Attn: Radeon Users

Especially those with the 9700 PRO. Are any of you experiencing a steady frame skipping sensation at times, then it goes away but comes back? It's different the the normal HD access pauses. It seems to be worse on the electrified routes but happens on the others also. It's very annoying, and I've tried everything I can think of to get rid of it. Does anyone have this and more imporatantly, does anyone know how to cure this. I've tried the original driver the latest on the ATI site and the latest beta driver with no joy! Other than this problem I like the card, but may have to go back to my GEFORCE 3 (I broke my Geforce 4 card installing the Radeon) if I can't get this resolved. Any help would be appreciated!!Tom

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RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., tcain1, Oct-29-02, 09:01 AM, (1) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., IcyFire, Oct-29-02, 10:23 AM, (2) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., chucksc, Oct-29-02, 03:47 PM, (3) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., stephenburr, Oct-29-02, 08:06 PM, (4) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., tcain1, Oct-29-02, 08:16 PM, (5) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., chucksc, Oct-29-02, 11:42 PM, (6) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., derekmorton, Oct-30-02, 04:33 AM, (9) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., Caffeine, Oct-30-02, 02:29 AM, (7) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., quaia, Oct-30-02, 03:44 AM, (8) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., tcain1, Oct-30-02, 05:22 AM, (10) RE: Attn: Radeon Users..., tcain1, Oct-30-02, 06:55 AM, (11)

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well being a future 9700 user, I know this:The 9700 is built using AGP 8x technology, so you probably wont get the most out of it unless your mobo supports AGP 8x, in other words, the card is faster then the portthe geforces are still using AGP 4xthere are some nice mobo's that support AGP 8x, such as the asus p4s8x which i'll be getting soon
Coming Soon: 2.53GHz, 1gig DDR Ram, ATI radeon 9700, All projects stoped until I get that system Built (3~4 weeks most)

Shawn "Icy-Fire" Kenselaar
ShawnSSK@Yahoo.com

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You guys realize, of course, that nothing out there even stresses AGP 2x let alone any of the others.... The skipping is being caused by either your CPU or Main Memory Load (usage)....Chuck Schneider
Chief Cook and Bottle Washer
North American Locomotive Works

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That's great to know! How does one fix it, as I am having the same problem with a Radeon 7600 on a new motherboard?

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Thanks Chuck! However it happens even if nothing is running. I have a 2Ghz P4 with 512MB RDRAM, so I don't think the system is being over taxed. Frame rate BTW is in the 30-40's. My guess it's a problem with the cards design or driver. The Geforce cards never exhibited this problem. If it was'nt that I broke my Geforce 4 card putting this card in, I would'nt hesitate to replace it. It's a shame because other than this annoying problem, the graphic quality is very good and performance superb. I was just hoping someone would know of some setting either in the control panel, or worse case the registry to correct this.ThanksTom

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TomATI has to fix their drivers.... I've heard this from various sources...
They aren't properly optised for D3D or 3GL (I forget which)...And on top of all this Kuju or woodoo has used about the buggiest 3D rendering package they could find... The 3D engine in MSTS is buggier than a Lousyanna Swamp (Sorry Kevin )Chuck Schneider
Chief Cook and Bottle Washer
North American Locomotive Works

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Shawn,>well being a future 9700 user, I know this:
>
>The 9700 is built using AGP 8x technology, so you probably
>wont get the most out of it unless your mobo supports AGP
>8x, in other words, the card is faster then the port You need to understand what bandwidth is used by TS.
AGPx4 runs at 2Gb/s which is about twice as much as TS needs, so having an AGPx8 is not going to anything for you.Derek

