Radeon Texture Glitch w/ Max Payne

[DOOM]

Hey guys... I just got a beautiful new Radeon 32 DDR. I can play movies and DVDs and most games with stunning speed and stability. However, I'm running into an intermittent glitch with Max Payne.

On some levels, the textures on the buildings are all garbled. And when the comic-style story line sequences play, the pictures do not show up.

I'm running a Matsonic mainboard with the VIA chipset. Is this the source of my problem? That would not disappoint me since I'm planning on getting a new mobo soon anyway. I just want to make sure my vid card and its drivers aren't broken and that I have all the right settings.

Has anybody else experienced a similar problem? What was the ultimate cause?

Any insight is greatly appreciated

-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[Crashman]

I would try DX8a and the latest Beta driver from ATI that allows more DX8 features, it's avialable on their site.

Back to you Tom...

 

[DOOM]

Already have DX8a, and I tend to shy away from Beta software.

Thanks anyway for the suggestion.

-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[Guest]

The Radeon *beta* drivers are not really beta, but also not certified and they don't wanna give Tech support for it.
Those drivers helped a lot in making The Sims more stable for my Radeon under 2k..

 

[phsstpok]

You could be running out of texture memory. Max Payne is best with a 64mb video card. To use a 32mb video card you should have AGP texturing enabled. Make sure you have the latest VIA AGP driver loaded, 4.05C, include with 4-in-1's 4.32 and a later (I think).

Alternatively, you could set the game to use 16-bit textures (not 16-bit colors) which would reduce the texture memory requirement by half.

For more help, try the <A HREF="http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/maxpayne/index.shtml" target="_new">Max Payne Tweak Guide</A> at <A HREF="http://www.3dspotlight.com" target="_new">3DSpotlight.com</A>

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[DOOM]

I'm already running it with 16-bit textures. Sometimes, when I fire a gun, all the textures snap back to what they're supposed to be and it runs normally from that point on.

Any ideas why the story board frames won't display? Also, the voice-overs are pitched up and a little fast.

-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[phsstpok]

when I fire a gun, all the textures snap back ...

voice-overs are pitched up and a little fast

Those are very strange problems.

The first sounds like a video driver error. Are your drivers current? Do have the same problem if you cut back on 3D settings?

As a temporary fix, in Display Manager you might try turning down the Performance slide by one notch. This will likely degrade overall 3D performance but it may cure the problem.

As for that sound pitch problem, I have no idea. I don't know what would make a sound card play faster and in a higher pitch than it is supposed to play. Do you happen to have AC97, onboard sound?

You might want to see if your sound and video problems are related. Try disabling sound in Device Manager by checking "disable in this hardware profile" for your Sound Device driver. This will test the video driver alone.

You can also try re-enabling sound and running Max Payne with Software D3D support instead of hardware, just to see what will happen. The results should be interesting but I'm not sure that it would prove anything.

That's about all that I can think of. If Noko is still in these forums I am sure that he can offer some good advice.



Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[DOOM]

Well, I upgraded to Ati's latest "BETA" drivers, and the problems seem to have disappeared. Although now I can't run the game above 1280x1024 without the jitters.

Thanks for all your advice.

-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[phsstpok]

Glad the new drivers fixed you up.

"Jittering"? If you are talking about very slight but frequent stuttering sometimes disabling <b>Delay Transaction</b> in the Advanced Chipset section of the BIOS sometimes can lessen this problem.

More severe "stuttering", (more like pausing), could be caused by hard disk DMA not being active, insufficient memory resulting in too much virtual memory activity, and IRQ problems might also cause stuttering.

Since you mentioned that the problem occurs at resolutions above 1280x1024 AGP texturing is problably the problem. Using AGP memory for textures is just much slower than local video memory. This probably can't be helped since you only have a 32mb video card. At 1600x1200 the amount of memory needed for all the buffers and textures is huge. (Sorry, I'm not knowledgeable enough to calculate the actual memory requirement).

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 10/12/01 04:38 PM.</EM></FONT></P>