Hello Gentlemen,

unfortunatelly Nexuiz 2.4.2 is also crashing on my new PC. . . .and not only on mine. I found in other forums many other comments from people with the ATI Radeon 48XX, who seem to have problems in combination with Nexuiz and many other OpenGL based applications.

What happens:
Sometimes the startupscreen (main menue) is already colorful crap. When i switch back to the windows explorer screen, and then again back to the game, then then menue is suddenly working. . . . .however during the game itself, the screen freezes completely and the PC has to be hard resetted. These freezes happen 2 seconds till some minutes after entering the game. I tried already to play with the Nexuiz settings (switch off all extras, Switch off OpenGL 2.0, tried all resolutions) but it didnt help. Also playing with the ATI driver (change quality settings, switch off A.I. . . . ) didnt help.

The System:
ATI 4850 512MB with latest Catalyst 8.8 driver
ASUS P5Q board with P45 Chipset
Intel E8400 Wolfdale
2GB RAM
WinXP SP2
DirectX 9C

No Overclocking or other tweaking done.

I suspect strongly that the ATI driver causes the problem. Does anybody else have the same experience? . . . . .and maybe even a workaround?

Thank you very much in advance


EDIT: A dude named Sirmabus posted this about the problem in the ATI forum. Seems to be an ATI driver Problem

I have had this issue with one of my windows comps before, one time it was a driver issue, I had to roll back the driver to a previous one.

Another time it was when I installed 2.4 on a machine that ran 2.3 fine, it seems the only way I could get it to work was when I set the resolution the same as the desktop.
You could try these 2 things and see if it helps but the best advice would be to stay away from ATI in future purchases, they have shit driver support and its a nightmare in Linux.

Nvidia ftw

Barfly wrote:I have had this issue with one of my windows comps before, one time it was a driver issue, I had to roll back the driver to a previous one.

Another time it was when I installed 2.4 on a machine that ran 2.3 fine, it seems the only way I could get it to work was when I set the resolution the same as the desktop.
You could try these 2 things and see if it helps but the best advice would be to stay away from ATI in future purchases, they have shit driver support and its a nightmare in Linux.

Nvidia ftw

Thanks for your reply. I tested already the resolution trick. . . no success. I´ll try the driver rollback when i am back home from work. Unfortunatelly there are only 2 prereleases which are working with the 4850.....both are pretty buggy, so the chances are low that i can resolve the problem by that.

You are right. . .before i had an old Nvidia GeForce 6800 2go in my Laptop. It never disappointed me and it was easy to tweak the latest drivers to run on that old machine.

Ok, after rolling backward and forward all available Catalyst drivers, installation of ATI and Windows Hotfixes, updating BIOS and Chipset. . . . . . I do believe what the people write in the ATI Forum. The ATI 4850 driver (latest version now 8.8 ) is NOT able to run OpenGL games with XP

So if you want to play Nexuiz. . . . . avoid the Radeon 4850

Almost every OpenGL Game is affected. This failure is known since the 3850 and has not been solved yet, so no quick solution can be expected from ATI

Its a pity.....on 1650x1050 and medium settings i had up to 750fps. . . .before it froze to 0fps


In the next days i am going to change it for a Nvidia 8800. . . . . better 10% less frames than no frame at all.

The card doesnt support OpenGL... thats just retarded. Severely. Hope you get it fixed!

ATI's drivers have been gimped for far far far too long.

The card is suppose to support opengl 2.0

another thing to try is to run nexuiz-sdl

I seem to remember that working for some people that had issues a few months ago.

I hate ATI

Thank you for your anticipation. I just became so angry that i plugged out this rotten ATI4850. It cost me 2 days of spare time and nerves. To be honest. . . i bought the whole PC including this graphic card JUST for Nexuiz, because i barely play something else due to lack of time.

Damn it and damn ATI. I cant believe that i also hold shares from this company. . . .i should sell them as quick as possible, before the people get a clue what crap they are developing.

irrlicht wrote:Damn it and damn ATI. I cant believe that i also hold shares from this company. . . .i should sell them as quick as possible, before the people get a clue what crap they are developing.

ROTFLMAO

I did some reading as well , it seems others are having problems with this card, and it seems to be opengl games that are having the problems, however some people say they have the same card and the same game and are not having problems..go figure!

