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ATI 4870X2 - Dynamic Shadow Questions


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Hiya,

Well, I'm after a couple of things, any ways or methods those of you with 4870x2's that have there settings on 1920x1200, exactly how you have everything setup in ccc and in game to get best performance.

AND

Secondly, I was reading this http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=384375&st=20 nvidia sli thread about "dynamic shadows" They are basically shadows cast by secondary light sources eg. headlights. If you check that link it shows that a car headlight when shone on a lightpole/bin/whatever casts a shadow (although for some those shaows are missing under sli).

 

I have checked my game out, and my cars headlights dont create any cast shadows what so ever. Is this a problem for 4870x2's similar to that with sli? Can someone with a normal 4870 see those types of shadows? Can ANY ATI users see them?

 

Any thoughts or help would be wonderful biggrin.gif

 

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Never seen them. Want them though... damn.

 

EDIT

I posted some benches here: CrossFire / HD4870X2 support. To summarize: in Vista64 I get ~51FPS benchmark, in XP32 ~55FPS.

 

My ingame settings: 1920x1200@60Hz, everything highest, except view dst: 32, traffic: 46 (high texture only worked ok in Vista64 since patch, XP32 always ok)

 

CCC: Everything standard/let app choose, except: VSync always on (to eliminate tearing), Cat AI: Standard (to use 2nd GPU). 2nd GPU is used, but not 100%. Haven't checked GPU1 usage.

Edited by Wreckless

1920x1200 60Hz - My monitors native resolution

 

Texture Quality: High

Render Quality: Very High

 

View Distance: 32

Detail Distance: 70

Traffic density: 70

Shadow Density: 0 (I put it to 0 because I prefer it without the grainy shadows)

 

 

I have no problems apart from my reported one of an FPS around police cars sometimes.

 

 

ATI settings are all at the second highest settings, I tried highest but it slowed down a lot.

 

 

CPU: Intel Q6660 quad @ 3.24Ghz

RAM: 6GB Crucial @ 900mhz

GPU: ATI HD4870x2 2GB GDDR5

28" Hanns-G monitor

 

 

I will check for the shadows you mention later once I have done a few things I have to do in R/L wink.gif

Hey, look @ this:

 

user posted imageuser posted image

 

The first screenshot was taken just after the game loaded, i was experiencing flickering textures/lights. It looks like dynamic shadows "works" here. The second screenshot was taken after ALT-tabbing to windows and back. The flickering stopped, but the dynamic shadows were also gone.

 

Hopefully the next GTA IV patch will fix this (for ATI users), or ATI will fix it in their new drivers...

 

EDIT1 If the above pics don't work:

 

user posted imageuser posted image

 

EDIT2 I also tested it under XP32, got flickering textures, the shadows were there (safehouse), flickering stopped, shadows stayed. I thought, ok, cool, now it works. But when I went outside, the dynamic shadows were no where to be seen. Went back in (safehouse) and the shadows still weren't there. Crap.

Edited by Wreckless

user posted image

 

CPU: Phenom X4 9950 (4x 2600 MHz)

RAM: 4 GB DDR2-1066 Kit (4096 MB)

GPU: HD4870 (ATI Radeon HD4870)

 

Texture Quality: Medium

Render Quality: Highest

 

View Distance: 48

Detail Distance: max

Traffic density: max

Shadow Density: 16

 

no problems as far as i can tell

I just removed all ATi drivers using driver cleaner, reinstalled ati 8.12 drivers/ccc, did not reboot afterwards. Now CCC doesn't show the secondary adapter in Information Center/Graphics Hardware:

 

user posted imageuser posted image

 

And in GTA IV i got this:

 

user posted imageuser posted image

 

Looks like the dynamic shadows of alternative lightsources work now! Now lets see what happens after a reboot... Will my secondary adapter be enabled, will the shadows still work?

