Mobility Radeon 9700 problem

Mike the Master · Jul 1, 2005, 06:52 PM

First of all congratulations to all the people at driverheaven for all your work. I'm happy to find you.

I'm having a problem with realtime light processing and reflections in all new games.
No problem with older games (DX7 and down): high fps, great image, all options max.
Aparently is something wrong with pixel shader.
In new games (DX8 and up) I see some kind of artifacts where reflections should be.
If I disable from the game's options special effects or realtime light procesing it works fine ( but not very beautiful :-( ).
I tried 3 video drivers and some settings but didn't figure out yet.

Something strange: 3DMark2001 SE reports Vertex shader 1.1 !!! and Pixel Shader 1.4 !!!
on my Mobility Rdeon 9700.

The laptop is Acer Travelmate 3201XMi with the following specs:

Intel Pentium M 715 (1.5 GHz, 400MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
14.1 XGA TFT LCD (1024*768)
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9700/64MB (GPU 400 MHz/ 210MHZ DDR 420MHZ)
Toshiba MK 8025GAS (80GB)
Matshita UJ-822S DVD-Super Multi (support DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM)
512MB DDR (PC2700)
802.11b/g wireless LAN
Bluetooth

Win XP SP2 and automatic updates on.
Drivers are now Omega 26.42, but I had the same problem with Omega 26.25a and even with ATI 4.12 drivers fom Acer website (wich are dated june 2004).

!!! The strangest thing of all is that in 3Dmark2001 SE I get the same artifacts even with SOFTWARE RENDERING!!!!

1. hardware malfunction?
2. chipset incompatibility?
3. WinXP/DX9c problem?
Here are some screenshots from 3Dmark2001 SE, BF 1942 with "special effects" from video options set to high (artifacts) and low (no artifacts), and Nexuiz with "realtime light processing" set to ON (artifacts) and OFF (no artifacts).
http://www.chip.ro/forum/download.php?id=2768
I tried a few other new games and it's the same, so I didn't make even more screenshots.
Thank you in advance to all who are trying to help me.

Mike the Master · Jul 2, 2005, 06:54 AM

Update: I tried Serious Sam The Second Encounter because I know it has a Direct3D and a OpenGL engine.
I was surprised that it works fine in both renderers. On their website Croteam says Serious Sam The Second Encounter has a DX8 engine.

Mike the Master · Jul 3, 2005, 08:57 PM

Update: Unreal Tournament 2004 works fine with all video options set to maximum image quality.
Also 3Dmark 2003 works almost perfect, I mean there are just very few such artifacts in the test Mother Nature.
I hope that somebody who knows very well some of these 3D aplications and the functionality of Mobility Radeon 9700 can help me with some advice to what my problem is. I started to suspect something different than the video card itself or it's drivers.
Maybe it's something wrong with the DirectX 9c that I didn't install myself. Ithink it came up with ervice Pack 2.
Or it's something with the chipset (Intel 855GM I think).
If somebody had similar light reflection artifacts on any ATI video card please tell me what was your problem, since I am new to Radeon videocards. Actually I always used AMD processors and nVidia videocards on my desktop computer, and I never had such problems with them.

Jul 1, 2005, 06:52 PM	#1
Mike the Master DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Mobility Radeon 9700 problem First of all congratulations to all the people at driverheaven for all your work. I'm happy to find you. I'm having a problem with realtime light processing and reflections in all new games. No problem with older games (DX7 and down): high fps, great image, all options max. Aparently is something wrong with pixel shader. In new games (DX8 and up) I see some kind of artifacts where reflections should be. If I disable from the game's options special effects or realtime light procesing it works fine ( but not very beautiful :-( ). I tried 3 video drivers and some settings but didn't figure out yet. Something strange: 3DMark2001 SE reports Vertex shader 1.1 !!! and Pixel Shader 1.4 !!! on my Mobility Rdeon 9700. The laptop is Acer Travelmate 3201XMi with the following specs: Intel Pentium M 715 (1.5 GHz, 400MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache) 14.1 XGA TFT LCD (1024768) ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9700/64MB (GPU 400 MHz/ 210MHZ DDR 420MHZ) Toshiba MK 8025GAS (80GB) Matshita UJ-822S DVD-Super Multi (support DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM) 512MB DDR (PC2700) 802.11b/g wireless LAN Bluetooth Win XP SP2 and automatic updates on. Drivers are now Omega 26.42, but I had the same problem with Omega 26.25a and even with ATI 4.12 drivers fom Acer website (wich are dated june 2004). !!! The strangest thing of all is that in 3Dmark2001 SE I get the same artifacts even with SOFTWARE RENDERING!!!! 1. hardware malfunction? 2. chipset incompatibility? 3. WinXP/DX9c problem? Here are some screenshots from 3Dmark2001 SE, BF 1942 with "special effects" from video options set to high (artifacts) and low (no artifacts), and Nexuiz with "realtime light processing" set to ON (artifacts) and OFF (no artifacts). http://www.chip.ro/forum/download.php?id=2768 I tried a few other new games and it's the same, so I didn't make even more screenshots. Thank you in advance to all who are trying to help me. Last edited by Mike the Master; Jul 1, 2005 at 09:02 PM.*

Jul 2, 2005, 06:54 AM	Thread Starter #2
Mike the Master DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Update: I tried Serious Sam The Second Encounter because I know it has a Direct3D and a OpenGL engine. I was surprised that it works fine in both renderers. On their website Croteam says Serious Sam The Second Encounter has a DX8 engine.

Jul 3, 2005, 08:57 PM	Thread Starter #3
Mike the Master DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Update: Unreal Tournament 2004 works fine with all video options set to maximum image quality. Also 3Dmark 2003 works almost perfect, I mean there are just very few such artifacts in the test Mother Nature. I hope that somebody who knows very well some of these 3D aplications and the functionality of Mobility Radeon 9700 can help me with some advice to what my problem is. I started to suspect something different than the video card itself or it's drivers. Maybe it's something wrong with the DirectX 9c that I didn't install myself. Ithink it came up with ervice Pack 2. Or it's something with the chipset (Intel 855GM I think). If somebody had similar light reflection artifacts on any ATI video card please tell me what was your problem, since I am new to Radeon videocards. Actually I always used AMD processors and nVidia videocards on my desktop computer, and I never had such problems with them.