BirdDogICT

Interlocutor, Thanks for joining the discussion. Overall, it looks like our settings are pretty similar. You're absolutely right about different rigs getting different results. For example, turning off messages made a BIG difference for me. I also didn't find the mipmap detail level to make much difference. I'm getting Track IR in a few weeks. My understanding is that setting Wait for Vertical Refresh reduces graphics tearing when using Track IR. Have you found that to be the case? Also, FRAPS shows my FPS to be 16-57 (avg 28) from sitting on the airfield to fighting in a 10 plane furrball. Cheers

Sitting Duck, Thanks for asking some good questions about ATI setups...it forced me to try a few new things. Like you said, when configuring graphics cards, there are a lot of buttons to push, and it's not always clear what impact each one or combination of them will have. Several days ago, my BHaH setup was very cranky (probably my fault) and I was just about to order parts for a new PC, mostly due to stuttering. I have to laugh at some of the posts complaining of low FPS, when in fact, FPS of 25-30 is perfectly acceptable. It's stuttering that's the major immersion killer, and s-s-s-stuttering was one of the major problems with CFS3 when it came out, especially on the PCs of the time. When I started playing Phase 2 and CFS3 several months ago on a newer machine, I had no problems with stuttering at all, but BHaH is a whole different animal, and I was disappointed that my 3GHz machine was choking. But I was willing to invest the time to fix the problem even if it required an investment of $1200 on new components. One of my mistakes was to ignore the recommended CFS3Config Overrides and Texture Info settings for ATI cards (Those recommendation were supposed to fix low FPS, but I wasn't having a low FPS problem, my problem was stuttering). Anyway, last night I added Catalyst A.I. on "Advanced" and Adaptive AA on "Quality", and everything looked great on low slider settings, but I was still having serious stutters. But then I set the recommended overrides and texture info, and the game was smooth as a baby's bottom, with 30-60 FPS (26 avg) in 10 plane furrballs right above the airfield at 1600X1200 resolution and 3-4-3-3-4-1 sliders. My frame rate cap is now set to 60 (Note: the one override that I did NOT apply was "Disable Terrain Texture Ring Blend"). To answer your other question, I use Edge filtering. See the following discussion as to why: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html...oZW50aHVzaWFzdA== "The Edge-detect CFAA filter is unique because it uses the stream processors to carry out its workload, and does not consume memory bandwidth or memory space. The filter uses an edge detect algorithm that delivers 12X and 24X CFAA modes with the same memory footprint as 4X AA and 8X AA respectively." The article goes on to say that one shoudln't use Narrow-Tent or Wide-Tent due to blurring, and I found this to be true in BHaH. Bottom line is to use Edge detect. It looks the best and causes the least reduction in FPS. Cheers

Sitting Duck, I forgot to mention it, but the CFS3Config override settings helped to eliminated stutters and maximize my FPS, especially with Catalyst A.I. and Adaptive AA on the highest settings. Those ovverride settings can be found here http://www.overflandersfields.com/Tips.htm (Thanks to Polovski, LeBlaque and Redwolf). Also, I'm using MAXFPS=40 in CFS.xml. Cheers

Olham, Glad to hear that...I'll need your advice in a few weeks when I set up my Track IR. Cheers

Sitting Duck, Keep in mind that I'm trying different combinations to maximum the performance of a CPU/memory constrained system. Based on my experience, though, I would suggest: 1. Start with the level of AA and AF desired. 4X Edge AA eliminates edges on planes, and AF sharpens textures as they fade into the distance and removes shimmering of landscape. You can try maxing these settings out and see what impact it has on FPS. 2. Keep Mipmap level at "Performance" 3. Add Catalyst A.I. support (using Standard or more aggressive Advanced setting). This does seem to improve overall quality, especially smoke, haze, fog, etc. I haven't had any problems with Catalyst A.I., other than reduced FPS. 4. Add Adaptive Anti-Aliasing (Quality looks better than Performance). This will "fill in" edges of some textures, and generally improves the look of polygon-based objects like buildings and planes. Adaptive Antialiasing isn't a big resource hog, but I'd turn it if FPS suffers significantly. 5. Seting Wait for Vertical Refresh to "on" appears to reduce tearing 6. OpenGL Triple Buffering doesn't seem to do much of anything. Without knowing how textures are rendered in the game, the above is based solely on my experience. As you increase the GPU's workload, with Catalyst A.I. and/or Adaptive Antialiasing, you may need to reduce your graphics sliders in the game. Cheers