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>Especially those with the 9700 PRO. Are any of you
>experiencing a steady frame skipping sensation at times,
>then it goes away but comes back? It's different the the
>normal HD access pauses. It seems to be worse on the
>electrified routes but happens on the others also. It's very
>annoying, and I've tried everything I can think of to get
>rid of it. Does anyone have this and more imporatantly, does
>anyone know how to cure this. I've tried the original driver
>the latest on the ATI site and the latest beta driver with
>no joy! Other than this problem I like the card, but may
>have to go back to my GEFORCE 3 (I broke my Geforce 4 card
>installing the Radeon) if I can't get this resolved. Any
>help would be appreciated!!
>
>Tom Hi Tom...You may well be experiencing the same sort of thing as I am at times. I have an Asus 64 Mb video card that used the Nvidia detonator drivers normally, since it's got the GeForce2 MX/400 chip of whatever that is. The Asus drivers that came with it were giving me this "frame skipping" sensation also, and I tried the Nvidia drivers and got far better results... almost normal you might say.But this was the 23.11 version of the Nvidia drivers I got first, and when I tried to upgrade to a later version when new ones appeared, it always seems to revert back to the "skipping" sensation, seen whne viewing the track & scenery ahead of the cab windscreen, or when viewing from outside (4 view). It gets VERY annoying to say the least, and so far, ONLY the 23.11 Detonator drivers seem to stop this skipping or whatever it is. Still, it's not perfect. I often see the motion on the screen STOP totally for about a second at times, and the HDD is NOT loading anything at all... I feel that all is not really perfect with MSTS (at least in this version, anyway) and it needs to be completely re-written so that there's no more pausing and shuddering, especially when you're going past heavy forestation and buildings-populated areas and also when areas like towns and citys are loaded... the action even stops totally a few seconds or shudders so badly it's not funny. Train Sim is really great, but it has rather toio many faults for my liking at present, and needs to be done over completely to make it more perfect and acceptable. I have a PIII 866 with 256 Mb of memory and the 64 Mb video card, so this is considered to be pretty much OK for Train Sim as far as I see it, but the video drivers leave a lot to be desired. More compatibility would be a great start maybe.A friend has a 2 Gigahertz P4 and 512 Mb of ram and still, the New Zealand route which came out recently, is performing very poorly on even that beast. There's several main areas where the framerates drop to 4 fps on his machine and even worse on mine. The NZ route needs to be re-done with buildings and populated with items that don't murder the framerates so very badly as they do currently I think.You're not alone with MSTS problems I reckon and anyone with NO probs at all would be very lucky indeed. Take my word for it. Regards...Jim McDermott

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Hi, Tom!I assume from the start that DirectX are correctly installed (new Radeon requires latest release, which should be distributed together with the card). Besides that, you should check all of the advanced video adapter settings and try hacking with them to find again optimal settings. I've seen that sometimes default settings are not optimal, and once it happened to me that the newer driver release had different defaults from the previous one. My suggestion is to always take a note somewhere about all of your precious settings which work, because you may need them again when upgrading your driver or replacing it because of a video card change (which may imply a change on the settings as well, but they can still be a valid starting point). You have to find a balance between performance and quality, of course, and you have to find the best working settings for the specific video card/MoBo/chipset/CPU/memory combination. Try first with explore mode to exclude any interference due to traffic, then check that the settings are valid with demanding activities as well. Continue experimenting til you have found again the best working setup. Feel free to experiment! It may take quite a while to find the best setting, but it's worth the effort. I don't know about your display resolution, but if it's high enough, 1024x768 for example, you can disable antialiasing or anisotropic filtering and see how it works. My feeling is that the quality is high enough anyway, but performance is better. I've seen that it's better to have them both the same value if you want to keep them on.
There is a setting which tells something like "Wait for vertical refresh": my advice is to activate it, because the default on Direct 3D was "deactivated" on my driver , when I had it deactivated I experienced something similar to what you are describing. If I've understood it correctly, that setting basically syncronizes the card with the video refresh rate. When it's activated you achieve slightly lower FPS, but frame transition is smoother, and FPS stays more constant.
The last advice is to use 16 bit video modes. 64K colors are already enough, there is not so much difference to the eye btw 64K and 16M colors, but the performance is heavily affected. I've found 1024x768x16 even faster than 800x600x32... FYC, my card is a Radeon 7500 (actually, a Radeon Mobility, because my PC is a laptop, but it's a 7500-equivalent). On my laptop it was hard to find optimal settings, but I've succeeded, and now I can achieve even 30 FPS sometimes when there's not too much traffic or objects on the scenery, of course. Typical, more realistic FPS is around 20.Hope that helps with your new Radeon! Good luck!
UmbertoPS: I have not installed the ATI control panel because my feeling is that it does not add that much, and actually I find the video adapter settings more messed-up after its installation. Have you tried without it installed too? Had my same feeling? Just for curiosity...

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Thanks! I think I have fixed the problem. (Atleast it has'nt occurred on my last 3 runs in MSTS) What I found was if I turned down Hardware Accelleration in the Troubleshooting section of the control panel 2 notches to the left, which turns off Windows XP cursor animations (I never liked them anyway) the problem goes away. Atleast so far (Knock on wood). I had already tried the V-Sync as you sugguest, but that did'nt help. The setting was for application preference, so who knows if MSTS utilizes that anyway. My res is 1600x1200x16 in MSTS I do have antialiasing or anisotropic filtering on but it did'nt help when turned off either. The only thing that seems to be working is turning down Hardware Acceleration. It does'nt seem to hurt FPS either. I'm still in the 30-40 range!ThanksTom

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Well I spoke too soon! The problem is back! Ah well, back to the drawing board.

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