Incompatibility with older games - Nvidia vs. ATI

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: palladium
Just a quick question if no one minds, what does 'dithering' mean? It was mentioned in the linked thread. Wikipedia's explanations are too complex.... Thanks.

Dithering is the mixing or blending of colors by making a pattern, using different colors in different pixels. When seen from a distance, the pattern looks like the color you want. This is used when there are not enough colors available. For example, in 8-bit rendering you would have 2^8 = 256 possible colors in each pixel. To get more colors than that, you need to mix the available colors by dithering.

The problem with Nvidia graphics in some older games is that they do not use dithering in certain textures that were designed to be dithered, and in fact were dithered in the original rendition of the game. So now, with "improved" hardware and drivers, the color looks very blotchy and banded.

 

[the unknown]

Originally posted by: smithpd

Originally posted by: the unknown
Perhaps I'm missing something, but if older drivers worked for the old games, why not just roll back to those while you play?

I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, a certain level of card demands a certain level of driver to run it, and drivers older than that level will not work. So, for example, a 6800 card cannot run with drivers before, I guess, 56.xx or something like that. You need a driver in the 4000 series to avoid this problem. This limits you to cards in the 5900 series and below. I have a Ti 4200 that works great. But it is too slow for modern missons, which have become larger and more computer intensive as the computers of trhe mission developers have improved. So, basically, without Nvidia's help with backward compatibility, you are left with old hardware that is hard to find and too slow to be really enjoyable. A far better solution is to go to a relatively new ATI card which does not have the rendering problems.

Well it seems you've made your decision as to which company is better, and I don't see a need for this thread. Unless of course your intention was to "educate" people on the "better" company

 

[BFG10K]

and I don't see a need for this thread.

He's trying to find out if the 2xxx/3xxx series from ATi has the same problems.

 

[etech]

Battlefield 1942 and HD3870 using Cat 7.11 has a problem.

Error message of " A debugger has been detected" on start up of game. Apparently the safedisk copy protection has a problem with the latest drivers. You can't roll back to earlier versions because they don't support the HD38X0 series cards.

A trouble ticket has been submitted to ATI.

Other then that, great card, but I still like playing BF1942 so my son has the card right now and I'm back on my X800GTO.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: smithpd

Originally posted by: apoppin
OK, i just loaded up Thief2 in Vista32 "normally" ... and played ... looked just as horrible as i remember it
- played a few minutes in the first level without issues


What am i looking for?

With proper renderging, it should look dated but not poor. I think Vista may work OK with the DX-10 cards (Nvidia 8000 series cards maybe the ATI HD series), but many people have many reasons to avoid Vista. To see what the poor rendering looks like with 8000 cards and Windows 2000 or XP, see several examples in the Nvidia forum thread that is referenced in the top post. One easy thing to look for is the famous Nvidia bad sky, which looks very blotchy and has no stars. If you see good sky with stars, and if you see good color gradation in dark areas (enabled by dithering), you have solved the problem. Look at the opening scene in Running Interference, the first Thief 2 mission.

But again, the main thing I am interested to hear about is an ATI HD card running in XP with Catalyst 7.1 drivers. I know the 8000 cards look like crap with any drivers and the HD cards also look like crap with drivers before 7.x. The question is, does 7.x fix it with the HD 2900 or 3xxx cards.

What do you mean 7.1?; i am using Cat 7.11 in Vista32 ... not yet 7.12 which is the very latest

Actually, Thief2 DOES look dated but *perfect* ... good sky ... good [16-bit] color rendering ... everything ... i only played a few minutes before being sucked into Gothic3. i will play longer today to see if i find any issues. AND i will try to resurrect XP when i find my floppy with the MB drivers.

Yes, the gameplay was as *brilliant* as the Dark Engine sucked. Strange that SS2 wouldn't play well using the same engine. i really liked Thief series. Hoping for a "IV" someday.

Check out The Seven Sisters, a three mission pack that just came out. It is really great. That should get you back into it.

OK, thanks - now that Thief2 is installed it is a 'given'. Last time i played it was the TX2 awesome fan-made expansion. But i am a self-confessed *graphics whore*. Are there any good mods/expansions for Thief-DS?

Besides the rather long load times, Gothic III seems to be rather bug-free with the community patch.

Even the load times are shorter then before - i have 1.52 community patch ... and it might also have something to do with having 4GB of system RAM ... i really almost forgot most of G3 from 2 years ago but will never forget the bugs.

