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I haven't play CS since I upgraded my system (about 5 months) and I just tried it for the first time recently. I'm getting some seriously bad framerates. When walking around in a level by myself the framerate averages 30-50 (using cl_showfps, NOT netgraph) and when I even look in the direction of hostages it immediately drops to 25-30 and stays there until I leave the area or look in a different direction. I'm running it at 1024x768 in OpenGL. I've gone to all sorts of sites for tweaks to put into autoexec.cfg and the framerates still suck.

Now what's funny is I clock in at 91fps in Quake 3's "four.dm_66" demo running 1024x768x32bpp with everything maxed out. I have the latest Omega drivers (also tried the latest ATi drivers), latest released Radeon tweaker with all the recommended setttings enabled, all Anti-aliasing turned OFF, anistropic filtering OFF, and the card clocked at 183/183. I also did a complete wipe of Half-life/CS (deleted the whole diretory) and did a clean install of Half-Life and CS using only the full updates. No change in framerates.

This is driving me crazy! My old system consisting of a Celeron 300a@450 and Voodoo2 SLI easily averaged 40-60fps @1024x768, even when playing online with lots of players! Any ideas on what I can do? I'm getting very tempted to throw my Voodoo2s back in just so I can play CS again.

As a side note is there anyway to enable VSync?? It works in Quake 3 (r_swapinterval 1) but no dice in CS, and the tearing is horrible! Also I tried using the profile Half-Life in RadeonTweaker and it did this to my desktop!

Did you get the HL ATI patch? There's a problem with the newest version of HL and the ATI cards... Patch is only about 700k. I would get booted out of a server after about 30 seconds and the frame rates really sucked. Might try that if you already haven't. File name is ati_fix_hl.exe

Yup...I installed the HL ATI patch too.

The guys over a Rage3d figured this one out. It turns out Half-Life has Truform enabled by default in the new patch and since my card doesn't support Truform in Hardware it's all done in software. So basically whenever I saw a Chicken or Hostage it would kill the FPS. Turned it off by typing ati_npatch 0 at the console. FPS are now pinned at 99fps pretty much all the time. Now if I could only get VSync working...I"m pretty sure that's a driver problem though.

moral of the story, don't buy ATI buy NVIDIA

Originally posted by tyler_durden
moral of the story, don't buy ATI buy NVIDIA

I would but I can't stand their 2D quality.

jester, 2D quality is a non-issue - the GF3 looks just about as good as the Radeon in 2D. Big improvement over the GF2.

Yeah i forget the GF line of nvishit cards don't have any issues of any kind at all. Don't matter who the manufacturer is there's always hardware issues... When you have 10000 types of vid card mobo's processors ram modems sound cards cdroms cdrws dvds consider yourself extrememly lucky if you put it all together and get it all working on the first shot. I have built many machines out of a wide variety of hardware and have yet had one machine work with complete 100% bug free operation on the first shot... Always some sort of trouble shooting you have to do...

I guess I got lucky.. My computer worked right off the batt...Of course, all I have installed is a videocard...

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
jester, 2D quality is a non-issue - the GF3 looks just about as good as the Radeon in 2D. Big improvement over the GF2.

no offense FP, but either you need to have your eyes checked or you're living in denial. I've run them side by side with a pair of Sony displays and there's no comparison. Radeons eat nvidia for lunch in 2D and DVD playback.

Originally posted by tyler_durden
moral of the story, don't buy ATI buy NVIDIA

LOL... yea, because Everyone KNOWS that Nvidia is perfect and has never had or will have ANY problems of ANY kind with ANYTHING.

LOL, remember the 3dfx vs Nvidia flame wars? Still have not figured out why people slam other hardware products. It's all based on personal preferences, which is why we have so many choices.

I've seen a Radeon DDR on this rig, not a 7500 or 8500 though (the Radeon ran like a dog on this rig - slower than a Geforce1 DDR I had to test it against then).

Looked nice, but not much nicer than my GF3 Ti-200, and I use 1280x1024 on a 19" and used to swear by Matrox (which in my opinion puts BOTH Radeon and Geforce to shame in 2D).

I'm pretty fussy about image quality since I'm usually doing work on this righ 8 hours a day.

If only Matrox made a decent 3D card, or someone made a decent 3D only vid card I'd be happiest. I LIKED the idea of seperate 2D and 3D cards. NOTHING looks better in 2D than a Matrox. NOTHING.

Anyway, the difference between a GF2 and a GF3 in 2D is like night and day. I'm very happy with the GF3 Ti-200.

I'm not going to argue about DVD because you're absolutely right, but then again DVD doesn't matter to me - I only watch DVD movies on this rig if the wife is using the DVD player in the living room.

I've yet to see ANY computer based DVD image match the quality of a stand alone DVD player anyway. Closest was a Creative DVD player with a hardware decoder I installed for a friend - it looked pretty damn good BUT my Sony standalone DVD deck looks better.

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin


I'm pretty fussy about image quality since I'm usually doing work on this righ 8 hours a day.

If only Matrox made a decent 3D card, or someone made a decent 3D only vid card I'd be happiest. I LIKED the idea of seperate 2D and 3D cards. NOTHING looks better in 2D than a Matrox. NOTHING.

Not for nothin' but weren't you using a Geforce 1 DDR ( Asus V6800?) for awhile there? I had gotten one of those in a trade and I have to tell ya that the 2D was SO BAD on that thing that I thought my monitor was going. I couldn't get that thing out of my rig fast enough. It seemed to run pretty decent in 3D tho so I don't think the card was bad.

I used a G400 Max for close to two years and if that's a 10 in 2D then this Radeon 7500 is a 9.5 easy. The Asus V6800 would be a 2 with a DOA card being a 1!! haha. My old Herc TNT-1 had pretty nice 2D but it seemed like nvidia's 2D went to shait after that. I think the Voodoo 3 had WAY better 2D than either of the GF-1's or GF-2's. I can't speak for the GF-3's so I'll have to take your word as to them being better. I hope so, for your sake.

I think you game more than me so I can understand the attraction to GF's. 2D, DVD playback and especially dual display capabilities are at least of equal importance to 3D for me, thus the attraction to the 7500. I don't need 160-200 fps for the games I play. The 7500 ( OCed to 324/250) comes in around GF-2 Ultra type speeds so that's plenty fast for me.

As far as the separate 2D & 3D separate card thing, I'm glad we're beyond that. Jeesh, I remember running out of PCI slots trying to use my old Herc TNT-1 with a pair of mismatched 12MB Voodoo 2's running in SLI with those hacked drivers that that Russian dude from Wicked 3D had up on the 'net! :lol .... Ahhhhhh those were the days tho.

Well I've been watching DVDs on my GF3 Ti-200 for the past couple of days - 1st time since I got this new video card.

Honestly, you can't tell me a Radeon does any better. The DVD image quality is superb - looks just as good as my stand-alone Sony DVD player in the living room.

I'm watching it on a 30" Panasonic TV via S-Video. It's a difference between night and day compared to the GF1 or GF2. No compression artifacts at all.

I'm more than satisifed.