Dell XPS and MA2.6

[clowning-around]

Hi,
please don't flame me if this has been answered before.Also this is my first post.
I have looked and I can't find a reference like my problem.

Occasionally, some fish get rendered without bodies!
Just little fins swimming around.
Occasionally the body will appear then disappear, but always the fins are viewable.

My config is:


Dell XPS Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 4 Gig Mem Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 3870 Driver ver: 8.501.0.0-latest
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
Direct X ver: Aug 2008-latest
Monitor: Dell E228WFP (22" WS LCD) Driver :1.0.0.0-latest.


Can anyone help?
Thanks

[Jav400]

Try pressing Ctl+T

Welcome to the forum.

[clowning-around]

Originally posted by Jav400:

Try pressing Ctl+T

Welcome to the forum.  

Thanks Jav400,
but it appears to re-draw with new fish but the fins are occcasionmallly still swimming around.
I tried the default screen definition: 1440x900 x 32 @60Hz without success.
and 1680x1050 x 32 @60Hz-highest, and 16 bit colours.
Anything lower than default screen res, I get black screen with sound.
Pressing S I get:200+/-fps,[1650x1050x32] ,Direct3D HAL,Vsync Off, N 414.1.1.974 I hope this can make sense to someone.
I have tried reducing fish numbers and seeing if a particular fish is affected.
It appears all fish are prone to the error.

The vid card is set to default settings.
I am not sure where to go to from here.

TIA
John

[Jav400]

I was shooting for the compression textures causing the problems, and hoping that would solve it for you. Looks like unfortunately not.

The other thing we have seen with ATI cards is quirky drivers. Unfortunately they are getting known for that. The latest driver isn't always the best one to use. It could be that if you revert to an earlier driver version it could solve your problem.

As for the "S" information, yeah its make sense around here. Basically you are getting ~200fps which means that your card has enough horsepower to more than handle the aquarium. You could actually turn down the frame rate and save some heat and wear and tear on your card and still be fine. The next part tells that it is running in D3D and that vertical sync is set to off, and the last is the version number.

[Jim Sachs]

Sounds like driver problems to me, too.

[Bob]

I had the exact same problem with my ATI 3870.

There is a later driver than the 8.501 you are using. I updated to 8.512 and no longer have fins swimming along looking for a fish.

[Jim Sachs]

Somebody should write down which driver is best for which video card.

[clowning-around]

Thanks guys.
I hope it is this simple!
Dell only have 8.414, ATI web site sends me to a Catalyst gamers site without any reference to the card or driver.-probably bad link.
Auto update for the driver gives me 8.501
Only more confused.
Bob,
Can you direct me to where you found the 8.512 driver?
Thanks
John

[Jav400]

Guru 3D is always a good place to look for drivers.

[Bob]

Originally posted by clowning-around:

Bob,
Can you direct me to where you found the 8.512 driver?  

www.ati.com or www.amd.com will take you to AMD's (current owner of ATI) web site. Under "Support" you will see a link to "ATI Graphics Drivers." Click on that and follow directions to select your card and operating system.

You will finally get to a page of "Drivers and Tools." Here you can download the Catalyst 8.8 package. The 8.8 actually has the 8.522 driver. I have not tried this driver.

If you go to the bottom of the "Drivers and Tools" page you will see a link to "Previous Drivers and Software." On the "Previous Drivers and Software" you will see a list headed "Driver Version/Download Link." The 8.7 Catalyst package will contain the 8.512 driver that I'm using.

WARNING: I don't know if the Dell version of the ATI card requires you to use the Dell driver or not. Maybe someone else with a Dell ATI card has tried the stock ATI drivers. So use my information at your own risk.

[feldon34]

We still have a Drivers section on the Fan Site but it is hopelessly out of date.

If someone wanted to take over responsibility for maintaining this page or maintaining a forum thread here with not necessarily the latest drivers but the BEST drivers for various cards, that would be great.

[jleslie]

8.9 is out today... downloading now...

