New Video Card Woes, Part 2

3dp · Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:01 pm Post subject: New Video Card Woes, Part 2

Due to Jerry's issues with ATI cards, I opted for an nVidia 9500 1GB for my first 'new purchase' video card in 11 years (all the others have been hand-me-downs!). It is amazing. With the assorted quality settings high and Transparent Shadows enabled, my FRs are rock solid. It's a beautiful thing.

Unfortunately, what is not a beautiful thing is the sky. In dawn/dusk missions, the breaks between the various colors of the sky are very noticeable and jarring whatever I set. I'd think it was nVidia, but the card I ripped out, a very old 256MB, did not have this issue and it was nVidia too.

Any ideas?

At the very least, I have always found nVidia's non-visual user interface far less useful than ATI's Catalytst Control Center. Can someone tell me what the optimal nVidia settings are for SDOE (maybe a screen shot of the settings?) and what renderer I should be using?
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Jerry · Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:19 pm Post subject:

I feel your pain, 3dp. I also get the sky color banding with my ATI.

Skid · Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:03 pm Post subject:

And me with my nvidia 9800 Sad

I haven't played with the settings to try and fix it, I just assumed it was the norm.
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3dp · Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 9:14 pm Post subject:

Frankly, I've always been able to see it if I looked hard enough. I've only ever noticed in screen shots really. It just seems that new cards make it much more pronounced, which makes no obvious sense. Crying

ArgonV · Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:16 pm Post subject:

Indeed, my GeForce 7800 GS has more pronounced banding than my old Ti4600... Did you try forcing the OpenGL version to 1.5 using RivaTuner? It helps some.

Use OpenGL32 in SDOE, and in the NVidia Control Panel set Trilinear mipmaps, clamp negative lod bias, Triple buffering On, Gamma Correct antialiasing On, and Conformant texture clamp Off.
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3dp · Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 5:16 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the recommendations. I've set my nVidia setting as outlined and downloaded Riva Tuner. Unfortunately, the latter has had little effect. Sad

3dp · Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject:

With Riva Tuner, do i have to have it running in the background to have it have an effect, or do I just set what i want and apply?

ArgonV · Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 6:56 pm Post subject:

Set what you want and apply. The only time you need it on start up is if you are overclocking or setting the fan settings.
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3dp · Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 5:35 pm Post subject:

I'm actually posting about this at the EVGA forum and got this response:

"Older directx games (pre 9.x) run on a sort of emulation layer from what i've been able to tell, instead of running natively in the dx api, as the hardware seems to have dropped native support. this had led to some interesting things happening when playing older games. Keeping in mind i have no idea how accurate this is, it's just what i have been able to dig up on my own, through searching and my own experiences with trying to find out why."

I've inquired as to whether this would apply to OpenGL too as the issue is renderer-independent.

Rendsburger · Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 9:28 pm Post subject:

can anyone post screenshots please? So we can make a comparision.
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3dp · Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 4:11 am Post subject:

Old Cards: lines visible, but only just.

New card:

ArgonV · Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 5:47 pm Post subject:

Wow that looks really bad... And you said you forced the OpenGL version to 1.5 in Riva Tuner?
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braddock · Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 7:56 pm Post subject:

Under Options/Display have you tried turning off Realistic Sky.It may help to get rid of the banding effect.
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Rendsburger · Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 10:05 pm Post subject:

Just noticed with my ATI radeon HD3850 card it looks the same in OpenGL and Direct3D.
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3dp · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 5:05 am Post subject:

I've decided to return the beast.

Perhaps (based on the similar experiences related above) I will not get around this problem as it seems to be 'old game + new card' and no one on a number of boards can seem to explain it, let alone fix it. But I'll give it a shot.

Anyone got any recommendations for a decent, new (i.e still commercially available), $50ish card that you know does not look like the latter two screen shots above?