I just removed all ATi drivers using driver cleaner, reinstalled ati 8.12 drivers/ccc, did not reboot afterwards. Now CCC doesn't show the secondary adapter in Information Center/Graphics Hardware:

 

user posted imageuser posted image

 

And in GTA IV i got this:

 

user posted imageuser posted image

 

Looks like the dynamic shadows of alternative lightsources work now! Now lets see what happens after a reboot... Will my secondary adapter be enabled, will the shadows still work?

Thats a very interesting find you've stumbled upon Wreckless, good work!! I cant wait to hear what happens after the reboot.... *crosses fingers*

How did the performance feel btw when the shadows were evident?

 

 

my settings are in sig, very satisfied with perf

 

i'll check the shadows sometime, i'm pretty sure they work (in the kitchen), havent noticed while driving

 

& maybe only certain objects & headlight angles are made to have them show

I'll give this a try myself tomorrow and see what happens. icon14.gifbiggrin.gif

 

On another note, you have a higher version bios than mine, can I ask the brand of your 4870x2? Mines gigabyte, don't suppose you have any tips on updating the bios on video cards? Cheers mate. smile.gif

 

Rebooted, secondary adapter (called "Linked Adapter" actually) shows in CCC. In GTA IV, the shadows are visible in the safehouse, along with the flickering of some textures (like before). But outside.. they're gone again. Crap...

 

EDIT: Disabling the secondary adapter in the device manager doesn't work (CCC/ati driver and (thus) GTA IV don't run)

Edited by Wreckless
...

On another note, you have a higher version bios than mine, can I ask the brand of your 4870x2? Mines gigabyte, don't suppose you have any tips on updating the bios on video cards? Cheers mate. smile.gif

I have a Club3D, just a few weeks old. Never did any bios updates to a videocard.

...

Just so I can see them for myself, can you clarify how you did the uninstall?

Did you use the ATI uninstall, then ran driver cleaner, then reinstall? Or was it just uninstalled from driver cleaner?

Cheers

I uninstalled the ATI software using the ATI uninstaller. Rebooted in Safe mode. Selected all the ATI items in Driver Cleaner, cleaned everything. I got a problem with the first item called just "ATI", when cleaning this, it would takes ages so I killed the Driver Cleaner process. After this I cleaned the other items starting with "ATI" one by one. Rebooted again, normal mode, installed ati 8.12 drivers/ccc and started GTA IV without rebooting first.

Damn I didn't even noticed this bug , I' don't get any shadows on my 4870x2 + cat 8.12 ... this game is truly a bugfest. Does R* toronto has anything to say about it?

 

p.s. I just noticed that I can see dynamic shadows in the safehouse, but whenever I get outside they are gone.

Edited by NIGos
Damn I didn't even noticed this bug , I' don't get any shadows on my 4870x2 + cat 8.12 ... this game is truly a bugfest. Does R* toronto has anything to say about it?

 

p.s. I just noticed that I can see dynamic shadows in the safehouse, but whenever I get outside they are gone.

Do you also (sometimes) experience any flickering when the shadows show?

Damn I didn't even noticed this bug , I' don't get any shadows on my 4870x2 + cat 8.12 ... this game is truly a bugfest. Does R* toronto has anything to say about it?

 

p.s. I just noticed that I can see dynamic shadows in the safehouse, but whenever I get outside they are gone.

Do you also (sometimes) experience any flickering when the shadows show?

Of course! I experience flickering when I start the game , but it stops when I go outside.

yeah, now i recognized it myself too. my first install of gta4 was with a single gtx260 and dynamic shadows were working but then i got a new hdd and a second gtx to go sli so i reinstalled windows and was really surprised to accept the fact that my savegames (without a save of the xlive folder) were not loading for me so i faced it and started a new game, but even having the same setting as before somewhat felt lacking to me biggrin.gif

 

with the 180.84 driver and sli enabled, dynamic shadows are only visible for a short time. though it gives the ambience a more "dynamic" feeling i enjoy the little speedboost which sli gives and dont care about it anymore. maybe a driver update from both parties will fix this.

