"White Artifact" in scenery P2

B

Barnstorm

"Molon Labe"
If anyone else is experiencing white geometric figures in the scenery when the point-of-view (POV) is changed rapidly, like with Tracker, or if you get a white "sheeting" effect in or near clouds, here is Nvidia nTune settings that may help. I did update the Nvidia drivers to the 178.24 version.
My system is:

Intel 2.4 G Dual Core, 3 Gig RAM, 8800 GTS vid card, 650w PS.
 
Tearing

The effect you get when POV changes rapidly is called "tearing". The POV is moving faster than the GPU can fill in the scenery. Even with my new hardware, I still experience it. One way you can cut down on that without losing any detail etc, is to move your head slower :icon_lol:. Another way is to back off on your settings a tad, maybe set the AA at 8x instead of 16. I'm running an 8800GTX and I'm experiencing the same thing although I opt for the first solution and move my head slowerrrr.:d

CJ
 
That's one reason they say Get The Fastest CPU you can lay your hands for OFF. My Quad is only at 2.4, and while it's definately a case of overkill, because I'm not designing any aircraft from scratch. It was preferrable to my other choice, a Duo at 1.7. Factory Order Sucks.

The Hot Number today is an E8600@3.33 or better ???? :ernae:
 
Got an E8500 3.16Ghz 1333fsb. Couldn't see the extra $$$ vs the small performance gain of the E8600. Besides the 8500 can be OC'd to 4 Ghz or better so we're good.:mixedsmi:

CJ
 
I have heard that Q6600 will overclock well into the 3's from its factory 2.4
I am planning too give it a shot if I can save my pennies
 
I have the Q6600, the GTX 8800GTC 764MB + 4gb ddr2 and haven't yet O/C'd mine yet ,but theres plenty of time when phase 3 arrives.
 
Hmmm

3.2 gig and I still get the triangles, but , I learn to move my head sl oo ww e rrrrrrr. Last vid card I OC'd blew up and corrupted my hard drive too, so no more of that crap. You can set the card to performance though instead of quality, and set you PC to the same.

Cheers,

british_eh
 
The settings I posted took care of 90-95% of the "tearing" I was experiencing. I only get a very slight amount during snow storms, but never with head movement now.
 
It seems to work on my setup, too. Still testing, but the setting called "Threaded Optimization" seems to be the one that helps this most (just swapped settings around 'til I could see which helped most...but, as I said, still testing to be sure).

My settings are shown below.

Note my AA/AF are lessened, I turned them down a bit because even with 2 in SLI, the 8800GS's I use aren't quite as capable as the GT/GTX cards.

Thanks, Barnstorm :ernae:
 
Seeing white sheets instead of texture is not tearing. I get similar artifacts when looking around, blue terrain tiles momentarily before the terrain tile shows. That is down to texture memory. It's a CFS3 thing.
 
If you are seeing white trees and white buildings etc - i.e white scenery objects then yes you are exceeding GPU mem capacity and then the solution is to lower the scenery and terrain sliders by 1 notch in CFS3 configs.

HTH

WM
 
Also....for anybody who's interested in what all those funky little settings in the Nvidia Control Panel really do....either independantly or in conjunction with one another, there's a really decent and comprehensive explanation of 'em right here:http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_6.html

Btw....there's 11 pages of that stuff there, and a couple of links to a bunch more....most of it valuable as well as informative. I particularly like the Riva Tuner section on page 10. In fact, the whole thing is required reading for anyone who aspires to gain membership into the Tweakers Anonymous Support Group.

Hopefully somebody will find it useful.

Cheers,

Parky
 
I'm not sure I understand what's being said here...

If you look in my sig, you'll see that - while it's by no means 'top-of-the-line' - my system isn't really slouchy, either. I post 55,000+ in 3dMark03, over 26,000 in 3DMark05...I get average framerates of 50+ ("Great") in Company of Heroes with all settings maxed and in full res (1440x900 on my LCD). Again, not the fastest rig out there, but not by any stretch the slowest by far. I only recently built this machine, and spent over $600 just for the motherboard, CPU, RAM and video cards.

