Problems With RADEON 9800 with FS2004

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

I'm having two problems using a RADEON 9800 Pro 128 MB with FS2004.

The first problem is that after switching between full screen and windowed
mode several times, the FS2004 screen goes black, and the cursor quickly
shifts between a mouse pointer and an hourglass, as if the FS2004 code is
attempting to do something but it is caught in a loop. Once this mode
starts, I can never return to the simulator safely. I almost always have
to reboot the computer.

I was guessing that I might be running out of memory on the card, but what
else could be causing this? I have had this problem from the beginning,
and no version of the Catalyst driver has ever cleared it up. I am now
using Catalyst 4.8. I am using a Compaq W8000 workstation with dual 2.4
GHz processors and 2 GB of physical memory. I can try to upgrade to 256
MB on the card, but I'm interested in anyone who is familiar with this
problem giving me more information on how to resolve it.

The second problem is that the monitor that displays the FS2004 simulation
is suddenly dying and displaying a red light in the middle of the FS2004
session. I am running 2048x1536 on each of two monitors. What is
interesting about the red light symptom is that this is an analog monitor
attached to the digital video port on the RADEON 9800. I have had similar
experiences on just this port of the card when I try to synch the monitor to
85 Hz refresh. If I stay at 75 Hz it does not have problems. So it is
almost as if FS2004 is overriding the monitor settings and attempting to
refresh at 85 Hz. Is there anything that would cause FS2004 to do this,
and is there an ATI setting that will prevent it?

 

[Don Parker]

I'm having two problems using a RADEON 9800 Pro 128 MB with FS2004.

The first problem is that after switching between full screen and
windowed mode several times, the FS2004 screen goes black, and the
cursor quickly shifts between a mouse pointer and an hourglass, as if

A fairly common problem (I think, since I've heard several, including myself
bitch about it), and someone posted the strange solution months back - IF
you're still able to hit ALT and bring up the command bar, go to display
settings and toggle the AA setting (if it's checked, uncheck it, and vice
versa), then go back and everything picks up like nothing happened. If you
want AA the way it was, go back and change it again, but I've never seen
much difference either way.... I know, sounds weird, but it
works..............

The second problem is that the monitor that displays the FS2004
simulation is suddenly dying and displaying a red light in the middle
of the FS2004 session. I am running 2048x1536 on each of two
monitors. What is interesting about the red light symptom is that
this is an analog monitor attached to the digital video port on the
RADEON 9800. I have had similar experiences on just this port of
the card when I try to synch the monitor to 85 Hz refresh. If I
stay at 75 Hz it does not have problems.

leave it at 75 hz - there is NO, NONE, ZIP advantage to having it higher.
Lower and you may notice some flicker, but higher just makes the monitor
work harder...

Cheers'n Beers.. [_])
Don

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

CHANGE USERNAME TO westes wrote:
A fairly common problem (I think, since I've heard several, including myself
bitch about it), and someone posted the strange solution months back - IF
you're still able to hit ALT and bring up the command bar, go to display
settings and toggle the AA setting (if it's checked, uncheck it, and vice
versa), then go back and everything picks up like nothing happened. If you
want AA the way it was, go back and change it again, but I've never seen
much difference either way.... I know, sounds weird, but it
works..............

Wow, bizarre. If this works, I owe you a six pack.

By the way, you absolutely do NOT want to select AA in FS2004 as a long-term
setting. That would do anti aliasing in software instead of letting the
driver do it for you, and on any system where the framerates are marginal,
you will take a big hit. It may be that your framerates are so high that
you don't see much difference even with the performance hit.

So I would enable AA and then immediately deselect it after the problem
corrects.

leave it at 75 hz - there is NO, NONE, ZIP advantage to having it higher.
Lower and you may notice some flicker, but higher just makes the monitor
work harder...

I do have it set to 75 Hz. What I'm trying to say is that FS2004 seems to
be putting the monitor into a higher synch than what the desktop settings
allow. That's just a guess. I guess the monitor could also be going bad.

 

[QVA08]

Try using the OMEGA Drivers at the ATI website. I found them to be much
better than the Catalyst drivers.

Ross

 

[Robert-Jan Oosterloo]

Wow, bizarre. If this works, I owe you a six pack.

By the way, you absolutely do NOT want to select AA in FS2004 as a long-term
setting. That would do anti aliasing in software instead of letting the
driver do it for you, and on any system where the framerates are marginal,
you will take a big hit. It may be that your framerates are so high that
you don't see much difference even with the performance hit.

So I would enable AA and then immediately deselect it after the problem

If you want to do AA with FS, you have to have it turned off in FS in
turned on in the systems display settings with the "Application
preference" setting turned off.
It indeed lowers your framerates, but the image quality increases a lot!
For me it is worth loosing some framerates for a better picture.

AA is also the point where more expensive cards make a difference over
the less expensive ones. See this test:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/graphics-cards-2004_40.html

Robert-Jan

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

If you want to do AA with FS, you have to have it turned off in FS in
turned on in the systems display settings with the "Application
preference" setting turned off.
It indeed lowers your framerates, but the image quality increases a lot!
For me it is worth loosing some framerates for a better picture.

I thought it was already implied, but yes do the AA with the video driver
not the application, and turn off AA in the application.

In my case, I cannot do AA at all because the RADEON 9800 Pro only does it
up to 1600x1200 and I am running at a higher resolution.

Out of curiosity, how much improvement do you see in AA at 4x or 6x over 2x?

 

[dmac]

doesn't FS only go up to 1600x1200?
the higher monitor res might be causing a problem there. check dxdiag to
make sure you're not forcing a higher refresh rate.

--
(e-mail address removed)
remove 1 to reply
P4 2.8 OC to 3.1
1024 mb DDR466 Buffalo
Ati 9800Pro 256 AGP
Twin Seagate 120 set RAID 0

 

[Robert-Jan Oosterloo]

In my case, I cannot do AA at all because the RADEON 9800 Pro only does it
up to 1600x1200 and I am running at a higher resolution.

Out of curiosity, how much improvement do you see in AA at 4x or 6x over 2x?

Wow! What kind of monitor do you have and at what resolution do you run it?

I do see a noticable difference between 2x and 4x but the difference
between 4x and 6x is very small. Normally I run at 4x with 8x AF.
Maybe when you run at such a high resolution, it already looks good
enough so you don't really need AA? I run at 1280x960

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

I run two monitors at 2048x1536 both in full screen mode simultaneously
under FS2004, and I still manage to get about 18 fps, which is fine. I'm
using RADEON 9800 Pro 128 MB.

I'm using dual Viewsonic P817 monitors.

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

FS seems to acquire the resolution of the video card it is working with.

Can you help me out with dxdiag? What specifically should I be looking
for, and what would be forcing higher refresh? How do I stop it?

 

[dmac]

start-run-type dxdiag then click ok
under more help there is an override button, try it on default to see if
that helps.

--
(e-mail address removed)
remove 1 to reply
P4 2.8 OC to 3.1
1024 mb DDR466 Buffalo
Ati 9800Pro 256 AGP
Twin Seagate 120 set RAID 0

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

I was already set to default.

Are you suggesting that I should interrupt FS2004 when the problem develops
and go into dxdiag and at that moment reset everything to default, then
return to FS2004?