Display & Other Problems

[Edi]

archaeolept said:
for refresh rate in XP that is purely microsoft "intentional stupidity". you need a 3rd party refresh rate fix. I use refresh force, but there are others.

Are these 3rd party refresh rate fixes graphics card independent, and where can I get them?

Edi

[archaeolept]

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/ for refresh force.

there are others. some drivers even include options to force the refresh rates; as well some general multi-purpose apps like Rivatuner also do.

basically, in order to "protect the customer's monitor", microsoft forces all direct3D games to run at 75hz, which isn't so bad at least. However, due to the obviously extremely dangerous nature of the competing OpenGL API, microsoft forces OGL games to run at 60hz...

yup. why is no one surprised?

[reverend]

Johan K said:
Dominions II was not developed with any special graphics card in mind and does not use any non-standard OpenGL commands. So I would blame ATI for not producing decent OpenGL drivers. But I guess they don't care much whether Dominions runs well or not .

Given the nature of Dom2, it isn't a high priority for most players either. But I wouldn't place ALL the blame on ATI. Sure, their OpenGL sucks. Nevertheless, I get better FPS on other OpenGL games like Il2 Sturmovik and Doom 3. (and I'm speaking full details at max. res here). So there definately are ways to produce a decent OpenGL result even on ATI cards. But then, those games had a larger budget than Dom2 I guess.

Don't take this as a criticism, no one plays Dom2 for the flashy graphics and stunning action. Although the battles are very entertaining to watch.

[Boron]

Edi said:

SDRAM, 100 MHz bus speed. My system is four years old, so it tends to have problems running newer games.

Edi

yeah win xp needs at least 128 mb ram i think .
but fortunately your patches fixed it somehow already and your linuxupgrade will fix it totally

[Edi]

Thanks, Archaolept, that did the final trick.

Boron, yes, I expect that it will. Though my XP is actually running smoother and with better performance than the Win98, must be more efficient use of resources.

Edi

[Chazar]

PDF said:

Do you have some links to get some 3rd-party OpenGL drivers ? I'm still unhappy with a 2.4GHz rig w/Radeon 9600 having comparable perfs with Dom than my previous 500Mhz/GF2 ...

I use the Omega-Drivers that have been pointed to by others already. Runs pretty well with ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility.

[Arryn]

I installed the newest (4.8-based) Omega ATI drivers Last night and it did nada for improving Dom 2 framerates on my (128mb video RAM) 9600XT versus ATI's own drivers. I get ~30fps at "normal" detail level. No offense to the IW guys, but I suspect the "problem" (for lack of a better word) is in their engine and not in the Open GL drivers, because the Omega drivers did improve performance for Doom 3. OTOH, Dom 3 also plays well on my 600MHz Celeron laptop (8mb video RAM). Overall, a game that plays well on antique (anything 2+ years old) hardware does have something good to be said about it. It would just be a nice bonus if it would actually take advantage of all the fancy horsepower my (3.5GHz) desktop has. Still, I bought Dom for it's strategic depth, not it's graphics, so I'm not complaining. heh

[Edi]

30 fps? And what exactly is the problem, if one may ask? My setup (32 MB Matrox G400 on a 500 Celeron with 256 MB SDRAM) barely manages 10 fps on low detail after the installation of new drivers and applying Refresh Force. Granted, the system is 4 years old, but I'd be bloody ecstatic to have 30+ fps...

Edi

[reverend]

You wouldn't be, if the same system managed 35+ fps in Doom3. (8xAF, 2xAA, 1280x1024, High Detail).

Like I said. FPS aren't crucial in Dom2, so nobody actually complains about it.

[Arryn]

Edi, from your perspective, I can readily see why you'd be delighted to get 30fps. One of my old PCs gathering dust downstairs (from 2 upgrade cycles and 7 years ago) has a 350MHz CPU, 512mb SDRAM, and the same video card. My IBM laptop (600MHz Celeron w/8mb video ram circa 5 years ago) isn't any better. I don't expect these machines to purr (much less roar). I'm quite happy that they run the game at all without choking and spitting up hairballs.

However, my recently-rebuilt desktop now sports a 3.5GHz-equivalent AMD CPU, 1Gb RAM, and a 128Mb ATI 9600XT video card. It's really sad to see 3D games that use pixel shading, light maps, textures, etc. (IOW, all the latest graphic bells and whistles) outperform a 2D sprite-based game that doesn't do all those per-pixel calcs. Given the game's 2D nature (foreground, not background, which is 3D), and my system's capabilities, I should be getting well over 100fps. 30fps is tolerable on the eyes, so I leave the detail at "normal" (I get about 10fps at the highest setting).

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not complaining much less advocating that IW do something drastic (and foolish) like maintain a parallel code base for the game using DirectX. All I'm saying is that the game's performance, graphically, is lacking. A simple statement of fact. Graphics aren't important enough in this game for the devs to take time away from other tweaks they could (and should) do, just so they can eke out a few more fps from their engine. But I would not be surprised if there's some rather inefficient code lurking somewhere that's causing the lackluster performance.