Now, in OFF, by comparison, I run the sliders at 3-3-3-2-1, and only @1152x864x32 - yet I should either expect these white triangles or I have to set things lower still?

What exactly is the 'recommended' hardware to run this on? Everything I recall reading here indicates multi-core CPU's aren't the answer (if I recall, many seem to say that either the multiple cores aren't used, or - if they are - they contribute to 'stutter'). I could be mistaken, but it seems some have suggested that having a faster CPU is more important to OFF than faster GPU (or a graphics card with more RAM). But, if multi-core doesn't count...how fast is fast? (Mine's already running 3.44G!)

Yet, I distinctly recall reading several instances of people proudly proclaiming they were running OFF with "all 5's" - what are they running, freakin' Crays or something? Or is this just internet-inspired 'oneupmanship'? Maybe they are running all 5's, just never turning their heads? I just can't see how it's possible, short of spending as if money were no object.

I've heard that P3 is improved in terms of the minimum hardware it'll require, but there's been little to say what the minimum is in either P3 or P2 that I recall.

Particularly with P3 approaching - and it being 'payware' as opposed to the previous free versions; I am wondering what one might expect to spend, to get this to run at decent quailty settings (and without graphic issues).

I personally believe OFF is one of the finest efforts I've seen in a very long time - and certainly the entire team deserves respect and admiration for this work. I'm not, by any means, trying to impugn anyone's effort here.

I'm very curious about this, because many people - like myself - have real limitations on what they can spend on things for entertainment. Even where that entertainment is something we dearly love (WW1 flight sims), we just can't heave hundreds (thousands?) of dollars at getting a computer game to run.

Can anyone, then, offer some perspective that I seem to be unable to find?

Thanks, and best to all.
 
OFF is texture memory hungry, although you have 8800GS in SLi, SLI does not pool GFX memory, so you are in fact still running at 384mg texture memory. The rest of your setup is very nice though :)
 
Hey Cliff,

I'm running an Asus Maximus Formula SE/FSB is set to 1600/E6850 clocked to 3.6 Gig/4 Gig of Mushkin Extreme Performance PC8500 at stock speeds with timings tightened to 4-4-4-12/Two 36 Gig Raptors (OS and Pagefile split between the two)/ Two 250 Gig Seagate 7200.11's in RAID-0 and a GTX280 Extreme Edtion GPU.....and I still see the odd white triangle here and there....lol.

Mind you, I'm also running all sliders on 5 except terrain, 1920x1200 w/16xAF and 8xAA. Bet you if I dropped those settings down some I wouldn't see any triangles at all, but to put it in perspective (I believe you asked for perspective didn't you?), I just spent more money on a single video card than you spent on your motherboard, cpu, memory AND video cards combined.

Now, if that doesn't make you feel any better, nothin' will.....;)


Cheers Mate,

Parky
 
I read somewhere on this forum, can't remember now if it was before or after the crash, that OFF needs a powerful processor and all of the graphics memory that you can throw at it. It was also mentioned that OFF makes very little use of SLI. Since I was planning my rig mainly for OFF (amongst other things) I took this advice to heart. It took some time, researching, saving and shopping, but I got it together. I can feel the pain you experience at the cost, however, due to some luck and smart shopping (and a little help from my friends) the computer itself minus the peripherals ran about $750 US. At the risk of being accused of being repetitive, here it is one more time..........

Apevia Black XCruiser Mid Tower Case $59.99
Abit IN9 32X MAX 680i SLI mobo $98.50
Antec EA650 PSU $59.99
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16Ghz E8500 processor $189.99
2x1Gb OCZ2P800R22GK PC6400 Dual Channel memory $50.00
Seagate Barracuda 500Gb SATA HD $79.99
EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Mb 384bit GDDR3 $128.99
Creative Soundblaster Audigy SE sound card Gift
miscellaneous shipping & handling $75.00
Windows XP Pro SP3 had it
Total $742.45 US

Now I have a rig that will last at least a couple of years (at least until the GTX280s come down in price) and from what I've been told it should run OFF quite well.
I experienced those white "jaggies" when looking around with Trackir so I used Ntune to raise the clock speed on my video card from 575Mhz to 622Mz. It produces about 5 or 6 extra degrees celsius on the GPU temp, but well within it's parameters. That pretty much took care of the "jaggies". I run OFF at 5,4,4,5,1, and maintain 40 to 65 fps speed whatever is going on.

