ff7. Slowdown in swirls and battles after graphic card switch

[Rainman]

Well, I've tried scrying the forums for a similar situation, but have yet to find a situation where a RADEON 9600SE card is involved.

Situation: severe slowdowns in the battleswirl prior to battle. This was never a problem with my previous geForce MX 4 card, where everything ran perfectly. Everything else works with the same settings and the same plugins with the new card. My specs are:

Athlon AMD 900 (slow, I know :P)
900MB SDRAM
Windows XP Pro SP2

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9600SE x86/MMX/3DNow!

Resolution/Color:
- 960x720 Window mode
[32 Bit]- Keep psx aspect ratio: on

Textures:
- R8G8B8A8
- Filtering: 0
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 4
- Framebuffer texture: 2
- Framebuffer access: 3
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: on [00001001]

As said, everything worked perfectly with my old card. When I switched to Open GL 2x with settings from Kane-samas site and other recommendations, the general effect was slower gameplay, good battle swirl, but slower battle with loss in Framerate. I cannot really find a sollution on the board. Help?

Thanks in advance

/Tomas

[Jordi_Overlord]

Try to use the Framebuffer access in the 0 position (emulated vram)

[Kane]

ATi cards are very poor compared to nVidia cards when it comes to framebuffer accesses, so I'd set Fb textures/access to 0/4.
As for my OpenGL2 settings being slow, could you please post your optimised settings for said plug. I'm interested in what settings you tried.

[Rainman]

Tried your settings actually, Kane But alas, they do not work well. On the world map, everythings good, and even the battleswirl are a joy. Battles, however, slow down to a dreary tempo at 25-30 fps.

But when I drop framebuffer access to 0, and, pulled the other settings down, it worked more or less; I lost the swirl, but that wasn't that important. Also, the battle cursor got this wierd black blotch under it, and I get the slightest of fps-loss during battle, but I could live with it I suppose. Best thing would be to get it working with OGL2, if I could.

Should I tweak my graphic card anything? I downloaded omegas ATI drivers, but I am unfamiliar with as to how to tweak stuff accordingly.

Here are the settings for both plugins: I'd like to make it work in OGL2 if I could :P

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.5
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9600SE x86/MMX/3DNow!

Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Window mode
- Internal X resolution: 1
- Internal Y resolution: 2
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off
- No render-to-texture: off

- Filtering: 4
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- TexWin pixel shader: off
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 1
- Framebuffer effects: 2
- Framebuffer uploads: 2

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: off
- Shader effects: 0/1



- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: on [00000002]

-----------------------------------

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9600SE x86/MMX/3DNow!

Resolution/Color:
- 960x720 Window mode
[32 Bit]- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8B8A8
- Filtering: 4
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 2
- Framebuffer texture: 0
- Framebuffer access: 0
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: off [00001001]


Thanks for your time!

/T

[hushypushy]

are you using the latest drivers for your card?

[Rainman]

Yeah, I downloaded the latest drivers from ATI's webpage, then later replaced them with Omegas modified version, which seem to offer me more configuration possibilities. The problem remains regardless of which driver I'm using though..


/T

[fireblaster_lyz]

No. Its the processor.

[Kane]

You tried lowering the 'internal y resolution'?
Oh, and fireblaster has a point: IIRC the OpenGL2.x plugin uses the CPU for swirls, etc.

[Rainman]

Yeah, I fiddled with the Y-resolution, but to no avail. Wish I could afford a better CPU -_-. I could really live without the battleswirls though, as they work in OGL2; the real problem is after, during battle, where I experience slowdowns in FPS. What settings are vital for battles?

Thanks for all your help.

/T

[Kane]

Uhh... the off screen drawing setting is the only 'essential' setting I can think of. The FB effects/uploads are for battle swirls and other special effects.

[hushypushy]

perhaps try regular OpenGL then? if you use OSD/FT/FA at 3/2/0 that will be good with your crappy CPU.