[clowning-around]

Hi jleslie,
dloaded last night and installed them.
(yeah I know, OZ is ahead of most countries! :P)
So far so good.
I will let you know how I go.
It is a shame that ATI don't give clearer directions that the driver is found on a different site by a different name.
Caught me out!
Funny how the ATI Radeon HD 3870 Driver is a Catalyst Driver!
I couldn't find it mentioned on the ATI site.
Guess you gamers know all this anyway.
doh

Getting back to the display,.....
Unfortunately I still get granular pixellation of the corals.
The fish are great, might play with the controls and see what breaks!
Was the corals and floor designed for wide screen?
It looks like it is being stretched into distortion?
Has any other HD Wide screeners seen this?


John

[Tiny Turtle]

You can choose to use the widescreen setting which adds a piece of coral (and also allows one more fish in the tank). The menu option "Anamorphic Factor" (IIRC) can be used to fine-adjust the aspect ratio so you should be able to get proper proportions regardless of if you run a 5:4, a 4:3, a 16:10 (like you and I) or a 16:9 screen.

[jleslie]

I've never been that thrilled with the 2D background, it especially looks bad on some types of LCD monitors. I actually bought MA way back in the day because the fish were so good and the background was going to be updated to 3D any second. Well, now that's true, so I'd say enjoy the fish and the background will get magically improved any time now. (Oh, and look at Dream Aquarium too...)
John

[Bob]

Originally posted by clowning-around:

Unfortunately I still get granular pixellation of the corals.


John  

The 2D background was created back when most monitors were smaller and using lower resolutions than are common today. It's not surprising that the background would look a little grainy on your 22" WS monitor. On a 15" or 17" 4:3 monitor it looks great.

The good news is that there is a "rumor" that a 3D version is in the works which will eliminate this problem. ;-)

[Jav400]

I run the new 3D version at 1920 x 1440 and it looks good.

[feldon34]

Originally posted by clowning-around:

It looks like it is being stretched into distortion?
Has any other HD Wide screeners seen this?  

The current background is either 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 768 depending on your settings. This looked awesome in 2000.

The new background is roughly 5120 x 1440. Hopefully that looks great for another 8 years.

[clowning-around]

Originally posted by Tiny Turtle:

You can choose to use the widescreen setting which adds a piece of coral (and also allows one more fish in the tank). The menu option "Anamorphic Factor" (IIRC) can be used to fine-adjust the aspect ratio so you should be able to get proper proportions regardless of if you run a 5:4, a 4:3, a 16:10 (like you and I) or a 16:9 screen.  

I probably missed that explanation along the line as I didn't understand its control function.

Thanks to everyone's contribution -it now looks fantastic!

With the latest driver found:
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_ca...common-vista32
Catalyst Software Suite (32 bit) English Only V8.9
The fins grew bodies!
And with the adjustments within MA 2.6, I was able to change the screen size with the "Anamorphic " adjustment to suit the 16 x 10 screen size.
I have left the screen size at 1440 x 900. (both hardware and MA-specified)
At 1680 x 1050 (MA specified, I encountered the stretched foreground -very granular)
If I changed the hardware and the res in MA to both 1650 x 1080, MA gives black screen for about 15 seconds then opens with granular foreground.
But the fun starts when MA closes in this res as the taskbar disappears -and the mouse can't find it.Getting the task bar back without the mouse:
Ctrl-ESC, Alt-Space, S, and then use the Up Arrow to resize the taskbar.

Summary for me:
ATI Radeon HD 3870 Catalyst 8.9 driver works-8.501.0.0 does not.
Monitor: Dell E228WFP (22" WS LCD) Driver :1.0.0.0

1440 x 900 x 32 x 60Hz gives the best results-both hardware and MA
Using the "Anamorphic " adjustment (I actually used 1.000) gave me the best results as it filled the screen completely.
1650 x 1080 x 16 OR 32 (either hardware or MA) is quirky and annoying.

A big thankyou for everyone's help in this , if there is somewhere we can put this info for the next newbie, -I will be happy to add it.
Maybe a template arrangement of hardware and adjustments that work?

I can't wait for V3.


Thanks again to everone,
John

[Jim Sachs]

Soon we'll get to start all over again with another 8 years of adjustments to get MA3 to run right on everyone's weird setups