ati radeon 9600, anyone else?

El Austriaco · Powder Monkey Posts: 24 **447 Gold** -

hi

iam running my game of pirates on the following specs

p4 2.8ghz
1gb ram
windows xp sp2
ati radeon (sapphire) 9600

i have the following problem
when sneaking into cities its extreme slow, nearly unplayable
except when i play on 800x600 and put the details down and the filters off

i will try to mess with my drivers(catalyst 4.10)

i just wanted to know if anyone else has that gfx card and is experiencing similar problems

all the other game features run fine its just the sneaking that wont work on "proper" settings
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SAIL HO! Looks like a Merchantman, Captain...

Civrules · Cutthroat Posts: 377 **4032 Gold** -

I don't have this problem, but it is interesting what you said because my card is not as good as yours, but does not have the same problem...

What video settings do you have? Full detail, or something else? Try setting everything on low and see if the same happens.

colossus · Swabbie Posts: 68 **900 Gold** -

I have the mobile radeon 9600 on my emachines M6811
I have all of the video display settings maxed out
The game plays wonderfully
No problems whatsoever
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Falconer · Captain Posts: 1902 **2865 Gold** -

Howdy El Austriaco,

Many of the sapphire cards (not all) are sort of budget cards. The standard 9600 isn't really all that good while the 9600XT for instance is a super card. You may want to check out which 9600 you have. If it's an SE or something like that, which is the budget card of the series, you're totally underpowered.

New drivers may help, and otherwise playing at lower screen resolutions and less detail will be the only way out.

colossus · Swabbie Posts: 68 **900 Gold** -

You might also try checking all of your drivers
Make sure everything on your system is up to date
I guess a windows update might be in order as well

Also check for viruses and spyware
Adaware and Spybot Search & Destroy are both good
I run both of them from time to time.
One of them always finds stuff that the other one misses

If all else fails you could try overclocking your GPU before you throw it out and replace it. Wink

.
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Firaxis_Barry · Firaxian Posts: 28 **347 Gold** -

The easiest way to see a performance boost (especially in sneaking) is to turn of shadows. See if that helps.
-Barry
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Barry Caudill
Pirates Producer
Senior Producer - Civilization IV
Firaxis Games

El Austriaco · Powder Monkey Posts: 24 **447 Gold** -

hi

thanks for the many replies and tips

i spent some time playing around with the driver options too
i think the problem was anti aliasing was on

now iam running on higher res and all details full
i tried the sneaking and no problem about the speed

anyway i guess time to get a new gfx card

iam thinking about the new x800, anyone has experience with that one ?

i think its quite expensive, on the other hand i will be happy if i can enjoy the eye candy in new games without having to optimize the graphics first
to get good performance too

anyway thanks for the replies and good hunt in the spanish main
chris
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SAIL HO! Looks like a Merchantman, Captain...

sky · Swabbie Posts: 57 **991 Gold** -

hi el austriaco,

so, which card do you actually own? is it an XT, SE, ...?
this could be interesting also for others owning cards of that series.

blacksurf · Powder Monkey Posts: 2 **31 Gold** -

Hi all, I have a 64MB radeon 9700 in my Sony Vaio laptop, I also find the sneaking sequence really really slow. Turning off shadows helps - as does lowering the res to 800x600 or 640x480.

Now call me mr picky, but as I can hapily play Half Life 2 on this machine, I see no reason i shouldn't be able to play Pirates at 1024x768 with shadows! Anyone have any clues, Barry?

luckybaer66 · Swabbie Posts: 61 **1282 Gold** -

I run the following:
P4 2.8C
1024MB Corsair XMS RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 Mobo

No problems or crashes with the game set on highest screen resolution and all the fancy shadows and stuff turned on.

I think I'm running my 9800 Pro stock, with no anti-aliasing and other stuff turned on - I think it defaults to "application preference."

I'll be ready to upgrade PCs in another 18 months or so. It will be fun to see how much better my next box benchmarks compared to my current box (and the current box is a pretty good set-up even when I run it stock).

Firaxis_Barry · Firaxian Posts: 28 **347 Gold** -

blacksurf · Powder Monkey Posts: 2 **31 Gold** -

Hi Barry,

Will the slowdown on the sneaking game be fixed in a patch for us laptop users with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700s. Turning off shadows certainly helps, but I can't see why I can run half life 2 with lots of visual goodness and not Pirates!

TIA

Tim

eliasgames · Powder Monkey Posts: 5 **56 Gold** -

ATI settings must have AA and AF off (I'm running it with the default "balanced" settings in Direct 3D and GL. Turn off Advanced Lighting in the game options.

too_much · Powder Monkey Posts: 3 **43 Gold** -

I know the problem he means - I'm running a Tyan Tachyon G9600pro, and when sneaking in/out of cities, it's literally slow motion. I thought they did it on purpose at first, for dramatic effect or something... But nope, it just really canes the machine for some reason, like 15fps :S

I'll try without AA + AF and see how it goes Wink

regAAARRRds,
too_much :p

bryce777 · Gunner Posts: 632 **652 Gold** -

Not to make any excuses for the developers, but I am pretty unhappy with my ATI card. It is the first one I have had (9100), and when I update drivers, invariably some old game stops working...so I don't think it is all the fault of the game makers since they don't even keep backwards compatibility!

It may not be an option for you, but for me next time I get a new card it will be an nvidea or at any rate not an ATI.