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Half Life 2 on the 8600 - Page 2

post #21 of 42
11/18/04 at 7:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bossy573
1280X800, mid-high detail and no lock-ups, etc. Great freaking game!
Ok I confirmed AI set to disabled solves the issue but It seems loosing a tiny bit of framerate (but well worth it)
But has anybody experienced this?
1) sound stutter (like a microopause of 1/4 of a second before dialogs; it helps defragmenting HD and RAM before running the game but the stutter sometimes appears anyway).
2) slowdows (like half of framerates) near big water sections:
It's fluid with simple 'reflections' and it's incredibly slow using both 'World ref' and 'All ref'. Actually I can't see any difference between any of the reflection options; infact even switching from ALL to simple retains the same quality and the same speed (if we can call it speed). I have to close and reopen halflife2 in order to get the proper simple reflections and gain speed. But again I can't see any quality losses; in simple mode objects get reflected in the water as much as in 'world reflections' and 'all reflections' but it seems to me the water is more transparent. So bottom line is to retain the same quality and get full speed (no framerates hits) switch 'simple reflections'.
This could be either a HL2 bug or a driver issue using omegadrivers (latest).
Please let me know if this works/not works for you.
sorry for my english if anything I wrote doesn't make any sense
R
Luca
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post #22 of 42
11/18/04 at 10:15am
When I first loaded the game I would get an occassional stutter. However, I updated my vid drivers, defraged, etc. I played for about 2 hours straight last night and did not see any further issues of this type.
Initially I had the game set to high settings all around and I could tell it was going to crawl so I knocked everything down to medium and it has been extremely playable and I think that even at those settings the game looks great. The fan on the 8600 was blowing like mad but I expected that. (No OCing, etc.) It may be time for a cooling pad though.
No question there is a frame rate hit outdoors but it is not enough to affect the game.
As suggested here, I am running the latest Omegas with AI disabled. No artifacts, rainbow colors, etc. Anyone here know what "AI" is anyway? And why do the latest Omegas come with "standard" D3D and OpenGL drivers? I can no longer optimize them for performance.
I must say I am surprised. Reading the previews I thought I'd be playing @ 800x600 with details set to low but not the case! This 8600 has a bit more horsepower than I thought and Valve did a great job making the game accessible to "low end" gaming machines like mine.
The only thing is I bought the DVD collectors edition. There was that half-baked strat. guide and a quick reference card but no instruction book. Is that the case all around?
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post #23 of 42
11/18/04 at 11:10am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by varignet
Ok I confirmed AI set to disabled solves the issue but It seems loosing a tiny bit of framerate (but well worth it)
But has anybody experienced this?
1) sound stutter (like a microopause of 1/4 of a second before dialogs; it helps defragmenting HD and RAM before running the game but the stutter sometimes appears anyway).
Yes - it is mostly because the CPU and HD can't keep up. I get less of it than you do, probably because I have 1 GB of RAM.

Quote:
Originally Posted by varignet
2) slowdows (like half of framerates) near big water sections:
It's fluid with simple 'reflections' and it's incredibly slow using both 'World ref' and 'All ref'. Actually I can't see any difference between any of the reflection options; infact even switching from ALL to simple retains the same quality and the same speed (if we can call it speed). I have to close and reopen halflife2 in order to get the proper simple reflections and gain speed. But again I can't see any quality losses; in simple mode objects get reflected in the water as much as in 'world reflections' and 'all reflections' but it seems to me the water is more transparent. So bottom line is to retain the same quality and get full speed (no framerates hits) switch 'simple reflections'.
I read on multiple forums that the water really stresses the card. The full reflections looks great but uses many resources the 9600 just doesn't have (it will stress out a desktop 9800 pro to some extent with frame rate drops). Simple reflections is just that - more of the kind of water we are used to in games than the hyper realistic water that they have in there. (Google half life 2 water, you'll see that this kind of water has never been created before.)
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post #24 of 42
11/18/04 at 11:19am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bossy573
...so I knocked everything down to medium and it has been extremely playable and I think that even at those settings the game looks great.
I have the settings (except water) at high and it runs great at 1200x800 (I think that's the res.). I did turn AA off to keep more of the visual goodies on. And I am only using Trilinear filtering.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Bossy573
As suggested here, I am running the latest Omegas with AI disabled. No artifacts, rainbow colors, etc. Anyone here know what "AI" is anyway? And why do the latest Omegas come with "standard" D3D and OpenGL drivers? I can no longer optimize them for performance.
AI is ATI's new term for basically two things: 1) CPU assisted GPU and 2) application specific driver tweaking. It is a copy of what NVidia has been doing for a while, I believe .

