HL2 detects DX 7, but seems to run in DX 9

[SHARPSHARK]

I must be doing something wrong. HL2 detects DirectX 7.0 Hardware, but it's like it's working in DX8 or DX9. It seems to emulate shaders or something else, because it's ultra slow. (about 5-10 fps)

I used the -dxlevel 70 command line option and the mat_dxlevel 70 in the autoexec.cfg, nothing works. It still operates in DX 9 software even if it detects DX 7 hardware.

-Windows XP Pro SP2
-Voodoo 5500
-Amigamerlin 3.1 R1

[Voodoo5]

@SHARPSHARK,

I believe you are correct in your thinking that the game is not seeing/recognizing the cards capabilities correctly.

I'm certainly not an expert on this but it seems as if the fps are very inconsistent with what has to be rendered, high detail scenes in some areas show great framerates (30-60), similiar to lower quality scenes in other areas show poor framerates (9-15) on my system.

I noticed last night when opening up the console (enable this from the advanced keybord menu and then hit the ~ key to open it) that it shows a rendering error on the bottom line :

Initializing renderer...
Error: Material "engine/occlusionproxy" uses unknown shader "Occlusion"

Not sure what this means though.

Maybe SFFT or Amigamerlin will help to figure out what is going on

[SHARPSHARK]

I fiddled alot with the console CVARs such as mat_ CVARs, and I found nothing really helping the FPS.

Does anybody encountering the same issue?

Does anybody tried the SFFT drivers?

Does anybody tried the game with another DirectX 7 supported card such as a Geforce 2 MX? I wanna know if the game performs same on these cards.

[omega_supreme]

Initializing renderer...
Error: Material "engine/occlusionproxy" uses unknown shader "Occlusion"

If im not mistaking this feature is making HL2 'playable' on voodoo cards. Everything outside an invisible circle around the player is not rendered. If you focus on an object, especially something small (lets say a barrel) start moving away from it. It will occur to you that it becomes invisible after a few meters.
HL 2 should detect dx6 (at least that what it says on my system) So I dont know how its possible that it detect dx7. Have you tried Amigamerlin3.1 instead of SFFT? However both drivers are capable of running the game with higher framerates than you mentioned.

Before I forget in the beginning, zoomed in on G-man, HL2 is ultra slow. After that it should go faster.