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: apoppin
Actually, Thief2 DOES look dated but *perfect* ... good sky ... good [16-bit] color rendering ... everything ... i only played a few minutes before being sucked into Gothic3. i will play longer today to see if i find any issues. AND i will try to resurrect XP when i find my floppy with the MB drivers.

apoppin,

Thanks for that information. So, it is established now that the HD 2900 card looks perfect playing Thief 2 with Vista. I am eager to find out if any of the HD cards work just as well with XP. That is what the majority of Thief players are looking for - an XP solution. I, for one, would prefer not to upgrade to Vista just to play Thief.

You should be able to get the MB drivers by a download.

Thanks again for looking into this. Enjoy The Seven Sisters. If you need any help finding it or getting through it, check here.

 

[betasub]

For those playing Medieval2:Total War - there appears to be problem with nvidia's 8 series and ati's HD series cards (on both XP and Vista). Neither series of cards display shadows for vegetation/grass properly (in fact, not at all). Earlier 7 series and x1 series cards don't have this problem. Would be nice if it could be solved in the drivers, but if not it'll probably end up with SEGA/CA ducking the issue rather than release a patch.

 

[smithpd]

I feel your pain, betasub. It is at least somewhat hopeful when you have an active developer who might be able to help. In the case of Thief 2 and System Shock 2, the developer Looking Glass Studios has been long out of business, the publisher Eidos has no staff or desire to address it, and the source code has not been released. So we are at the mercy of Nvidia and ATI. In other words, unless ATI's recent drivers come through, we may be hosed.

 

[sandorski]

I think a lot of the problems has to do with changes in DirectX over the years, but also there have been so many new features added into Video Cards and many features removed that were abandoned as the newer features worked better.

 

[smithpd]

You are certainly correct, sandorski. But this situation does not explain why Nvidia has abandoned the older features and, for the most part ATI has not (at least up to x1950). To me, it is a question of programming integrity, not a necessary fact of life.

The question still remains, are there any DX-10 cards that give decent rendering when playing Thief 2 under Windows XP? We know that Nvidia 8000 series is broken and ATI HD cards are broken with older drivers. I would still be interested to know if anyone has experience with rendering Thief 2 or SS2 with ATI HD cards and 7.11 or 7.12 drivers under Windows XP.

Thanks.

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: apoppin
What do you mean 7.1?; i am using Cat 7.11 in Vista32 ... not yet 7.12 which is the very latest

Sorry, I was mistaken. It should be 7.11 or 7.12. I have changed previous posts so I am hopefully not sending mixed signals.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: smithpd

Originally posted by: apoppin
What do you mean 7.1?; i am using Cat 7.11 in Vista32 ... not yet 7.12 which is the very latest

Sorry, I was mistaken. It should be 7.11 or 7.12. I have changed previous posts so I am hopefully not sending mixed signals.

i tried it with both 7.11 and 7.12 with Vista. i will probably get XP working tonight - i found the OS drivers for my RAID [not my MB].
Thanks for the 7-Sisters mini-expansion for Thief2. i d/led it but have not yet installed it .. i guess it goes into the thief2 directory - my memory of procedure isn't so good for these mods.

i know you purists *hated* DS ... but weren't there some really ambitious projects to take advantage of the
[far] more advanced engine? What happened? it's been a few years.

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i know you purists *hated* DS ... but weren't there some really ambitious projects to take advantage of the
[far] more advanced engine? What happened? it's been a few years.

The DS engine was advanced only in the fact that the graphics were more "state of the art". So, OK, it had dynamic lighting and shadows. IMO they looked crummy -- much too black. It had rag doll physics. The rag dolls looked stupid - e.g., you see a blackjacked AI folded backwards at the waist. The buildings had a cartoonish look and bluish cast. You could not get large areas into the maps, hence lots of distracting load zones. If you look at a recent T2 Fan Mission (FM) like The Seven Sisters and compare it to TDS, the improvement in T2 vs TDS is self evident. The textures used in recent T2 FMs look better, brighter, and more realistic. I would gladly forsake theoretical improvements for better game play and better looking missions.

What happened was that it took a great deal of effort to get possession of the editor, and when it finally arrived the few brave souls that tried it found it more difficult to use than Dromed. There are some T3 FM's but they have not taken off in popularity like some had hoped. The number of T2 FMs released have been increasing in number (10 in December) and getting better and better.