The first allows the CPU to kick in and assist the GPU with its calculations when possible for even more frame rates. This of course effects the CPU.... but in some games (a few) the CPU is idling more than the GPU so this helps.

The second allows ATI to build in specific application boosts. Only a few games have the boost now. Apparently 4.12 adds them for Half-Life, which would make it safe to turn AI back on. No word on when Omega drivers will have that.

As to OGL/D3D - the Omega driver as far as I know is optomized for both and the 3D advanced tab effects both. (Using RadLinker)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bossy573
I must say I am surprised. Reading the previews I thought I'd be playing @ 800x600 with details set to low but not the case! This 8600 has a bit more horsepower than I thought and Valve did a great job making the game accessible to "low end" gaming machines like mine.
Agreed! I am surprised - the 8600 has much more gaming power than I thought. Even Doom3 runs on it, as does Flight Sim 2004 pretty well. I think the screen takes well to lower resolutions - and widescreen adds to that. We're all used to gaming on larger desktop screens so a similar resolution on a smaller screen looks sharper.

The 9600 mobility is also a really good chip. I can only imagine how well the 9800 mobility performs - or the new GeForce Go 6800. Mobile graphics has come a long, long way in the last few years.

My desktop is still better, but not by -that- much.

Oh - I bought the silver package on steam and burned my own DVD and made covers for the rest. For $60 it came with HL2, Counter Strike source, HL source, Day of Defeat source (not out yet), and the whole back catalog of Valve games. Not a bad deal at all.
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post #25 of 42
11/18/04 at 2:08pm
I agree I can't believe they managed to squeeze so much out of our i8600.
I have 1024Mb or ram and the sound stutter is decrease to acceptable levels now (perhaps closing all the useless services and programs helped).

what AF do you use in the omega-ati-radlinker-3d properties?
I'm temped to use 8x performance in the o-a-r-3d properties and aniso 4x in the hl2 properties.

what reflections setting are you using?
Have you read my post about weird reflections behaviour in HL2?
basicly setting it to 'simple reflections' sometimes retains all the reflections and of course makes the game run slower.
and the only way to see the new reflections changes is by closing down and reopening the game.... I think unless I'm missing something.
What's the difference between the 3 reflections settings anyway?

sorry for the amount of questions it's only... it's only that I want to get the best experience out of it! it's toooo good
No really I've been working in games before, followed the hl2 development andnever seen anything like this before. Quality-wise it's even better than some cinematic 3d sequences out there, but in realtime!!!!!!!!
Luca
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post #26 of 42
11/18/04 at 6:16pm
NM - didn't see second page answering my question....
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post #27 of 42
11/19/04 at 1:39am
Can someone post more details about their experiance running with the 64MB Geforce? Such as what the maximum settings you can use, how good is the framerate, maybe a screenshot, etc.

I sort of regret not paying the $70 for the Radeon =[
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post #28 of 42
11/19/04 at 6:08am
How do you disable the AI? And will it also improve the performance for other games rather than Half-Life 2? I really have no idea, thanks.
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post #29 of 42
11/19/04 at 8:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by narattah
How do you disable the AI? And will it also improve the performance for other games rather than Half-Life 2? I really have no idea, thanks.
display-properties/radlink/3d (or advanced?) bottom right is says A.I. disabled normal high set it to disabled. This definitely works using the latest omegadrivers. Not too sure about the rest.
This fix doesn't increase framerates; actually decreases performance but fixes the textures corruption.

If you don't know what omegadrivers have check it out at www.omegadrivers.net
we're all awaiting for the new version coming out soon, based on the catalyst 4.12beta. The current version is based on the 4.10beta.

By the way,
for everybody:
I wrote twice about weird reflection performance and I worked it out ;-)
basically any change in the hl2 video advanced menu is taken into account ONLY by changing resolution in the video menu (example: set your advanced options, change res from 1024x768 to 1152x864, apply, wait, change back from 1152x864 to 1024x768 and enjoy your new settings).

