No Bioshock for X800/850 owners? Wait a min...

As you may already know, the incredible action game that is Bioshock requires pixel shader 3.0 support in order to run. There is no ps2.0b mode, thus, the game will show major graphical problems on the ATI Radeon X800 and X850.

But, all hope is not lost yet! A couple of motivated people are working on a fix for we who own the best video cards ever designed. Think Oldblivion for FX video cards, but in Bioshock and for X800/850. It's still far from perfection, but, what, 2 weeks after the game's release, it's already an impressive effort.

See their forum here. Full article here.

EDIT: here's a petition to Irrational for adding 2.0 shader support in a later patch. At the time of writing this, above 4700 people have signed it. http://www.petitiononline.com/BioShock/petition.html

Just upgrade man... jeez.

A SM 3.0 card 150 is good enough

All Unreal3 games require Shader model 3.0, and how are the X800 series the best videocards ever designed?

I think the good doctor was saying that with tongue in cheek because he owns one, Heyyou.

Personally I think the unreal guys have made a notable error is ignoring all the SM 2.0 cards out there, many of which still have enough horsepower to push games like Bioshock.

Hopefully, the efforts of the modding community will influence the Unreal engine devs to add support for older cards, alot of which are still out there providing good service...

Yeah, even Crysis is going to support SM2.0. This is a pic of a SM2.0 card playing bioshock, notice the white in the background. It is not perfect put it is playable.



I have a x800xt and I am playing bioshock. I just have the demo now, as I am waiting till the fix is complete.

Almost? Noooo, I failed....

Yup that's basically the point. X800 and 850 are still very decent card in terms of raw performance, plus in ps2.0 you can do pretty much anything that is possible in ps3.0. Heck, Valve uses ps2.0 HDR in Half-Life 2: Episode One (and 2, judging from the screenshots).

So basically, we who own the pinnacle of gpu enginnering feel cheated.

"I'm pretty sure Crysis will support SM2.0," didn't I just say that it would.

As for Bioshock, it plays just fine on my X800XT, no slowdowns, very smooth, keep in mind that the unofficial fix is not done completely, so there are a few missing textures here and there. I would not recommend buying the game until the fix is done.

So you know the rest of my system to get an idea how it may be on yours:
AMD 3500+ and 2GB Ram, oh and my X800XT is AGP.

To DXRick
Dont know what you are on about i upgraded to a x800xl to play Oblivion and it did a blinding job(until it died on me) .I agree with you though about the tec keeps marching on but i have some sympathy with those who cant upgrade be it budget or whatever reason.This whole thread seems a bit ironic to me as i have spent the last week on here advising people on AGP upgrades only to have the enevitable few dropping in with "your rig is c*** you need to upgrade"etc which as i pointed out is a scewed point of view as the 1950xt can be had as AGP which is about the 4/5th fastest card out there! Same thing as the good Dr points out with the x800 cards wish they had put the newer features on one and started at the x1600s
Mactronix

Will this work on the retail game?

time to see if a 9800pro(my brothers computer) can play it

This Pic looks Like ****, don't ever disgrace a beautiful game such as Bioshock with these disgusting images. UPGRADE your computer or stop whining. Maybe....just maybe, this game doesnt support SM2.0 so that they can encourage the purchase of new graphics cards that do support it. Who on earth would enjoy playing a game at 10 fps on a SM2.0 card anyways. This is like when I see those 'Which AGP card should I get thread' makes me want to scream upgrade already and join the times, this is an enthusiast forum, act like youre 'enthused'. UPGRADE

Umm.....yeah.....
Not all of us are loaded down with cash...so we can't afford the newest stuff.
Be nice.

Colin Mc Rae won't even run on anything else but a SM3.0+ card. That's life...

"Who on earth would enjoy playing a game at 10 fps on a SM2.0 card anyways."

Since you obviously don't know what you are talking about GTFO. I get bare minimum mid 40fps. The main creator of this fix has a 8800 himself, but he enough sense to realize they should have supported SM2.0. The 8800s, 2900s, and the 1900s > X800s, thats about it. Graphic card families overlap each other so much when they are released, if you were to upgrade from a x800 to a 2600 for example it would be DX10 and SM4.0 support, but performance wise it would be a backwards step.

Another pic, it just keeps getting better, and they are no where near done.

Yep, the 8600/2600 and lower DX10 cards are pretty weak.
As for 2K not supporting SM2.0 it is all about $$. Nvidia "the way it's meant to be played", right.
It worked in everyones favor, Nvidia, 2K and M$ not to support SM2.0.

Don't hate me cuz youre all poor wtf. Stop working at Mc Donalds go to college and get some money.

you keep posting that pic in multiple threads even, it looks horrible and I'm not talking the white area either.
Yours

vs
Mine(7900GT)


Why keep posting an ugly pic when there are better ones running around

Going to a college and mugging rich college kids is NOT the answer!

actually that wasn't my pic, I run at higher resolution than that, that was someone elses, and there are better pics of the mod out there just look around. I just grabbed the first 1 I seen for an example.

And the last thing i said was

Kind of like accusing a person of being poor or working at McDonalds?

How does your foot feel, being so far in your mouth like that...

You just have to be a decent writer with good sense and a computer hardware background.

ok, another voice from the 'not rich' crowd here.

I dont work at Micky D's (or any other food establishment for that matter), but infact am a computer professional. Ok, you would think that would make me rich (dont all computer pro's make mega bucks??) well, newflash, MOST computer professionals (ok let me narrow that down, I am a hardware man, NOT software) in my field dont make a hell of a lot.

My meager income goes to the following items (pretty much in order of necessity).

1. Feed the wife and kid
2. keep the roof over the head of me and family (read this as all household related expenses, other than food)
3. auto upkeep (gas, insurance, maintainance, etc.)
4. well, that just leaves me about 5 bucks a week to spend on whatever the hell I want..

as you can see, even tho I work with cutting edge hardware for my customers every day, I dont get to play with it on my own personal pc. if your interested in what you can build for a VERY minimum of $ outlay, look at this. (mind you, nothing has been added to this in about 3 yrs).

p4 2.8 northwood
P875 mobo
2 gig of ddr (mismatched, no dual channel for me!)
numerous hdd's of various sizes
X800XL (which is a recent aquisition, about 6 months ago).
Audigy

I got most of the parts there for free, from friends who have (or had) too much money in their respective pockets and were upgrading constantly.

annisman got owned!

STFU

Agreed.