AGP slot uncheck, but I have AGP card...

Well It wont let me check my AGP slot for some reason, I have no idea why.

my mother board is a
Asus A7V333-X
Sapphy ATI 9800pro 128mb with samsung memory.
So is this how it's spose to look?
http://hobonation.com/~dump/userfiles/smurfy/pfft.JPG

AGP acceleration is not supported for ATI cards. They blame it on ATI. ATI blames it on them. Go buy an nVidia if you want a good graphics experience here. I had to.

That's full of it, But geuss what, theres a way to make it reconize as a Nvidia card, but that's just stupid, meh it's fine ethier way, I have a nvidia system next to me -.-

So I keep re-reading this, expecting someone to say, "Oh, that's BS, AGP on ATI cards works just fine. Here's how to work around it," but I haven't seen it so far.

Excuse me? This is a fact?? As much reading as I've done, all I saw was that the box in question was 'disabled' for macs due to crashing.

I don't even run a mac, so why is it disabled for me?

Even if I did, I'd rather crash every once in a while than watch the slideshow I'm watching now. SL behaves as though it were software rendered on my box, and I have a fast box with a good video card (Which happens to be ATI).

I also know people who run ATI video cards and get good or acceptable performance, so there's something that ain't right here, and it doesn't have anything to do with my hardware. For the record, several 'very' high-end games (AAO (opengl) and EVE (DirectX)) run just fine on the box, so it's not an issue of 'poor opengl performance from ATI cards'.

And no, SL is not 'very demanding'. It's demanding on video ram (I have 256M), on CPU
(To assemble the frames for the video card to render) and on the system and network (To download, interpret, interpolate and collate the data into a scene, loading from cache where possible)... But not so much on the video card at all. Yes, there are particle effects and alpha blending, as well as reflection, textured lighting, and ripple effects (Which don't work right for me and cause all the low spots in the world to flood) but nothing all that difficult. AAO, for example, has an entire map with amazing blowing-sand particle effect. It runs without a hitch while SL runs at 1fps.

So, what's the deal here?

-Kysh

Here's what I was told...

ATI cards aren't that good at changes textures for items "on-the-fly".

With "traditional" games and stuff, all the textures needed for a particular level are loaded all at once (at the beginning load screen) and then used throughout the level as needed.

With Second Life, there is no "set number of textures" since we can upload our own. Apparantly, ATI doesn't handle this well, whereas nVidia does.

Personally I think that's a copout and that it's unprofessional for Linden Labs to blame it on ATI. They should be the ones programming the workaround, like every other game company does until ATI can issue a bugfix, if, indeed, it is a bug.

Hmmm, Microsoft has been operating in this manner for years. They should be strung up too.

Actually ATI is better for rendering textures ont he go. Seeing as they have the capibility to run FP32 and FP16 @ the same time. And I wasn;t trying to correct you I was agreeing that LL should ahve a fix.

So, what's the work-around to make it think an ATI is an Nvidia? I'd like to try it at home and check it out.

Made a hook.dll
and play with 3danalyze
Doesn't really work tho as once you switch swims it crashes game.

Bump for the sake of getting PROPER supprot for ATI computers. Where theres a programmer theres a was. This "it cant be done" stuff is crap :\

How much are you willing to pay to have this done? From my understanding of the problem, there are two options:
1) Pay an ATI tech for a month or two to fix the problem in the ATI drivers -- assuming it's not a hardware design flaw, in which case it may not be fixable.
2) Pay a third-party company to reverse-engineer the ATI drivers and write functioning replacements, which will take several man-years to accomplish.

Do what ever other big-name publisher does: #1

Linden just got $8,000,000 in new funding. They can through $15,000-$20,000 at this to fix it for future generations of SL'ers.

Kind of old thread but this is imporant! I'm using ATI and I get to sit there every time I check my preferences and just think of how I could be getting better framerates but noooo...c'mon LL do something!

I forced SL to let me check AGP for my ATI9600XT, been like the for months, and have had no issues (beside have to make SL let me re-check after every update), but I have it checked and have no issues and get 20+ fps ...

So looks fine to me...

How did you do this Michael? Someone earlier said 'make a hook' and run 3danalysize/ I've no idea how to make a hook! 3Danalyze was a baffling screen of options.

Thanks!

I think it's likely that LL will have addressed the ATI problems in the next engine. As it is, I don't think it's particularly wise to waste time patching the old client/engine when the new one can be designed from the ground up to better employ all cards. Of course, that means we're left waiting.

Did anyone notice the latest Mercury Research percentages of graphics cards ordered? Aside from the dominating Intel embedded GPU's, ATI has taken a lead over Nvidia. Maybe this has something to do with DOOM 3 being a bomb and HL-2 being the bomb.

As for SL, I'll say that whatever LL did during that series of rapid December updates has eliminated all crash problems with my ATI 9600pro 128. Not once since those updates have I crashed. Of course, it could also be that ATI fixed the problem in their monthly drivers update. I've even ventured safely towards zooming in really close while building (a definite crash trigger before), expanding my draw distance, and enabling local lighting again.

I forced AGP on my ATI Mobility 9700 and there was a marked difference. It just felt far less smooth, even though my FPS was still high. Stuttering, etc.

in featuretable.txt change all the AGP settings for all ATI sections to 1 1. Make a copy though, you may want to switch back. Changing all of them is overkill, but I don't want to document the workaround, just try it.

That is correct Postmark, I noticed about a 5+ FPS, had about 15fps before, now always over 20..must nicer..and don't crash running the newest drivers on my ATI9600XT