I am getting terrible shimmer in a lot of games with my 4850's and was wondering if anyone else was as well? I have tried 8.6HF and 8.7 currently and they both suck and this is a fresh install of vista as well. It doesn't seem to make any difference how I set the AF setting in the CCC I still get bad shimmering on background objects. Flight sim 2004 and FSX are terrible. COD4 is bad as well. Is there a way to get AF to work as good as it does on my old 8800? The IQ is much better on my old 8800 than it is on these 4850's. I am also stumped as to how to get super sampling working. Every time I enable it as soon as I apply the setting it reverts right back to multi sampling. These drivers...
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poor quality AF with 4850
- Thread starter Astrodave
- Start date
FSX uses alpha-test textures for many objects. They'll shimmer no matter how good the AF is. Maybe lower the Mipmap detail slider in the control panel one notch? You could also try using ATI Tray Tools to enable "High Quality AF". Also make sure Catalyst AI is at Low or disabled, not Advanced. You can also try Wide or Narrow tent AA which will have a small effect on the full scene.
The drivers automatically choose between using Supersampling or Multisampling for Adaptive AA depending on what will work the best. The pull-down menu is just for selecting which one you want to adjust the quality of. The 8.8 driver will no longer use a menu, instead there will be a unified slider for adjusting the quality of both multisample and supersample adaptive AA.
The drivers automatically choose between using Supersampling or Multisampling for Adaptive AA depending on what will work the best. The pull-down menu is just for selecting which one you want to adjust the quality of. The 8.8 driver will no longer use a menu, instead there will be a unified slider for adjusting the quality of both multisample and supersample adaptive AA.
Thanks jimmi but i had already tried all of those settings. I just think that AF is plain broken in ati drivers or the quality of AF is just a lot worse than nvidia. Maybe that's why these cards are so much faster than nvidia this time around, they are skimping on IQ...
Reviewers would have picked that up. If you're so skeptic of ATI, maybe you should've gotten a Nvidia card?
Shimmering typically comes from a negative LOD, ie. the mipmaps are larger than the number of pixels they occupy on the screen. If anything, this would reduce performance. Nvidia drivers have had an option to clamp negative lod, don't know how ati handles negative LOD but there are no options for it.
Shimmering typically comes from a negative LOD, ie. the mipmaps are larger than the number of pixels they occupy on the screen. If anything, this would reduce performance. Nvidia drivers have had an option to clamp negative lod, don't know how ati handles negative LOD but there are no options for it.
The negative LOD is what always got rid of the shimmers for me in fs9 with my old card. Believe me I am mulling the idea of going back to nvidia because the IQ of the 4800 cards is not very good and the drivers are so limited with no options. If the gtx280 gets to the 300ish range then I will probably try one and sell one of these 4850's and put the other one in my htpc. Some games look great with these cards but some are just horrible, like both flight sims especially.
You're only looking at two games here.. No review pointed to any noticeable image quality differences. I think they would have bashed the 4800-series to pieces if it was revealed that they are "cheating" to achieve the performance they do. It would have been all over the net like the NV30 3Dmark fiasco or the "Quack" incident.
I went from the 8800GT to the 4850 and I've also seen that the shimmering in FSX is more pronounced on the 4850, but it was pretty bad on the 8800GT as well. FSX is using a crappy, outdated engine and transparency AA doesn't work either on the Radeon or the 8800GT. In Oblivion, for example, the image quality is about the same, but with the 4850 I can use high quality adaptive AA and 4x AA where as I had to revert to 2x Transparency AA with the 8800GT due to lag and stutters.
The driver control panel is simplified to make it less confusing. It lacks one or two options normally found in Nvidia's control panel. That's why power users use something like ATI Tray Tools when they need to change more advanced settings.
cod4 is noticeable with shimmers too. I just can't seem to get this card to apply good levels of AF no matter what i set the sliders to. Every power line, tree edge, etc has shimmer to it that won't go away. I never had that with my 8800. What do you have set in your CCC for your 3d settings that works well for you? ive tried super sampling aa, mip to high and low, af to high and application controller. It's like the cards have a mind of their own and ignore all of my CCC settings and only use application settings regardless of what is set in the CCC.
Metrocall
Gawd
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Mind providing a ss of what your seeing? I just set everything to highest and am not seeing a whole lot, if any, shimmer except in places I know there should be in CoD4.
Shimmer is not something you can show with a ss....
Shimmer requires movement before it can be seen. In fs9 all is peachy on the ground at idle until you move one little bit and then it's shimmers. The main problem I can see so far is that when it comes to AF, games are not taking any input from the CCC and the driver overrides. Set AF to any level you want in the CCC and the game, every game as far as I can see, just ignores it. If the game itself does not have a setting for AF built into it then you can expect shimmers and even if the game does have AF built in the AF quality is just nowhere near as good as it was with the 8800. Nhancer was a Godsend for me and fixed all of my issues with the nvidia drivers. It's too bad that there is no tool like that for ati cards yet. Ati tool does not support crossfire from what I have read so it is useless to me.
Shimmer requires movement before it can be seen. In fs9 all is peachy on the ground at idle until you move one little bit and then it's shimmers. The main problem I can see so far is that when it comes to AF, games are not taking any input from the CCC and the driver overrides. Set AF to any level you want in the CCC and the game, every game as far as I can see, just ignores it. If the game itself does not have a setting for AF built into it then you can expect shimmers and even if the game does have AF built in the AF quality is just nowhere near as good as it was with the 8800. Nhancer was a Godsend for me and fixed all of my issues with the nvidia drivers. It's too bad that there is no tool like that for ati cards yet. Ati tool does not support crossfire from what I have read so it is useless to me.
Anarchist4000
[H]ard|Gawd
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Might be a little obvious but make sure you unchecked the box that says "use application settings" or whatever next the the AA/AF sliders.
Shimmering power lines sounds more like a problem with AA than with AF. Make sure adaptive AA is on. Also, try checking the use application settings boxes next to AA and AF and uncheck Adaptive AA, then hit apply. Then uncheck the boxes again and enable Adaptive, and hit OK. I have noticed a few times that the CCC will get "stuck" at the application settings and this usually take it out of that. I'm finding the leaked 8.8 beta more reliable with its AA and AF settings so I'd recommend you wait for Cat 8.8 before ditching the card.
Jimmi good advice I will try that. I don't even think I have tried unchecking adaptive AA period out of all the things I have tried. Maybe the adaptive AA is what is causing it and unchecking that will help. I see no difference at all in frame rate or in IQ when i select super over multi there either. In GRID for example, I get no AA at all if i set the CCC to 4xAA manually. If the game doesn't have an AA option to check in the game itself then it will never use the CCC settings and i dont get AA at all. There is something rotten in Denmark with these CCC settings never being applied? A crossfire issue maybe?
Tudz: thanks for the advice but as has been said previously, the ati tools beta does not support 4850 in crossfire from what I have read on their site.
Tudz: thanks for the advice but as has been said previously, the ati tools beta does not support 4850 in crossfire from what I have read on their site.