I dont think there will be much of a performance hit if we could see the shadows, I think they are still being rendered, somewhere, but lousy porting is making them invisible.

 

Wreckless, I tried to replicate what you did last night! I followed your directions, but unfortunately gta would not run until I had restarted my comp after the driver re-install. But, I think it may have to do with you cancelling driver cleaner. My system is the same, it appears to hang when removing "ati" but after about 3 minutes it continues and finishes the job. So you may have had some driver left-overs to play the game.

 

Which got me thinking. So I removed all traces again, and reinstalled the ati drivers, but I unticked and did not install CCC. Sooooooo, with no CCC gta still runs fine, but I get a ATI CROSSFIRE logo in the top of my screen, which suggests both cores are running, anddddddddddd still no shadows sad.gif

 

If you get a chance, re clean your drivers out (give driver cleaner a good long time to finish, it should do) and reinstall 8.12 without CCC and see what happens.

 

 

Also, I think your higher bios value may be what is causing differences in yours and other 4870x2's. Maybe if those of us with these cards who are also getting either higher than average, or lower than average scores could paste their vid bios values. I've been hunting to work out if I can update them, but with no luck so far...

 

 

 

I dont think there will be much of a performance hit if we could see the shadows, I think they are still being rendered, somewhere, but lousy porting is making them invisible.

...

When the shadows worked, my FPS changed when I turned the shadows on/off (setting it to 0 - 16).

 

 

If you get a chance, re clean your drivers out (give driver cleaner a good long time to finish, it should do) and reinstall 8.12 without CCC and see what happens.

...

I'll try uninstalling the drivers again. But I did give Driver Cleaner a good long time to finish... I left my pc for a while. Dunno exaclty how long, so i'll try again.

 

Little off-topic: I installed the hotfix for 2 4850's in CrossFireX mode, just too see if anything happened. I'm not sure if it was there before, but I could turn on the CrossFireX logo, and it shows in GTA IV when CCC AI is on Standard (and pbb also on Advanced). It didn't show with CCC AI disabled. So that works like it should.

I just uninstalled Cat. 8.12, rebooted, reinstalled Cat. 8.12, did not reboot and played. The shadows are back.

 

GPU-Z shows that CrossFire is (truely) disabled (not Catalyst-AI-Disabled-disabled):

user posted image

 

Strange thing, in the kitchen the shadows work fine:

user posted image

But then in the staircase they dont work =S:

user posted image

So I went outside:

user posted image

user posted image

Shadows are ok again...

 

EDIT: It's just what you call "ok", nasty-edged shadows...

 

Can people who have the shadows running fine see them in the staircase...?

 

EDIT2: Another question: is it possible to disable CrossFire/the linked adapter of the HD 4870 X2 and still have things working ok? When I do this via the device manager, CCC/driver stop working and so I can't run GTA IV.

Edited by Wreckless

OK! biggrin.gif

 

I've had a little win FINALLY!!!!!! biggrin.gif

 

1. Download Ati Tray Tools from here http://www.findmysoft.com/scripts/download-ATtools.html

 

2. Install the program, don't start fiddling with any check boxes during the install.

 

3. Once its loaded up in the tray, right click it, go to "3D" to open the sub menu

 

4. Under "3D" choose, "Force Z-buffer Depth" and set it to "16 bit"

 

5. Now I have dynamic shadows!!!

 

 

Notes:-

 

I dont want to be responsible if this stuffs up anything on your computers, all I can say is its working on gigabyte brand 4870x2.

 

I havn't noticed any drop in performance, which is still a bit st, but I may make some more fiddling time with attools and see what I can improve.

 

The force z-buffer depth to 16 bit, is under a "GL" setting, is that a bit odd??

 

Also, I have my ati 8.12 drivers installed, WITHOUT CCC installed, this may effect things, some feedback would be handy.

 

I'm almost happy, just need to up those fps!

