Problem with halflife and my new Radeon 9800 Pro

[Polishwonder74]

I hope you guys can help me out with this. I just replaced my old GF3 with a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, and it eats Madden 2004 for LUNCH, and makes Doom 3 look much better, but it is doing a terrible job playing Day of Defeat (HL mod). Is there some sort of known bug with the new 4.9 Catalyst drivers or something? I've been reading that it could be a vsynch problem, but I can't find an option to disable it anywhere. You'd think if a graphics card can stand up to Doom 3, Halflife should be a piece of cake, right?

Throw me a clue here fellas, I'm drowning.

 

[Rage187]

well you went from Nv to Ati.

So did you erase the old drivers, then run driver cleaner?

Vsync sounds like it could be your problem, I'm not familar w/ Ati drivers but would guess there is way to turn it to Application Controlled.

 

[rbV5]

Do you have truform enabled?

Wait for vertical refresh is available in the custom 3D tabs of the legacy Control Panel, or th Advanced view of the 3D menu in the new CCC.

 

[Polishwonder74]

I tried it with and without Truform enabled :-(

 

[Matthias99]

Try running some basic, reliable benchmarks like 3DMark01 and 3DMark03. If your results seem way too low, you probably need to uninstall and reinstall your chipset and video drivers (as well as reinstalling DX9 afterwards). I'd also use something like Driver Cleaner 3 to ensure you don't have any old driver remnants lying around and screwing things up.

 

[LTC8K6]

Run DXDIAG and click the display tab. Make sure agp texture acceleration is enabled.
Check and see what Smartgart says about your AGP speed.

If those are out of order, follow Matthias99's instructions.

 

[Polishwonder74]

Ok, I checked DirectX Diagnostics, texture acceleration is enabled, as well as directdraw and direct3D acceleration. I scored around 3,000 or so on 3DMark '03 as soon as I installed the new card. SmartGart says that everthing is running, everything is enabled, and my AGP speed is at 8X. Man, this sucks.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: Polishwonder74
Ok, I checked DirectX Diagnostics, texture acceleration is enabled, as well as directdraw and direct3D acceleration. I scored around 3,000 or so on 3DMark '03 as soon as I installed the new card. SmartGart says that everthing is running, everything is enabled, and my AGP speed is at 8X. Man, this sucks.

That is low for the default test at 1024x768. Is the slider set to balanced for Direct3D in the 3D settings tab? Move the slider to performance and run the test again with the default settings.

 

[Concillian]

Yeah, that's quite low, not just a little. you should be getting well over 5000 with a 9800 Pro.

 

[skreet]

Is it in an AGP 4x slot? Mine looked really bad before I rebuilt my system the 2nd time. Went from messy 4X to a clean 8X install and half-life rocked at 99fps solid.

I would try a fresh load of the O/S to clear any software related issues.

 

[Polishwonder74]

No, it's the mobo in the system in my siggeh. It's an 8X AGP.

 

[SilentRunning]

Maybe I am missing something but Half-Life has always run better in OpenGL mode than DirectX, even on ATI cards.

So have you set the in game mode to OpenGL?

 

[Polishwonder74]

Yes, definitely OpenGL. This is just baffling me 'cause the old GeForce 3 that I replaced with this super cool Radeon ran Half Life like a CHAMP. I figured I could unhook vsynch and get like 120 fps with this slick new card.

 

[BFG10K]

As was already asked, did you remove all traces of your nVidia drivers?

 

[Avalon]

Weird. I upgraded to a 9700 a while back from your same video card, a GF3. When I went to play games, there was a good ammount of tearing, and it made my game feel sluggish. That was until I enabled vsync. I scored full marks in 3dmark03 before enabling vsync, though, so I'm not sure why your performance is suffering. Where did you get your 9800 pro? Also, what model is it? I have a sneaking suspicion you accidentally bought a 128bit version of the card, but even still I don't see how that would hurt your performance so badly. Correct me if I'm wrong about your card being 128bit.

 

[Polishwonder74]

I guess I'd better get in there and flush out what's left of the Nvidia drivers, I haven't done that yet.

This is the card that I got (from newegg) It's definitely a 256-bit version. And even so, it should do at least as well as my old GF3, even if it were the crappier 128 bit version. It does pretty well with Madden 2004 and Doom 3, so I know it's working ok, it's just Halflife that's not working well.

Does anyone have a link to that slick little program that flushes out the old Nvidia drivers?

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Polishwonder74
I guess I'd better get in there and flush out what's left of the Nvidia drivers, I haven't done that yet.

This is the card that I got (from newegg) It's definitely a 256-bit version. And even so, it should do at least as well as my old GF3, even if it were the crappier 128 bit version. It does pretty well with Madden 2004 and Doom 3, so I know it's working ok, it's just Halflife that's not working well.

Does anyone have a link to that slick little program that flushes out the old Nvidia drivers?

Driver Cleaner

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

i went from NV -> ATI..

no amount of driver cleaning would fix my HL problems, just had to reinstall windows :/

 

[BW86]

i went from nv to ati, used driver cleaner and cs runs better than ever i have no problems playing cs with the 4.9 cats, i did have a problem with the 4.7 cats with cs though.

 

[Marsumane]

Your 3dmark score is way low. I'm getting ~6200 w/ my oced 9800p. You are getting less then 1/2 of that. If i were u, id run drivercleaner and eliminate all drivers of both vendors and then do a fresh install of cat 4.8's. I heard some major complaining in another thread about the 4.9's and i personally have been using the 4.8s sense their release on about 10 different games w/o any problems. You will know when your card is working properly when you get between 5k -> 6k on stock speeds/settings.

 

[lament]

of course you've entered fps_max 100 into the console to lift the 72FPS cap right? (unless you're vsync'd at your refresh rate)

 

[Polishwonder74]

Ok, I ran driver cleaner just now and then benchmarked at 5629 3DMarks. What kind of coolers are you guys using when you overclock your 9800's? I'm tihnking of trying it.

As soon as I get done fiddling around with 3D Mark, I'm going to try Halflife again and see if that helped.

 

[Polishwonder74]

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!

Ok, for all you people with similar fps problems with Halflife and a Radeon 9800 card, type these commands into the console:

ati_subdiv 0
ati_npatch 0

That outta do it!

 

[BFG10K]

A better way is to set Truform to "always off" in the control panel.