I noticed in the system requirements that one of the memory recommendations for a "high end" system is 2GB to 3.5GB (XP) Any technophiles out there who have upgraded their XP machines from 2GB to 4 GB to run BHAH? Did it improve game performance? I'm currently running BHaH on a system I built several years ago. I'd love to upgrade, but will have to wait a while. Specs include: ---ASUS A8R32-MVP Motherboard ---2GB of Corsair Twinx2048-4400Pro DDR memory at 275 MHz (DDR 550) at 3-4-4-8 (2T command rate) ---FSB speed of 275 MHZ with HT Link speed of 1375 MHz ---Opteron 185 dual processor overclocked to 3.025 MHz on air (has 1MB L2 cache) ---ATI 512MB HD4870 graphics card (recently added) My system is completely stable up to 3.1 MHz, and I'm getting great FPS in BHaH with sliders set @ 2-5-2-2-2-1, although I get some stuttering when (I think) textures are loading. I found 2 more GB of the same Corsair memory, and plan to populate all 4 memory slots (that would probably require me to reduce the FSB/memory speed for stability, but I have an unlocked CPU multiplier, so have lots of options). I'm guessing that XP would have about 3.3 GB of addressable memory when I'm done. Would 4GB of memory improve BHaH performance at all? BirdDogICT

Racindriver, Actually, ALL of my sims and first person shooters run well, but I've had to create custom game profiles for nearly every one through Catalyst Profiles Manager. In most cases optimum graphics settings for ATI and NVidia cards can be found on fanboy sites. It's challenging to find the sweet spot sometimes, especially with older D3D and OpenGL games. Cheers

Sitting Duck, I've tried some new settings that work better, utilizing 9.2 Catalyst controls instead of in-game controls. Frankly, finding the right combination of settings is tedious. The problem is, every game handles transparencies differently, and without knowing how BHaH handles them, finding the best settings is a trial and error process. I spent many hours trying to clear up "shimmering" of landscapes at low altitudes. I assumed that it was caused by either (1) mipmap detail level too high or (2) Catalyst A.I., but finally cleared it up by using high AF settings. My current Catalyst settings: 1. SMOOTHVision HD Anti-aliasing - uncheck "Use Application Settings" and choose "4X Level" and "Edge Detect" This seems to give the right amount of AA without a performance hit. 2. SMOOTHVision HD Anisotropic Filtering - uncheck "Use Application Settings" and set Per Pixel Samples slider to "16" "3. Catalyst A.I. - check "Disable" (BTW, the wrong Catalyst A.I. setting can play hell with some older flight sims, e.g., if using "Perfect" landscape settings in IL2, Catalyst A.I. MUST be set to "Standard") 4. Mipmap Detail Level - slider at "Performance" 5. Wait for Vertical Refresh - "Always On" (this doesn't seem to make much difference, but may reduce graphics tearing, especially when using TIR 6. Adaptive Anti-Aliasing - leave "Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing" unchecked 7. OpenGL settings - check "Triple Buffering" (doesn't seem to make much difference on or off) Within CFS3Config, Set Anti-Aliasing to "Off" I've had a minor FPS hit on these settings, but looks MUCH better, and reduced stutters. Of course, your mileage may vary. Cheers.

Sitting Duck, I've played around a lot with the Catalyst 9.2 settings but have a lower end PC than yours (FYI, I'm running BHaH on a 939 socket machine running at 3.0 GHz with 2GB DDR550 memory, XP SP3, and a 512MB HD4870 @ 1600X1024 with Sliders @ 3-5-3-2-2-1). I'm getting FPS of 30-40 in furrballs with 10 planes. I found that it's best to turn off most Catalyst features and let the game graphics do their work. When I've tried to use Catalyst to improve graphics performance, I've ended up with some oddities, most noticeable one being planes at a distance lack definition, almost like they are stick figures. Here are my Catalyst settings 1. SMOOTHVision HD Anti-aliasing - check "Use Application Settings" 2. SMOOTHVision HD Anisotropic Filtering - check "Use Application Settings" 3. Catalyst A.I. - check "Disable" 4. Mipmap Detail Level - slider at "Performance" 5. Wait for Vertical Refresh - "Always On" (this doesn't seem to make much difference, but may reduce graphics tearing, especially when using TIR 6. Adaptive Anti-Aliasing - leave "Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing" unchecked 7. OpenGL settings - check "Triple Buffering" (doesn't seem to make much difference on or off) Within CFS3Config, Set Anti-Aliasing to "8 samples" I've had good luck with these settings, but my CPU and memory are choking my GPU. For a good read on the functions of Catalyst Control Panel, try this: http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html

Glad you're enjoying your I7. With the on-chip memory controllers and faster memory, your bandwidth would be about 25 GB/s versus my 5.5 I can still run Crysis, COD5, etc on max settings, but flight sims are SO demanding.