 

 

I've tried to disable the crossfire wreckless, but havn't been able to acheive it without windows cracking a wobbly etc. I tried disabling crossfire with attools, but again my screens flashed on and off for 1 minute, until it decided that it just didn't like my suggestions.....

 

Your way thats working is good, but you cant reset! Its good to see we are finding different ways to enable them, maybe r* should be taking some notes and looking into it.

 

sad.gif

 

I installed CCC and now I cant get the shadows back at all sad.gif bugger

 

I'll remove all drivers again, put attools on again (without installing ccc, only display drivers) and see if I can replicate results again, otherwise my above finds were invalid and something else might have been at play.

 

Update soon.

 

No good news I'm afraid. I have been unable to replicate my success with using attools instead of CCC. I'll keep trying, but I dont know whats going on anymore.

 

Interestingly, attools has a graph which can map the gpu usage. When playing around the streets, the gpu's are only running at around 50%, which I though was kind of odd... Then, when I crashed into the ocean, my gpu went up to 99% usage. When all there is to render is Niko, and the ocean, the GPU really starts to kick in and work. Its as if the ocean is controlled purely by the GPU, where-as the city is being rendered by the cpu maybe? I dont know, its not my area of expertise... CMON R* or ATI, help us!

 

I'll try to fiddle with the ATI Tray Tools.

 

EDIT1: I can't run ATT... it crashes on startup.

 

 

...

Interestingly, attools has a graph which can map the gpu usage.  When playing around the streets, the gpu's are only running at around 50%, which I though was kind of odd...  Then, when I crashed into the ocean, my gpu went up to 99% usage.  When all there is to render is Niko, and the ocean, the GPU really starts to kick in and work.  Its as if the ocean is controlled purely by the GPU, where-as the city is being rendered by the cpu maybe?  I dont know, its not my area of expertise...  CMON R* or ATI, help us!

Strange... I get loads like this by walking and driving near the safehouse:

user posted image

Edited by Wreckless

That is strange, from that SS I see you must have exited the game, as the clocks are in 2d mode, but, before that, it certainly looks like they were both pumping.

 

I disabled cat ai, and it ran on just one core (I have twin screen setup, so i can monitor in game easily) and that one core was running at around 70-80% out on a typical street, turn ai back on, enabling both cores, and they drop down to 35-45% ish each.... All that power just going to waste, I may as well be running a plain 4870, the x2 bit in gta4 is useless.

 

(still doesnt explain your high usage tho, although, I'm monitoring in ati tray tools, and you using gpuz)

 

I still have not managed to get shadows back. sad.gif

 

 

...

I disabled cat ai, and it ran on just one core (I have twin screen setup, so i can monitor in game easily) and that one core was running at around 70-80% out on a typical street, turn ai back on, enabling both cores, and they drop down to 35-45% ish each....  All that power just going to waste, I may as well be running a plain 4870, the x2 bit in gta4 is useless.

I monitored the GPU loads in Vista64 when driving around the safehouse and messing things up ^^. Both cores are constantly around 50%... and no 60+ FPS... not even close (i got Vsync turned on).

Damn this game ... Sapphire 4870x2 and cat8.12, and I have not run the dynamic shadows, I have flashes of some shadows on the safehouse when they finish loading and in a second or two away,

 

sometimes I see Dynamic shadows on the stairs but after salts into the street and do not work, then reinstall ccc have worked up the street in front, and the seller of fast food had its dynamic shadows, I have spent in front of a car Niko in the night and have their dynamic shadows, but this only lasts 1 minute or two, and stop working, or if I move a little down the street stop working, and then go back to the safehouse and no longer work ...

 

we have to find a solution, and as off for the moment how disable frosfire mode?

 

we also can open a thread in ati forum, to see if something is worth

 

http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?...=279&forumid=11

I will open a theme

 

a greeting.

 

edit,

 

this post:

 

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm...3&enterthread=y

 

sorry for my english.

 

Edited by LaMuerteX

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