 

[PingSpike]

I have been having issues with system shock 2 (which uses the same engine as thief and has most of the same problems) using my 8800GT and previously my 8800GTS. I finally gave up on the software. I bought a x800pro and am going to install it with a pci-e 1x adapter and then dual to a classic games install when I want to play it.

Last time I checked, both ATI and Nvidia both had washed out color issues with the dark engine. Some one made a workaround, but it sounded like it had almost as many issues as the original.

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: apoppin
Thanks for the 7-Sisters mini-expansion for Thief2. i d/led it but have not yet installed it .. i guess it goes into the thief2 directory - my memory of procedure isn't so good for these mods.

Put all downloaded FMs into a special directory. I call mine Downloads\Thief\ Leave the ZIP files intact. Do not expand them. Then get Darkloader 4.2 or 4.3. On setup, you point Darkloader to the T1 and T2 EXEs and to the directory or directories containing the FM zip files. Then, on launching Darkloader, you see the list of mission files to chose from. Click one and it will display mission information in the readme. Click play to run it. After that, it will play automatically by invoking the EXE. To change to another simply select another. Sometimes (rarely) you need to load the Original Missions beteeen FMs to clear out some wayward files.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: smithpd

Originally posted by: apoppin
Thanks for the 7-Sisters mini-expansion for Thief2. i d/led it but have not yet installed it .. i guess it goes into the thief2 directory - my memory of procedure isn't so good for these mods.

Put all downloaded FMs into a special directory. I call mine Downloads\Thief\ Leave the ZIP files intact. Do not expand them. Then get Darkloader 4.2 or 4.3. On setup, you point Darkloader to the T1 and T2 EXEs and to the directory or directories containing the FM zip files. Then, on launching Darkloader, you see the list of mission files to chose from. Click one and it will display mission information in the readme. Click play to run it. After that, it will play automatically by invoking the EXE. To change to another simply select another. Sometimes (rarely) you need to load the Original Missions beteeen FMs to clear out some wayward files.

thanks ... it's been awhile ... since TX2, Shadows of the Metal Age

============

Originally posted by: smithpd

Originally posted by: apoppin
i know you purists *hated* DS ... but weren't there some really ambitious projects to take advantage of the
[far] more advanced engine? What happened? it's been a few years.

The DS engine was advanced only in the fact that the graphics were more "state of the art". So, OK, it had dynamic lighting and shadows. IMO they looked crummy -- much too black. It had rag doll physics. The rag dolls looked stupid - e.g., you see a blackjacked AI folded backwards at the waist. The buildings had a cartoonish look and bluish cast. You could not get large areas into the maps, hence lots of distracting load zones. If you look at a recent T2 Fan Mission (FM) like The Seven Sisters and compare it to TDS, the improvement in T2 vs TDS is self evident. The textures used in recent T2 FMs look better, brighter, and more realistic. I would gladly forsake theoretical improvements for better game play and better looking missions.

What happened was that it took a great deal of effort to get possession of the editor, and when it finally arrived the few brave souls that tried it found it more difficult to use than Dromed. There are some T3 FM's but they have not taken off in popularity like some had hoped. The number of T2 FMs released have been increasing in number (10 in December) and getting better and better.

it's actually early Unreal2 engine adapted for DS ... it was released 6 months after DE-IW. Yes, the maps were too small ... but the graphics were pretty exceptional - at least compared to the original Dark Engine.

are there ANY good FM expansions for DS?
[yes i *will* play 7 Sisters ... but remember, i AM a graphics whore]

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Last time I checked, both ATI and Nvidia both had washed out color issues with the dark engine. Some one made a workaround, but it sounded like it had almost as many issues as the original.

ATI has no issues for cards up to x1950 if you use drivers 7.11 +, which restores fog. Even earlier ATI drivers did everything correctly (no bad sky, no bad dark textures) with the exception of fog. ATI has issues for the HD series that are the same as the Nvidia 8000 cards, unless the latest drivers improve it (TBD). Nvidia has rendering issues for all cards exceeding 5900 (for the last 4-5 years?), but these issues get distinctly worse for the 8000 series.

As I understand it, the really bad performance with the DX-10 cards is found in XP but not in Vista. The issue is, most Thief players would prefer to use XP and not Vista for a variety of reasons.