I always thought ATI would get it's shit together after AMD bought them, but now AMD is loosing it's ass on the CPU side and I read that they let go of thoudands of people, support seems to be the first to go in these large companies.

Barfly wrote:however some people say they have the same card and the same game and are not having problems..go figure!
.

Yes, you are right. Indeed people claim that, however i also found settings where i could play about 20 minutes till it crashed. . . who knows if the people tested so long. . . . and anyway Nexuiz seems to be an absolute NoGo for this card.

I requested some minutes ago the RMA for the ATI4850 and ordered already the 9800GTX+ from Nvidia, and then i dont want to hear anything again anymore from ATI. Indeed its a pity how AMD / ATI performed in the last 12 Months. AMD slept when Intel prepared the step to the 45nm production (and is having 32nm golden samples, developing already 22nm) and ATI. . . . .well i guess they have outsourced their driver development in a backyard somewhere is Asia. . . . ah. . . i am still angry.

hmm thats really bad news. i need a new card and strongly considered this one. Are you sure you had enough power and cooling? from what i read this card preforms very, very good but is a real hot running power hog. anyways tnx for the heads up.

tZork wrote:hmm thats really bad news. i need a new card and strongly considered this one. Are you sure you had enough power and cooling? from what i read this card preforms very, very good but is a real hot running power hog. anyways tnx for the heads up.

Yes, i am sure that it was well cooled. I have four fans running to cool the pc case and only high efficiency components inside, like the 65W TDP Wolfdale CPU and a 85% efficiency power supply. Furthermore the card crashed often 2s after entering the game. . . .in dont think that the core temperature can rise so quickly. The next argument against overheating is that the screen was frozen with the last frame. An overheated GPU causes a black- or bluescreen.
The power was for sure sufficient. . . . The 550W powersupply has a load of max 240W in this PC


Stick to NVidia if you dont want to waste time and money. . . . The XFX GT8800 Alphadog is available here for ~100€, and its more than ok for Nexuiz. Even Crysis should run on that with medium settings.

From the technical point of view, The ATI is surely a fancy piece of silicon. . . .1TF calculating power for 130€, but the driver spoils the whole product. There is no alternative driver, and the problem exists since over one year and nobody at ATI cared to fix it. I called the ATI helpdesk and also wrote a failure report. . . .nobody picks up, nobody replies. . . . as i told you: just waste of time.

Damn, and I wanted to buy the HD 4850 =/

Well being a linux user and seeing that the ati drivers are getting better but still are not there it was an easy choice on what to get

esteel is right, the ATI Linux drivers are fantastic in comparison to the other Linux selection.

Another note, I agree that it likely is not an overheating issue as these cards run reasonably cool compared to previous generations' higher-end offerings (think 2900XT).

Also, another note: Catalyst 8.9 is out now, and it should handle OpenGL fine as far as I know.

Finally, and most importantly: You and others have found the issue to be with the drivers (software) not with the actual hardware itself. So, this is no reason to tell people not to get a 48xx card, as AMD is often releasing new drivers for their cards. There's also the fact that the 48xx series cards are the best on the market right now and are serious bang for the buck.

GAH! Why would you go through all trouble with RMA-ing the card? Obviously the problem is going to be addressed, and likely well before you get your new 9800GTX+ (which is not as good of a card). In fact, as I said before, the new driver is already out.

I love this quote:

I always thought ATI would get it's shit together after AMD bought them, but now AMD is loosing it's ass on the CPU side and I read that they let go of thoudands of people, support seems to be the first to go in these large companies.

What the fuck? How did ATI not get better after the acquisition? The current 4xxx series is DOMINATING nVidia... Epic /fail.

Troll senses tingling.

avanderveen wrote:esteel is right, the ATI Linux drivers are fantastic in comparison to the other Linux selection.

No. Just no. How much of a Linux user are you if you're extrolling the virtues of ATi's drivers?

avanderveen wrote:Also, another note: Catalyst 8.9 is out now, and it should handle OpenGL fine as far as I know.

No ATi driver has ever handled OpenGL properly.

avanderveen wrote:There's also the fact that the 48xx series cards are the best on the market right now and are serious bang for the buck.

...and likely well before you get your new 9800GTX+ (which is not as good of a card.)...

How did ATI not get better after the acquisition? The current 4xxx series is DOMINATING nVidia... Epic /fail.

Fanboyism or trolling?

