FFXI and ATi Video Cards

[Elesirdur]

A number of months ago I switched to an ATi video card (X1600 512MB specifically) after using nVidia cards for a long time. Obviously, FFXI uses very little in the way of GPU power and post-processing is just a pipedream for the Windower guys. However, with my ATi card I've noticed a significant drop in visual quality when it comes to mip-mapping texture filtering.

With my old nVidia card I could force Anisotorpic filtering and get a very nice texture smoothing effect for a great distance - even with drawdistance plugins and such. But with the ATi card, even when I force AF, the filtering distance is still very short and any textures rendered after that distance are very, very block and un-filtered.

I've tried fiddling around with forcing AA, AF, Catalyst AI, etc but nothing seems to make much difference. I've also tried the registry value changes and more often changing the mipmapping registry value to a higher number results in worse looks.

Given the large expanses of stone tiled textures in Aht Urghan it's really noticable and just looks like plain ass. Anyone have any suggestions for improving the visual quality on ATi cards or know of any tricks to get AF to stick over greater distances?

[XaocRamuh]

I think(?) that when CoP came out, FFXI had the whole "Plays best on nVidia" nonsense thing. It might be that the engine works more effeciently with nVidia, I dunno. I am an ATI fanboy (but do support for nVidia, go figure...), so I don't know what graphics would look like with nVidia video cards.

[Elesirdur]

I'm pretty sure the nVidia GPU design of FFXI on PC is part of the problem. I just don't know if it can be circumvented.

PS: I had tried using the old, old Catalyst drivers SE says are officially supported with no change. And really, I can't play Oblivion on year old drivers anyways.

[Snowknight26]

Now you say you fiddled wtih AA, AF, and such, but did you change the mipmap setting in the control panel to max, not just in the registry for ffxi?

[Tahngarthor]

I have a mobile radeon 9600, and the bump mapping and everything else looks just fine. antialiasing and anistropic filtering dont seem to have any impact on quality for some reason (yet it does hit performance). AA is only really helpful at low resolutions anyway, otherwise its just a waste of processing power IMO. Turn off your AA, set mipmap detail level in catalyst control center to maximum, use any level of anistropic filtering. Bump mapping is particularly noticed in ru'lude gardens and it looks nice there on my (crappy) machine.

[Zirk]

Totally irrelevant but where in Victoria are you.

WOOT double-digit post count!

[izembo]

what resolution do you run on by chance?

[Elesirdur]

Totally irrelevant but where in Victoria are you.

WOOT double-digit post count!

I live in Oak Bay, about 5 min drive from UVic. I gradded from there in the Spring.

As for my resolution: 1280x1024 with 1600x1280 background res

[Snowknight26]

First of all, AA and AF won't work. Its all about mipmapping and background res, so having a background res of 1600x1280 will give you partial AA, so set that to something like 1280x1280; but thats still irrelevant if you're trying to get the textures to look crisp at any distance. Have you tried messing with the mipmap settings? What about mipmap settings?

[ddasol]

Change values in registry. You can change mip mapping and resolution w/e you want.

[Asherek]

AA&AF don't really impact FFXI very much, due to the way S/E renders the image. >_>

There's actually a quick couple of things I need to point out however, that might help.

1. Make sure you have Mipmapping set to full in your ATI Control Panel.

2. This is an important one. You need .NET framwork 2.0 for ATI Catalyst Control Panel. However, you need to install 1.1 and then upgrade to 2.0, not just install the 2.0 patch from Windows Update. This sounds stupid, but I've made this mistake in the past, and while working at ATI, I saw a number of complaints from people who had the same problem of "AA & AF/Mipmap settings not making any difference". It seems for some odd reason, if you don't install .NET framework properly, the AA&AF settings don't work correctly and no matter what settings you set them to, it won't make a difference.

In terms of visual quality, actually, ATI has always been better for me for FFXI.

P.S. I used to live in Gordon Head, like 5 minutes away from UVic too.

[Kimiko]

Well, I for one am glad this thread came up. I'm considering getting a Raedon here in the next couple of weeks.

[neighbortaru]

Driver AA doesn't work, AF does (applies to nvidia too). I have mine set at 8x and it's a bit of an improvement.

Like others said, you get the most eye candy by regedit-ing the background res and mip-mapping.

And before you all jump on the nvidia bandwagon, there is an acknowledged lag problem with some of the 6 & 7 series cards and FFXI.

[draxyl]

I'd probably just get the new nvidia 7950 GT over the comparable ATI offerings (x1900 xt). Not that you'll go wrong either way, I just think nvidia has "won" this generation.

Although, anandtech disagrees with me and says the x1900 xt @ 256mb is still the better buy:

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2833&p=1

[neighbortaru]

I'd probably just get the new nvidia 7950 GT over the comparable ATI offerings (x1900 xt). Not that you'll go wrong either way, I just think nvidia has "won" this generation.

Although, anandtech disagrees with me and says the x1900 xt @ 256mb is still the better buy:

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2833&p=1

the price/performance is very nice on the 1900XT so I would agree with anand

not that it matters much in FFXI (wasted potential), but if you play other games...

[Raineer]

As long as ATI still has that performance edge when you run it on the 2002 drivers that FFXI requires you should be fine.

Most reviews put NVidia ahead on this round, you might read a few more before choosing (although it's more their $220-250 cards that blow away ATi)...in the higher end it might be closer.

[Asherek]

In terms of price to performance at the moment, ATI X1900XT is far better than nVidia's 7900 GTX simply because ATI dropped the price drastically due to their new cards coming out.

The X1900XT is equal or greater performance to the 7900 GTX in most stuff, especially if you overclock it to XTX speeds, which is easy to do.

As I said earlier, triple check that you installed .NET framework correctly, because this is a big problem for people who simply installed the 2.0 upgrade without installing 1.1 first. It royally screws up the settings in CCC panel if you do that.

[neighbortaru]

As I said earlier, triple check that you installed .NET framework correctly, because this is a big problem for people who simply installed the 2.0 upgrade without installing 1.1 first. It royally screws up the settings in CCC panel if you do that.

no, you don't need to install 1.1 first. 2 is fine by itself (fyi it's not an upgrade, it's a new version of the whole framework).

[Asherek]

As I said earlier, triple check that you installed .NET framework correctly, because this is a big problem for people who simply installed the 2.0 upgrade without installing 1.1 first. It royally screws up the settings in CCC panel if you do that.

no, you don't need to install 1.1 first. 2 is fine by itself (fyi it's not an upgrade, it's a new version of the whole framework).

Are you 100% sure about this?

I've tested this 3 seperate times on 3 different machines. And when I helped with troubleshooting at ATI, this was a popular complaint/troubleshooting fix.

It's quite possible there's some component or something that was only 1.1 then that's not found in 2.0 or something, because this same issue has occurred every single time I've installed only 2.0 without installing 1.1 first (AA & AF & Mipmapping settings wouldn't have any effect).

[neighbortaru]

Are you 100% sure about this?

yes

I've tested this 3 seperate times on 3 different machines. And when I helped with troubleshooting at ATI, this was a popular complaint/troubleshooting fix.

It's quite possible there's some component or something that was only 1.1 then that's not found in 2.0 or something, because this same issue has occurred every single time I've installed only 2.0 without installing 1.1 first (AA & AF & Mipmapping settings wouldn't have any effect).

I have no problems with my card. Keep in mind, driver level AA does not work at all so you're not gonna see anything happen there. AF & mip-map work fine, though mip-map you're gonna have to regedit in order to see anything noticable (default is really, really low).