Timeslip's DDFIX is the only way to get decent rendering of sky and dark textures with an Nvidia 8000 series card and possibly (TBD) with an ATI HD series card when running under XP. You have to live with its foibles, among which are lack of fog, if you want half decent rendering when you find yourself in that mode.

Washed out is not quite the right word. That implies a raising the white level, which does not happen. I think a better words would be muddy and banded. By muddy I mean indistinct / incorrect dark colors. Some darks disappear into black because there are not enough dark colors to render the scene without dithering. The old dithering algorithm does not work. The banding again is caused by not enough available colors (8 bit rendering).

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: smithpd
This same problem has occurred with many other older games as well, including Aliens vs. Predator.

Which driver fixed AVP1? I've been busting my ass trying to get that game to work.

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: apoppin
are there ANY good FM expansions for DS?
[yes i *will* play 7 Sisters ... but remember, i AM a graphics whore]

I don't know. I am ashamed to say that I have not tried them, but I have read quite a bit about the editor and the problems with T3 FMs, and I did play TDS itself. You could check TTLG Fan Missions Forum and do searches for T3, TDS, etc. Note that you need another program called GarrettLoader to run them. GarrettLoader has bugs for running T1 and T2, so I don't use it. Also, Komag's site has a special section devoted to T3 FM's.

 

[smithpd]

Originally posted by: GundamSonicZeroX
Which driver fixed AVP1? I've been busting my ass trying to get that game to work.

I don't know, and I also don't know if it was AVP1 or AVP2 that was fixed. I don't have the game myself. I got this information by a reference posted in our Thief rendering thread at the Nvidia forum and then reading a really long thread concerning AVP problems at the Nvidia forum. I suggest you go to the Nvidia forums and search for it.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: smithpd

Originally posted by: apoppin
are there ANY good FM expansions for DS?
[yes i *will* play 7 Sisters ... but remember, i AM a graphics whore]

I don't know. I am ashamed to say that I have not tried them, but I have read quite a bit about the editor and the problems with T3 FMs, and I did play TDS itself. You could check TTLG Fan Missions Forum and do searches for T3, TDS, etc. Note that you need another program called GarrettLoader to run them. GarrettLoader has bugs for running T1 and T2, so I don't use it. Also, Komag's site has a special section devoted to T3 FM's.

Big thank-you! i got *lost* last time i visited there and tried to find info [i did get DarkLoader at that time though]. i really appreciate the awesome work that goes into these FMs. Some of them are as good as the original story [or better!].

i still have big problems trying to get XP to fit in with my Vista partitions again ... the damn RAID drivers will load but then it asks for the XP disk on the wrong drive

--i'll get it ... eventually

 

[BFG10K]

AFAIK AvP was fixed after the uproar but 169.21 has broken it again.

I also see older OpenGL games like Serious Sam and MoH Spearhead having issues on 169.21 when they didn't on older drivers.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
AFAIK AvP was fixed after the uproar but 169.21 has broken it again.

I also see older OpenGL games like Serious Sam and MoH Spearhead having issues on 169.21 when they didn't on older drivers.

Back during the FX/9000 series days I would have said nvidia had the backwards compatibility crown. But it seems they have thrown it out the window recently, particularly with the 8 series. At least ATI held the line up to the x1x00 cards, for the most part. As pointed out the banding/dithering issue in old games is common to the both new kinds of hardware though. I wonder if its not a hardware compromise, and that we'll never see any improvement. At any rate...I already gave up.

I do realize that we can't reasonably expect backwards compatibility all the way backwards forever. And thief/SS2 is pretty old. But it does seem like backwards compatibility is getting way to short changed recently. Titles that aren't very old at all start to have problems that aren't ever fixed.

However, it sure would be nice if they had a say "emulate ti4600" option for the new cards.

 

[shortylickens]

Well, Nvidia has actually been better for me. My 7900GTX has fewer errors and glitches with Deus Ex than my X800 Pro did.

 

[CP5670]

Yes, I think ATI is slightly buggier with that game, although the issues are pretty minor (the brightness bug I mentioned earlier, which is easy to fix, along with text not appearing in the target window if you have the targeting augmentation). I still prefer ATI for it though because you can use the fake bloom shader with it, at least on the X1900 cards. The base version of that effect is way too strong, but you can tone down the parameters in the file or use a weaker version floating around the internet. This can be done even on newer drivers that don't support the feature, by temporarily replacing two driver dlls in the windows folder. I have made a bat file to let me quickly switch the files around for this and some other OpenGL games.