Ed wrote:

avanderveen wrote:Also, another note: Catalyst 8.9 is out now, and it should handle OpenGL fine as far as I know.

No ATi driver has ever handled OpenGL properly.

"as far as I know" may be understood as a rethorical version of "I really don't know" in that case. Obviously this guy hasn't run Nexuiz with this driver yet (well, I'm rather sure he has never played Nexuiz at all ).

I refuse to spend 150 euros for a HD4850 just for a testing purpose, but I'm about to get myself a HD4670 which should be available soon, so I'm gonna find out how fine the windows driver handle openGL (=! D3D btw).

so long

Even if the hardware WAS good... it's of no USE when there's no working driver...
Hey, it's ATI... what more do you need to know to NOT buy such a thing?
I had an ATI card ONCE... because people told me their cards were "already" better than nVidias... (the radeon 9700 pro times....) and they sucked back then, and it didn't work for *months*...

I guess the situation will never change

I have a Radeon 3850 and I'm surprised the 4850 doesn't work properly. While I had/have a few 2D related problems on Linux (well, after all it's still fglrx, right?) I never had any serious problems with OpenGL. On Windows everything was smooth for me, so I wonder how they could have screwed up support for the 4850, which should only need minor changes to the driver for support.

avanderveen wrote:What the fuck? How did ATI not get better after the acquisition? The current 4xxx series is DOMINATING nVidia... Epic /fail.

From todays news..AP report
The end of June showed AMD holding about $1.6 billion in cash while carrying $5.3 billion in debt.

We need competition to keep prices down, but lets face it, the AMD CPU market took a dive when they bought ATI, Intel simply has a better product now and ya gotta be a nutcase if ya think Nvidia doesn't have a better lineup of cards, plus i can just plug it into a Linux box and it just works.


This guy is a fanboy, unlikely he will retort.

Well, Nvidia currently indeed is in a difficult position as ATI's offerings currently indeed offer more bang for the buck at nearly every pricepoint. The Radeon 4xxx series is just really fine hardware, but that doesn't necessarily mean the drivers are just as fine for all setups. I don't regret my purchase of a 3850, but I can clearly see that e.g. Nvidia's Linux drivers are still more robust.

I don't see Nvidia in a difficult position at all, the "Bang for the buck' that you speak about is killing ATI / AMD financially with all the setup and R&D they do costs big bucks and they just don't have it. Lets face it, they lost their ass to Intel in the CPU market, shame on them.
We need the competition to keep prices low, no doubt about that.
Remember when there where 4 big players in the vid card market, now there are only 2 ? (for gaming anyway) with ATI's debt they are just moving product for a bit over cost..and I'm sure Nvidia will counter with a new card..
I say fire all the idiots that write the drivers for ATI, start fresh and get rid of the Catalyst name for the drivers, they make good cards..but support has been sub par for MANY years.

Barfly wrote:Remember when there where 4 big players in the vid card market, now there are only 2 ?

Intel will reenter the discrete graphics card market with Larabee. That may shake things up a bit. Or it could be the next S3 Volare. Intel is still the leader in graphics chipsets my miles just because most PC's don't have graphics cards, they use on board graphics.

Barfly wrote:support has been sub par for MANY years.

A point I've just been testing today with a Radeon 9000 in Nexuiz. The last Windows 9x driver managed 5.29 fps. Under Linux with the opensource Radeon driver which uses mesa, 9.24 fps.

Barfly wrote:I don't see Nvidia in a difficult position at all, the "Bang for the buck' that you speak about is killing ATI / AMD financially with all the setup and R&D they do costs big bucks and they just don't have it.

The Radeon 48xx series is cheaper to produce than mostly-equivalent offerings from Nvidia (smaller chips, simpler boards). I'd say that business-wise the ATI business may be amongst the healthiest within AMD (doesn't mean much currently). The R&D for Radeon 48xx for sure was lower than the R&D for the GeForce GTX 260/280, which fail to impress compared to how cutting-edge and expensive their technology is.

Barfly wrote: Lets face it, they lost their ass to Intel in the CPU market, shame on them.

Actually, with 45nm AMD may offer compelling mainstream chips again with production cost being more in line with what they can afford. The current 65nm offerings indeed looks rather pale (lowish clock-speeds, high power consumption).

Barfly wrote:I say fire all the idiots that write the drivers for ATI, start fresh and get rid of the Catalyst name for the drivers, they make good cards..but support has been sub par for MANY years.