Are you running XP SP3? If not, they included a dual core optimizer similar to the AMD one in SP3. Also, I found a really good article on using Ntune here,

http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_6.html

CJ
 
Gentlemen, let me thank you for the time and effort in responding.

Brigstock...now *that* information is precisely the sort of thing I was referring to - I honestly have to admit I did not know that (about the SLI)...can you tell me then, would your recommendations echo those of others I've seen here, who say that one card is better than two? (I'm actually considering 2x9800GT's w/1G DDR3 as we speak...or maybe not, as it were) And, if the SLI only uses one card's worth of memory for textures, what becomes of the other 384M?

And Parky...good ole Parky :) Well, I can't say it makes me feel *better* exactly...it sorta makes me want to cry *lol* You certainly helped put things in stark contrast, if not perspective.

But, again - for either of you, or anyone else...what could one reasonably expect to get decent graphics - say, sliders at 5-4-4-4-2 - say, maybe 1280x820 (16:10/wide) and *no* stutters or white triangles, etc? Any guesses? Is it all about a video card? Or a CPU? Both? Do I need to not eat for a month? (I'd probably consider it :d )

BTW that XFX card, unless I'm missing something, is $469 at TigerDirect

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3969465&CatId=28

- not that I can afford it, but still only about 2/3 of what I just spent. Anyway, let's say I bought the card you did, instead of what I bought - that puts us around $900, for the MB, RAM, CPU and video card. Still don't have a case or PSU, no drives or a monitor...as I said, this appears to rapidly approach thousands.

And, perhaps most important of all, is P3 going to substantially change what would be required, as has been recently suggested ?

(And, finally, another disclaimer: If my rather deliberate manner of questions offends anyone, please be assured that's not the purpose here. By training, discipline, and profession, I am compelled to get the 'straight and skinny', as it were - nothing else is intended or desired).

Thanks to you each.
 
CJ..more to your post later, but for now: No, I'm not running SP3. I began refusing many of Microsoft's "crucial" automatic updates long ago, opting instead to consider each of them on it's own merits. That being said, I did install the update for KB896256, which I believe is the 'optimizing' component of SP3 you're thinking of.
 
cliff527 said:
BTW that XFX card, unless I'm missing something, is $469 at TigerDirect

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3969465&CatId=28

- not that I can afford it, but still only about 2/3 of what I just spent.
Click to expand...

Actually old chap, you are missing something. I'm not fortunate enough to have George Bush as my president. As a result, we pay considerably more up here for those items. Once you add taxes, the card is indeed north of 6 hundred bucks.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3930708&CatId=3669

On a side note, it is my belief that a combination of a fast cpu with a top of the line gpu will make for very satisfying result when it comes to P2 performance levels. Although we've been told that Mickeysoft flightsims are more cpu reliant, I doubt very much if you were to couple up a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 with an Nvidia 8600 you'd see very good results. Throw the GTX280 in with that processor and I think you'd see some pretty damned impressive performance levels.

As has been mentioned, I don't think CFS3/OFF benefits from SLI/Crossfire arrangements. Soooo......essentially, what you're running there in the graphics department is the equivilent of a single 8800GS. That card's performance falls somewhere between that of an 8600 and an 8800GT. Not exactly a real speed-demon by today's standards.

If I was in your position, I'd probably wait and see how "optimized" for performance P3 is before I went out and spent any hard-earned cash. I'm fairly confident the Winder had more than one single trick up his sleeve.

Bottom line is, Phase II needs a horse of a machine to run at extremely high settings, and even then you'll see the Bermuda Triangles occasionaly. Then again, all you had to spend money on was your hardware. The game is free, which leaves you money for beer, which if you consume enough of it, should remove those white triangles altogether for you, or at least distort them enough that they'll no longer be a bother....lol.

Cheers Mate,

Parky
 
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