Performance issues w/ Pete's OpenGL2 2.8 and Vista/Vista ATI Drivers

[curryking1]

My configuration

X1900 GT
Pentium D 820
2G RAM
Windows Vista Ultimate
Catalyst 7.5 (for Vista)

Recently I have installed a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate on my computer.

After I installed this software, I realised that the OGL2 plugin for ePSXe would not function properly, and I would get a 'No WGL Extension found.'

So without searching on the internet for a fix about it (I don't believe I had pixel shaders enabled for texture windows or whatever that check box is called) I decided to update the ATI drivers from XP drivers to ATI Vista drivers. So I installed 7.5 Vista ATI drivers.

Now I do not get a 'No WGL Extension found' error. However I noticed that I can in fact, on an ATI card, run with setting 2 on X resolution, and setting 3 on Y resolution, which was impossible before. This is just FYI, this is not my problem.

The root of my problem however is that there are severe performance problems now. Even when I use X resolution at 1 and Y resolution at 2 and all the other settings I used in XP with the same ATI card, there are very bad performance problems. In FF IX now, whenever more than 3 guys appear on the battle screen, the frame rate dips to horrible levels making the game unplayable.

Secondly, another very annoying anomaly produced by OGL2 with my 7.5 Catalyst drivers is that there are lots of 'holes' in the characters, namely when they are very round I am assuming or have generally a lot of polygons. For example, when I summon Shiva in FF VII, there are very, very disruptive visual errors like hundreds of holes in her, the light that appears around her is very cracked, and when she throws down the ice more performance problems occur.

I would be very happy if anyone could help me with this problem. I also wonder, maybe now since Vista is out, a OGL2 driver plugin could be optimized for it? Vista has very significant performance benefits over XP, and the multimedia features are far more powerful than any Windows OS before it.

Thanks for any help.

P.S. When I was running XP, I had the Catalyst XP 7.4 drivers installed. Before I installed Catalyst 7.5 Vista, I had still been running Catalyst XP 7.4 with Vista installed, and I would get 'No WGL Extension found.'

Ok...........

I have great news for Vista owners.

I discovered the problem myself. The problem was that ePSXe does not autodetect the amount of RAM in your graphics card I'm guessing.

My setting was at 0 (autodetect VRAM size) and now I set it to 256 MB..

And guess what!! IT ALL WORKS! And even better, it works with X resolution set to 2 and Y resolution set to 3!!!!

This is a big FYI for everyone with Vista, as OGL2 is my favourite, and I'm sure many others' favourite plugin. So in Vista, with ATI cards, you can now run with X res at 2 and Y res at 3 settings.

Cheers!

P.P.S. There still appears to be a lot of artifacting with FF VII, and some minor artifacting in other games like FF VIII, I'm not sure why though.

Another issue, in battles, and maybe world too, in FF VII, when you choose to attack or perform any action and the cursor moves from the menu to choose a character to attack, there is a pause for some reason. Looking for more problems.. trying to fix them too I guess lol.

P.P.P.S. I think I fixed the pausing part by taking off pixel shader for PSX texture emulation, but there is still a heck of a lot of artifacting in FF VII.

It's like there are a ton of polygons missing on characters that aren't getting coloured or filled.

P.P.P.S. I got some picture examples of the artifacting. These are all from FF VII, there is some light artifacting in VIII also. I haven't checked many games. This artifacting happens even with X res set to 1 and Y res to 2, which did not happen in XP.

http://img461.imageshack.us/img461/8084/untitledau1.jpg
http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/3...titled1zi6.jpg
http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/4...titled2kl9.jpg
http://img461.imageshack.us/img461/8...titled4qb1.jpg

P.P.P.P.S. I noticed something even odder in OGL2 with ATI Vista drivers. When you transition between screens, instead of the screen fading to black, the screen fades to white lol.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Ok... another odd thing. In FF IX, the shadows switch from black to white randomly after an attack or during another attack or magic or anything. Very peculiar.

Is anyone reading this btw? Or am I doing this for nothing.....

http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/4...titled3mv4.jpg

[hushypushy]

Is anyone reading this btw? Or am I doing this for nothing.....

You posted this morning at 7:43 AM. I woke up at 9:45 and turned on my computer. It is now 10:11 AM. Remember that there are time zones, and some people have to sleep

Anyway, it says that you fixed your own problem but uh...which problem? You presented a ton, and resolved a few...if you're still suck, concisely (that's important) restate your problem and we'll work from there.

[curryking1]

Lol, yes, my bad. I just saw 8 moderators on, and was wondering if anyone of them was there or in this part of the forum lol.

Ok, I fixed the performance issue, that was fixed by setting the VRAM thing to something other than 0.

Problems I have now...

-I put 4 pictures up there to describe the missing polygons thing and other visual anomalies like in the Shiva pic, that's really, really apparent in FF VII, and it seems to be affecting all the games in Vista with the ATI Vista drivers
-Also, the white shadows thing, I dunno what that is about lol, it's in the fifth picture, the shadows that should be a gradient of black are instead a gradient of white, and sometimes (happened in FF VII, only one I tried) transitioning from one screen to another the screen fades to white instead of black

[curryking1]

Helllo???

[hushypushy]

Well, Vista support is still kind of shaky in general on these things...my advice would be to check out this thread, click on the FF ones, and try those settings out.

It could be related to the Vista drivers though, that's the mystery variable in this equation, and I really don't know what to say about that.

[curryking1]

^Ya, I just wanted a reply like that. I was just wanting to confirm my assumption that it's probably the workings of the OS making the trouble with the program.

Thanks.