Actually given I up to now had no problems at all with the Windows-flavor of Catalyst I'd say things may not actually be in such a bad shape (keep in mind I deliberately went for ATI to serve as driver guinea pig). I'm hearing bad things about Nvidia drivers, too (to the point of some driver releases also breaking Nexuiz - and this statistic is also interesting http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvid ... hes-in-20/ ), so things are not always as easy as they seem.

Now, of course the question remains why some people seem to have massive OpenGL trouble. The OpenGL driver in general for sure is functional (given that review-sites do have scores for e.g. Prey and Quake 4), so this may be specific to some setups.

SavageX wrote:Now, of course the question remains why some people seem to have massive OpenGL trouble. The OpenGL driver in general for sure is functional (given that review-sites do have scores for e.g. Prey and Quake 4), so this may be specific to some setups.

No, not specific to some setups. My company's also been in big trouble with ATi drivers for years now. We produce CAD/CAM software, where a special module allows processing units directly in an openGL visualized workspace.

At times when the X800 was current, this module was running fine on every ATi (both Radeon and FireGL). When they changed to the X1xxx generation, and built up drivers for them, our application began to commonly crash on WXP and throughoutly when running it on Vista.

So it's definately the ATi drivers that cannot handle certain openGL instructions properly.

I have no clue how you think ATI / AMD is financially stable, the stockholders are not very happy thats for sure.
http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:AMD

Anyway, I say its all this guys fault.


Terry Makedon
"Mr. Catalyst" - head of the
Catalyst development department



And as far as this link that you posted
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvid ... hes-in-20/

Its Vista, who cares anyway, ya gotta be a nutcase to run Vista and damn near EVERY hardware manufacturer has had driver issues with Vista.

I'm not saying that Nvidia is doing that well financially either, but look at the market cap on both,

Barfly wrote:I have no clue how you think ATI / AMD is financially stable, the stockholders are not very happy thats for sure.
http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:AMD

I'm not saying AMD is financially stable, just that from all divisions over at AMD I'd guess ATI may be the "most stable one". Their current lineup is designed to be more cost-effective than competing Nvidia products, which is why they can do some pretty aggressive pricing to win back market share from Nvidia.

(Plus also note that stocks in general are currently under pressure.)

My point really is that AMD /ATI is selling stuff so cheap the profit margin is next to nil.
In the short term its great for consumers but in the mid run it's gonna kill them.
I run 6 computers at home, 2 have ATI cards and the rest Nvidia including my laptop, My OS of choice is Linux, but I do run XP and 2 K as well on 3 of them and over the years I detest the ATI driver support for Linux, and lets face it, for gaming in Nex ya don't really need a Direct X 10 card and since I play mostly OpenGL games and my OS of choice is Linux my choice is obvious.

Phoronix has a review of the 4670 with a Nexuiz benchmark that includes the 4850 and it seems to work OK for them:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 4670&num=6

Sorry if I trolled a little bit there,

I didn't mean that AMD has performed better financially since purchasing ATI, since they obviously have been getting their asses kicked by Intel in the CPU market. ATI is starting to gain ground and is keeping AMD afloat, especially with discreet graphics.

As for the driver issues, I think you'll realize that with linux if you use the official ATI driver it works very well. It's especially impressive how open ATI is to open source by releasing a complete open spec for their driver and providing support for the community and linux in general with their drivers. With Windows driver issues regarding OpenGL, I have to say that your experience with Nexuiz seems to be an exception to the norm. Or maybe it's just that non-commercial projects don't have the public requirements or resources to ensure that they will work with all combinations of ATI/nVidia cards and DirectX/OpenGL (which is more a fault of the public not being aware of these projects, and not the fault of the developers). For the review that Phoronix conducted they used the official Catalyst 8.9 linux driver and got 113 FPS at 2560x1600 with HDR enabled. That is impressive (the GeForce 9600GT got 105). So I don't really see an issue with ATI's official driver or with OpenGL and Nexuiz in general. On a final note, mainstream OpenGL games run just fine on Radeon cards.

Ed wrote:Phoronix has a review of the 4670 with a Nexuiz benchmark that includes the 4850 and it seems to work OK for them:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 4670&num=6

I think the opengl problems exist for the windows drivers.. but maybe i misunderstood something, as i do not own a ati card