question about the 4870 performance

[BungFoo]

<p>So, my 8800 gt died and I'm currently running on my old 7800 gt (good thing I didn't give that one to a friend).</p><p>I've ordered a 4870 with 1 gig of memory and its due to be delivered in a few days. I know that the 5xxx series just came out but I had limited funds and the only game I play is eq2 so dx11 has nothing to offer me. It's been a long time since I've used an ati video card and I'm wonding what sort of quirks I should expect in eq2. I'm also wondering what sort of performance to expect. With my 8800gt I played on balanced and fps (except in raids) almost never went below 55 or 60. My monitor resolution is 1920x1200.</p><p>Here's my system specs:</p><p>asus p5b</p><p>4 gigs of ddr2 memory</p><p>x-fi audio card</p><p>intel core2 quad @2.83Ghz</p><p>Vista 64</p><p>Thanks for any input or info that you have.</p><p>Den</p>

[one-point]

<p>Well, I have a fairly similar system so perhaps you can get an idea from this. Brief specs:</p><p>AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.8GHz</p><p>4GB DDR2 1066MHz</p><p>Radeon HD 4850 512MB @ 735MHz core/1050MHz RAM (still slightly slower than a 4870)</p><p>With the setup above I can run EQ2 above extreme quality with 8xAA and stay somewhere around an average 40FPS which I find more than sufficient for this type of game. Make sure to use GPU shadows <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[BungFoo]

<p>Well that is great news. Thanks.</p><p>Any particular bugs / quirks I should be wary of?</p><p>Den</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well that is great news. Thanks.</p><p>Any particular bugs / quirks I should be wary of?</p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>The only one I'm aware of is an issue with the 'adaptive anti-aliasing' feature that ATI has on their cards.  That feature can cause problems with the game and I would advise disabling it.</p>

[BungFoo]

<p><cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well that is great news. Thanks.</p><p>Any particular bugs / quirks I should be wary of?</p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>The only one I'm aware of is an issue with the 'adaptive anti-aliasing' feature that ATI has on their cards.  That feature can cause problems with the game and I would advise disabling it.</p></blockquote><p>Thank you, that is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to know.</p><p>Den</p>

[Jacquotte]

<p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well that is great news. Thanks.</p><p>Any particular bugs / quirks I should be wary of?</p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>The only one I'm aware of is an issue with the 'adaptive anti-aliasing' feature that ATI has on their cards.  That feature can cause problems with the game and I would advise disabling it.</p></blockquote><p>Thank you, that is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to know.</p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>you may want to disable catalyst AI also, if you plan to use FSAA</p>

[BungFoo]

<p>Thanks for the tip about catalyst ai. What does that do anyway?</p><p>Honestly, I'm confused about the cards performance. In skyfire I can play on high quality with gpu shadows on and the frame rate is solid in the mid 50s. In moors on those settings the frame rate drops to the mid to low teens. Even on high performance the frame rate in moors is terrible. In some places it'll go into the 80s and in others it still drops down into the high 20s.</p><p>My personal comfort zone is around 40fps minimum in eq2. An occasional dip is fine but a sustained dip to the 20s gives me a terrible headache after a half hour or so.</p><p>I appreciate all your feedback and ideas folks <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Den</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thanks for the tip about catalyst ai. What does that do anyway?</p><p>Honestly, I'm confused about the cards performance. In skyfire I can play on high quality with gpu shadows on and the frame rate is solid in the mid 50s. In moors on those settings the frame rate drops to the mid to low teens. Even on high performance the frame rate in moors is terrible. In some places it'll go into the 80s and in others it still drops down into the high 20s.</p><p>My personal comfort zone is around 40fps minimum in eq2. An occasional dip is fine but a sustained dip to the 20s gives me a terrible headache after a half hour or so.</p><p>I appreciate all your feedback and ideas folks <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>I believe the catalyst AI will scale the graphics card's performance levels based on power consumption and heat management. </p><p>Regarding the performance you are receiving, did you reinstall windows after switching graphics cards?  I would recommend doing so after switching between Nvidia and ATI cards.  If that isn't an option then uninstalling the old drivers and running a driver/registry cleaner would be a good idea at the very least.</p>

[BungFoo]

<p>Yeah I uninstalled the nvidia drivers and used a driver/registry cleaner program before I installed the ati card. I'd like to avoid re-installing windows if I can mostly because it takes a really long time and I don't have that much time to play anymore. I will if I need to though. How much better performance are we talking? 5%? 10%? 20%? </p><p>Den</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yeah I uninstalled the nvidia drivers and used a driver/registry cleaner program before I installed the ati card. I'd like to avoid re-installing windows if I can mostly because it takes a really long time and I don't have that much time to play anymore. I will if I need to though. How much better performance are we talking? 5%? 10%? 20%? </p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>I'm sorry, but I wouldn't want to speculate about the performance improvement you would see with a reinstall.  Generally speaking it will help but any number I give would be a complete guess.  If you were crashing with a graphics card error then I would strongly recommend reinstalling Windows.  For performance issues it becomes more of a gray area.</p><p>Have you tried tweaking your graphics options within game?  Options like shadows and complex shaders can have a major impact on performance.  You might want to try shifting the shadows between the CPU and graphics card for a start.</p>

[BungFoo]

<p>Not having any crashes. In fact, I used to get out of memory crashes fairly regularly with my 8800 gt and I haven't had one since installing the 4870.</p><p>I guess what I'm asking is whether the performance I'm getting is clearly a lot lower than it should be given the hardware and OS that I have. I was sort of expecting at least equal performance to my 8800gt which is generally shown in benchmarks and tests to be slower than the 4870.</p><p>Den</p>

[BungFoo]

<p>So, I did a clean install of windows 7 home premium last night (no way was I re-installing vista and we got the family upgrade pack which is 3 licenses for 150 bucks) and I played eq2 for a bit after doing all the updating and driver installs.</p><p>The performance does seem to be a lot more consistent although I'm still only getting like 25fps on high quality when I stand by the DD quest giver in moors. It's weird though because the frame rate isn't changing much at all and it feels a lot more fluid than 25 fps usually does.</p><p>The performance still seems a lot lower than you guys were saying I should expect but since the fps is extremely consistant now I'm pretty happy.</p><p>Any idea if creative's alchemy works for eq2 in windows 7?</p><p>Also, I really appreciate all the help and input I've received here <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Den</p>