Just wanted to say: This is some NICE work again there, love the list and the layout of it!

Hello!

Ok, right to the topic:

I guess, SFFT driver development is being documented, just as any major software project.

Would it be possible to post release notes for every new alpha release? It would make the driver testing process a lot easier, 'cause then you really know what to look for. Otherwise, a tester gotta test his whole array of games every time and check for old and new bugs, which is rather not optimal.

So, Release Notes documenting any bugfixes or new features publically would make things a lot easier, and may even speed up development due to faster and more precise feedback.

Thank you very much.

I exchanged the coolers of my 5500, wouldn't dare to do that on my 6000s though. But this one sure is one better looking modification compared to some others.

Again, i can only repeat myself. Please integrate an option into the v4/5 drivers to force DXTC in D3D. It would do a lot for some games. Most of us already experienced what a pain it can be to play a game with hires Textures, when that game has to swap them to the main memory. This renders a game on v4/5 unplayable! If FXT1's 4-in-1 encoding is forceable too, all the better! In some scenarios it might just be the better solution, sure has to be better than swapping textures to the system memory..

Thank you very much.

From all the Intel-based Boards i have tested by now, the P3B-F was best (make sure you have BIOS version 1006 or older).

You may even equip this board with a Tualatin-class processor (PowerLeap adaptors), but better choose a Celeron, P-III S' FSB133 won't work because of AGP overclocking.

My system is now equipped with an SB16 (still got one AWE64 Gold somewhere though) as well as 2x256MB MCI memory. Since i could never get the OR840 to work correctly with Tualatins, and the P3C-E i820 board is only partially comaptible (DONT TRY THIS BOARD!!), P3B-F seems to be the best solution when using P6-core based CPUs like a P-III Coppermine or Tualatin Celeron.

Hmm, i remember seeing corruptions like this when setting texture quality or resolution too high in UT2003. Maybe it's the texture resolution exceeding v²'s maximum?

Same here, i just don't like TFT interpolation, and there is no way to run newer games at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 on a Voodoo5 class card. So, i still use a 19" CRT and sometimes my 21" Trinitron with the 6000. No TFT for my systems...

I however don't know how to force DXTC. There is no driver option for this, so if a game doesn't make use of DXTC natively, it cannot be enabled (i guess)?

For the memory: 32MB of memory per chip, yes, but the framebuffer is split up between the chips, no? That would mean, on a 4-way SLI setup, each chip would get a quarter of the total framebuffer, while on a 2-way SLI setup, each chip will get a half of the total framebuffer.

So i'd say, the more chips you use, the lower the memory load per chip is, and the more texture memory would be available per chip. As far as I know, only textures need to be duplicated for each chip, not framebuffer/pixel data.

Am I correct or wrong? That could explain the Sacred behaviour. Still, being able to force DXTC (if not FXT1) would help.

Thanks.

Newest SFFT Drivers under 2000/XP should help. I had severe problems with all KRASS Engine based games, like Aquanox, Aquanox II and Spellforce as well, none of them worked. I tried 3DA in 2000/XP and "Geometry Assist" in Amigamerlin 2.9 in 98SE, just nothing worked.

With the newer SFFT driver core however, it seems to work flawlessly.

Greetings!

I recently switched my v5 6000 Box to Win2000 to try the newer AmigaMerlin 3.1 drivers. They really got a lot of stuff working, that the older AmigaMerlin 2.9 on Win98 wouldn't do.

I got stuck however with a rather annoying bug: The well-known 60Hz Bug, that affects D3D, OGL and Glide. I already tried ReForce, V5 Frequency Selector, and i tried to modify the refresh registry entries all by myself, to no avail.

I went to...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{<My Monitor Device Group ID>}\<Active Monitor Number>\Modes\1024,768\
...and tried to set the minimum vertical refresh rate to 85Hz for 1024x768, the resolution i'd like to use currently. I even modfied the minimum horizontal refresh rate to 96kHz, but it just doesn't help a bit. The modified entry looks like this: 96-254.0,85.0-85.0,+,+, where 96 is the minimum horizontal refresh rate in kHz (default 2.0) and the first 85.0 should be the minimal vertical refresh rate in Hz (default 60.0).

To be absolutely sure, i even applied my changes to all inactive monitors, didn't do anything either. I just can't get past 60Hz in Win2000, i also tried to reinstall the drivers several times.

v5 Freq Selector and ReForce have been tried several times after fresh driver installations too: No effect. As always, help is greatly appreciated... Staying at 60Hz vertical refresh rate just isn't an option.

Thanks very much in advance!

Update:
Tried V.Control now, since V.Control is supposed to overwrite the registry settings and apply changes by direct HW access. With the MS Windows Plug & Play monitor driver, i cannot select a single resolution in V.Control.

I can select a few very high res though when using the original driver for my monitor (Sony GDM-F520). I however cannot access lower resolutions like 1024x768 for instance.

See:

I got Painkiller to run without 3DAnalyze in Win9x. I just activated T&L Emulation (Geometry Assist) as well as Force 32bpp Rendering and Renamed the Movie folder. => Painkiller 1.00 runs out of the box.

Didn't try Patch 1.15 however...

Edit: I forgot..  I tried it on a v5 6000 Rev.3400-A3. But i guess this should work for v5 5500 Users too. I did however NOT test those simple settings with my 5500 yet.

Maybe the HiNT HB1-SE66 was already burnt out before you tried to use this 6000.

Two other compatible boards:

Asus P3B-F 1.04 (Do NOT use the newest BIOS Version, but second to newest!)

And here it comes....
Intel OR840 Workstation Mainboard / IBM IntelliStation M Pro 6868

Yes, you probably can help!

Please tell me, which *.dll files you have replaced, and by which versions (download sources? Maybe you could also mail the *.dll Files to me as a zip/rar archive?)

Since the problem appears consistently in all K.R.A.S.S. Games (Aquanox, Aquanox 2, Spellforce, ...), it seems to be an engine-specific problem. Maybe your *.dll's can do the trick here.

Thanks in advance!

Sacred

Works flawlessly with v5 6000. Had some annoying errors like having the minimap not displayed on the v5 5500. Game Performance is FAR better on the 6000 when zoomed out.

All Games with K.R.A.S.S. Engine: v5 5500 only, don't run on 6000's (Target Resolution not found...)

Greetings!

I have a major Problem using Games with K.R.A.S.S. Engine on my 6000. I tried AmigaMerlin 2.9 in Win9x and 3.0 XP in 2000, same problem. The K.R.A.S.S. games say, they cannot find the target resolution. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with desktop resolution and/or color depth however.

Spellforce works, initializing 1152x864, but as soon as i try to change the res, it does the same as AquaNox, giving me this ominous error message and telling me to install the latest 3dfx drivers. Spellforce however only works within the menu, when starting a campaign, the game crashes.

Now i DO know, that K.R.A.S.S. works on v5 5500 cards - so it should go well with the 6000, which it unfortunately does not.

Any suggestions? I'd love to see K.R.A.S.S. powered games come to life on my Rev.3400-A3. Thanks!