Also, for any UK dvd owner, is there a way to play without having the dvd inserted in the drive?
apparently there's only a 90days warranty on dvds and once scratched it's not possible to redownload hl2 from steam for us! (apparently).
There's a petition at the steampowered.com/forum to put pressure to valve/vivendi and get rid of the cd/dvd copyprotection.
join it!
http://www.steampowered.com/forums/s...hreadid=176562
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post #30 of 42
11/21/04 at 8:00pm
Hi guys

Just a few commenst from my side to HL2 on i8600.

1.) It works perfectly. No errors or anything. I bought the DVD version and it runs perfectly smooth at 1280x800 with all to high except AA, that is turnt off.
2.) The steam stuff suxx a bit cause you always need to start HL2 via the steam launcher and I hate that but well, it works
3.) I also experience the sound stutter and that seems to be an issue that will be fixed by Valve cause they are aware of it. However that stutter is not this bad as it is only present at the beginning of the levels.
4.) What I really hated was that even though I needed to check my key with STEAM I sill needed my DVD in the drive. However there is a fix for this and it works perfectly though it is not really legal so I am not sure to post it here.

Overall I can say it is a great came although I still like FarCry way better :-)

Cu
StarSheep
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post #31 of 42
11/22/04 at 12:04am
Erm, forgive me if I read the thread wrong....But is anyone still having overheating problems? Or was the heat just overly crazy because of the AI thing?

I'm wondering about my upcoming 9200 and it's HL2 performance... It seems like the 9200 is closer to the 8600 than the 9100/XPS anyway, it'd probably run into the same problems.
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post #32 of 42
11/22/04 at 9:39am
Well, I have the heat mod installed so my GFX temp stays around 75 degrees C and so I have no heat probs at all. It doesn't matter what stress the GPU is on, always 75 degrees is the max it could get.

But even with stock cooling it should work perfectly and if not let DELL replace the card

Cu
StarSheep
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post #33 of 42
11/22/04 at 9:43am
Hi!

With no heat mod installed the temperature of my GPU is 85°C.

Bye

Marc
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post #34 of 42
11/22/04 at 6:03pm
You shouldn't be overheating like that >>> Call Dell for sure...
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post #35 of 42
11/22/04 at 6:14pm
Hmm... my 8600c runs at around 80-85C when running Far Cry as well, even with fans set to high. Haven't noticed any trouble yet.
At what temps should i be worried about damage to the GPU? i'm kinda reluctant to void the warranty by heat-modding it... any other suggestions for keeping things cool?
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post #36 of 42
11/22/04 at 6:19pm
hm, my gpu seems high..90 possible above.

is there another ap than fangui to measure it.. hard to tell on that graph
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post #37 of 42
12/21/04 at 8:05pm
any notice that it doesn't seem to run in full screen? when i set the resolution to 1280x800 its a tiny box in the center of my wuxga display.

only 1920x1200 fills the screen and then it's really slow. i selected "full screen" in hl2 instead of "run in a window". any help?
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post #38 of 42
12/21/04 at 9:12pm
^^^

I run Half-life 2 and CS:S on my i8600 WUXGA at 1280x800 and it fills the whole screen. It plays great! I have the 9600PT.

Martian
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post #39 of 42
12/21/04 at 9:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martian
^^^

I run Half-life 2 and CS:S on my i8600 WUXGA at 1280x800 and it fills the whole screen. It plays great! I have the 9600PT.

Martian
do you have the omega drivers installed? or the dell drivers?

edit: figured it out.. in the video settings there's a display panel with a panel attributes section which allows you to scale the image. it was deselected.
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post #40 of 42
12/21/04 at 11:41pm
I just finished the game a couple of days ago, setting at high with highest listed LCD in game settings and 2x anti lansing , no heat problems at all,even after several hours of game play..The game ran perfectly smooth on my 8600 1.7 with the Nvidia 128 5650FxGO with the 70 drivers, only stutters were right at the begining of a new level with the sound which lasted just a split second then all was normal, {Does that on my desktop with the 9800 Pro }Game was amazing and I really enjoyed it..even in intense combat scenes my 8600 handled it without any problems or slowdowns, I was quite impressed...

Specs 8600 1.7
128Nvidia 5650FxGo
768 MB 333DDR
15.4 WSXGA+
60 Gig HD
4xDVDR+RW
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