[Mitesh]

I have a number of issues - if anyone can help I would be very grateful:

Far Cry - Patched up to v.1.33 (I have not applied the v1.4 patch as it only helps if you use multiplayer which I do not as I do not have the internet at home and nor have I ever attended a LAN party - although I did try to setup my own LAN business in Canterbury which failed (My budget was £100 and I did not conduct any market research to see if there was demand for such a service so.......).

I also have the 1.4 BETA patch which enables HDR and AA to be used at the same time however that patch provides infinite ammo, and since I have installed Far Cry on my new rig (All my components except the LCD screen and the case are brand new) I have not applied the BETA patch.

I currently use the Nvidia 158.22 drivers and have installed Ntune so I can monitor the temp of my card.

1) Now the first problem is to do with Far Cry and Far Cry only.

When I shoot any most weapons, then pretend it says I have 300 bullets in total remaining underneath the 30 or whatever amount of bullets per clip.
When I shoot that weapon and reload the total amount goes down to 270 which is correct as I just shot 30 bullets or wasted them in a reload.
however that ammo count affects ALL the other weapons except one of them.
I have a video clip of it which is worth a million words - I simply cannot explain it properly through text - watch it and you will understand the problem.

I use only the official patches that come on the disc.
As you can imagine running out of ammo in all guns because of 1 is no small problem.


2) The other problem is regarding AA (Anti Aliasing).
This affects ALL games such as Tomb Raider Legend, Call Of Duty 2, Far Cry, Tomb Raider Anniversary (I have only tried the demo - the full game should be with me on Monday), Fable: The Lost Chapters.

First things first - I have set the settings in my Nvidia control panel as such:

Anisotropic Filtering - Application Controlled
Antialiaising - Gamma Correction - On
Antialiaising Mode - Application Controlled
Antialiaising Transparency - Supersampling
Conformant Texture Map - Use hardware
Error reporting - Off
Extension limit - Off
Force Mipmaps - Trilinear
Multidisplay/mixed GPU acceleration - Single Display Performance Mode
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias - Clamp
Texture Filtering Quality - High Quality
Threaded Optimisation - Auto
Triple Buffering - Off
Vertical Sync - Force On

(I have missed out some setting as they are greyed due to settings I have chosen above)

I have it on the highest settings because that is exactly what I expect a £300 graphics card to cope with.
But noooooooooooooo............

Now Far Cry in game settings - all advanced settings set to FULL including AF.

V Sync is on, obviously Full Screen and sound options are on there highest as I have a creative X-Fi with Logitech Z-5500 speakers.

With AA set to 2x in the in game menu, I played on the Pier level. I have played Far Cry loads so I keep my saved games - I have played it through using the command which allows you to save at any point in the game at any point using the console. So I loaded it from the point where you just shoot down 2 mercs from the tall sniper point place (1 guy is down by the generator and the other up in the tall sniper point place with the ladder on it. After that there is a jungle with a couple of mercs in it, after which you then come out to the mercs camp where you then plant explosives in the weapon storage block.
At the jungle bit it slopes downwards. I saved it at the top of that hill just before entering the jungle.

I used FRAPS to record the FPS during these 30 seconds (All other settings to full using the in game settings).

Resolution: 1280 x 1024

With 2x AA:
Min: 57
Max: 62 (??? VSync yet 62??)
Average: 60

Comments - Is very smooth, no signs of slow FPS.


4x AA:
Min:29
Max:61
Average:42.467

Comments: Most of the time it feels like I am playing in slow motion, especially when I look up at the leaves because obviously there are MANY leaves which need to be removed of Jaggy's.
When there are no trees and bushes (rarely seeing as alot of the time we are in the jungle) the FPS seems OK.

8x AA:
Min:13
Max:35
Average:21.9

Comments: Felt like a slideshow.

