w4000 has no digital input btw only digital output :( ) my HDTV detects that fake audio signal coming through its hdmi port and it automatically mutes the audio jack, so you get the picture :(

@ mark0824 : i already got a 5M DVI-HDMI cable so i don't need the DVI-HDMI adapter you mentioned, can you please confirm that your card does not try to send sound through dvi like my stupid nvidia does ??
 
I am sorry that I do not have a 5870 to give you specfic information on that card and its output, but I do have my 3870 which I use for audio output as well. Currently my card is set up with the DVI -> HDMI adapter that was included with the card, then HDMI is then going into my Harmon Kardon AVR. Now if I just turn on the avr + tv and set it to my PC output, I will get a picture but the sound will still come out of my PC speakers. The only time I will get sound is if I set the 'HDMI audio out' as the default source (either in Windows settings or the specific program I am using for playback).

So I am thinking you can just turn off your pc speakers and the 3.5mm cable should still output sound to your TV. That way you just get the sound from your tv speakers and video from the cord off the 5870. I would be pretty suprised if this has changed as I was also told this is how it works on the 4870s (which would work on the 4890s).
 
i cant believe theres no SPDIF+DVI to HDMI cable... that would solve all your guys problems but... sure enough, it looks to be the case.
 
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