As can be seen from the above results, I can only game at 2x AA - although this is not a prblem sice I am only gaming at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 and you only need 4x AA when you reach 1920 x 1050.
However the reason why I upgraded from my X1900XT to this card was because that card had the same problem.
Now my concern is - if at this resolution it struggles with 4xAA, then what about when it is on a larger resolution?
I thought (and reviews prove this) that this card is quite capable of upto resolutions of 1920 x 1200 with 4 x AA.(This result is from a review using F.E.A.R).

Now I left it on 8x AA and put all other graphics options (in game) to there lowest setting as well as turning VSync off.
Here are the results:

Min:16
Max:35
Average:24.867

Comments: The graphics looked absolutely terrible, it looked like the first tomb raider game ever released! It was still a slide show.

Now with COD2 it is the same thing and in Tomb Raider Legend, if I enable Full Screen AA from the in game menu (dont forget you cant really tweak TRL) then FPS falls down to roughly 19 FPS. If I enable Next Gen (HDR) then it preety much becomes unplayable.

Anyone have any ideas? I thought a 8800 GTS KO 640MB could easily handle this lot - but nooo.

(i am posting this here as I posted htis in the hardware section hiwever I was advised to post it here).

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HDR is only supported by the newer games like Half-life 2. COD2 does not support HDR in any fashion.

Fraps records in a lower FPS rate unless you purchase it. Full version of fraps normally generates good video clips. The best clips are done with a tv capture card.

I always adjust my video game settings WITHIN the game and not with the nvidia software.

latest video drivers for nvidia are 162.18.

[starjax]

HDR is only supported by the newer games like Half-life 2. COD2 does not support HDR in any fashion.

Fraps records in a lower FPS rate unless you purchase it. Full version of fraps normally generates good video clips. The best clips are done with a tv capture card.

I always adjust my video game settings WITHIN the game and not with the nvidia software.

latest video drivers for nvidia are 162.18.

[Mitesh]

Of course I know that COD2 does not support HDR, I was talking about TRL (Tomb Raider Legend).
I also know the latest version of nvidia drivers, however it takes me some time to find out there are newer versions as I dn not have the internet at home - hence the long delay in my replies.

You did not answer any of the questions - this has nothing to do with FRAPS.

[starjax]

Yes I have answered some of your questions, thought they might not have solved your issue. You wander all over the place with information and issues. Maybe you should have opted for the blue pill. Be as it may, I'll try again:

Far Cry: All the problems you describe sound like you have the 1.4 patch installed. Only thing I can recommend here is that you uninstall the game. Then go in and make sure your install folder (c:\farcry as an example) it deleted. reboot and reinstall. Patch to 1.3.

Fear: still one of the most demanding games out there. Does not support wide screen resolutions. If you played at a lower resolution you should see much better performance.

I disagree with your statement on fraps and refer to my above statement. I've used the free version of FRAPS to do several cod2 videos.

Picture is worth a thousand words...... if there was a picture I'm sure we would be a long way to resolving the issue.

Nvidia control panel: I don't mess with any changes in there. Once installed I leave everything at its defaults. When it comes to profile settings, I prefer to let the games handle it. They will differ with capabilities from game to game. For example, COD2 has an config.ini file for the main folder and in the players profile folder. You have to set your settings in both locations for the game to remember the settings and run properly.

Now I am running vista, so my control panel is a little different. It gives me the options for profiles, but under normal circumestances I don't have the option of tweaking the settings. I must also note that I am running the nvidia 7800gt.

Without vsync turned on, you will get lots of tearing and other graphic anomalies. Essentially the 8800 you have is to fast. This is especially true for cod2.

AA: this has a huge impact on performance. How the game implements it has almost as much impact as does the hardware running it.

To be honest, your running xp according to your profile. If you were running vista, then I would lead straight to the drivers as the cause of all your problems. In general the 8800 is almost a step back in time when it comes the the drivers. It's taking nvidia some time to get them matured to the same point that they were in the previous generation of hw.

If your still having problems, then I am recommend that you visit http://anandtech.com/. They have some very in depth articles on their testing as well as dx9/dx10 that I think you should read. I also think you might get some better technical answers from their forums.