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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / "ATI" issue update

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Richard Davey
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Posted: 8th Apr 2003 15:32
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Hi all,

Lee posted the following into his DBDN diary yesterday. I'm reproducing it here because it's a very important topic that I know a lot of you are waiting for.

"I think I have fixed the ATI slowdown bug, not that it has anything whatsoever to do with ATI (who will no doubt have fallen out with us by now). I corrected a flag which switched the engine to default to processor friendly, which actually inserts a sleep command in the message pump. Normally this idle sleep is good for letting other windows applications do their thing. It might also explains why DBPro Patch 4 applications take such a long time as it barrels through all the sleep commands during its init phase. We will see when the first DBDN beta is released."

So, no ETA as such, but things are definitely moving ahead.

Cheers,

Rich
"Gentlemen, we are about to short-circuit the Universe!"
DB Team / Atari ST / DarkForge / Retro Gaming
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haggisman
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Posted: 8th Apr 2003 15:45
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woohoo!

Specs:- 1GHZ athlon, Radeon8500, 192mb ram, winxp
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spooky
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Posted: 8th Apr 2003 18:47
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woohoo too!

Gronda, Gronda
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REDOXODER
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Posted: 8th Apr 2003 23:24
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good news
when the first beta will be release to dbdn ???


thx



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lcfcfan
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Posted: 8th Apr 2003 23:58
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cool that means i wont have to walk all the way over to my pc then instead of using laptop woohoo.



2ghz, ati radeon mobility 32mb DDR, 30gb, 256mb DDR ram, Win Xp

http://www.apollo-design.com
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 01:45
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(^_^) i hope it comes soon, too many people nowadays have Radeons its insane.

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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Richard Davey
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 01:51
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True, but to say it only effects Radeons isn't correct. Two of the DBS team (myself included) have them and don't notice the error. Anyway we'll see what the DBDN lot say when they get to test it.

Cheers,

Rich

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Rob K
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 02:53
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"Two of the DBS team (myself included) have them and don't notice the error."

I don't mean to be a moaner, but that really isn't saying much. The latest Radeons are unaffected, only 9000 and below IIRC.

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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Richard Davey
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 02:56
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It's saying that to blanket ALL Radeons as having this fault is, basically, incorrect. Which was my entire point and is true.

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EddieRay
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 03:53
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Isn't that nice... a bunch of sleep commands... must be sleep commands of the "buzz loop" variety... my system is very unresponsive during that "sleep". So it's sweet that it turns out to really be something that changed in patch 4 after all and not some driver deficiency uncovered by patch 4. Cool.

Now just gimme da patch!

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EddieRay
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 03:57 Edited at: 9th Apr 2003 04:01
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I also notice that with patch 4, programs take several seconds to exit after calling END or hitting ESC. It's not a big deal - only 3 to 5 seconds instead of instantaneous, but it's different. Possibly the same sort of "sleep" stuff happening? My initial guess was that DBPro is cleaning up after itself more thoroughly with patch 4, so I didn't worry about it too much.

Anyone else notice this exit slowness with patch 4?

By the way, this happens on every computer I've tried, not just one with a Radeon card.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 17:25
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maybe a certain set of ATi Drivers that are using a particlar section of DirectX...
but there are alot of people here which have Radeons that have complained about the problems, some with newer card some with older - so it is likely there is a system by system different.

yet the recent shader arugment kinda leads me to believe that ATi cards are very system specific when it comes to working properly...
problems like this certainly don't help people such as myself like them any better though. I mean atleast with the GeForce2 problem in DarkBasic Standard we could blame a certain selection of Drivers and the fault was nVidia's - but this doesn't seems to have any one particular culprit or target, its more of a random effector.
which is just sad really especially as it doesn't help build confidence in cards which don't exactly have the best reputation around as is.

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MrTAToad
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 17:31 Edited at: 9th Apr 2003 17:31
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Indeed - you should have seen what PCFormat said about the 9500Pro (and the drivers) last month - quite amusing it was...

Good news everyone! I really am THAT good...
http://www.nickk.nildram.co.uk/ for great plug-ins - oh my, yes!
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Rob K
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 17:42
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"I also notice that with patch 4, programs take several seconds to exit after calling END or hitting ESC. It's not a big deal - only 3 to 5 seconds instead of instantaneous, but it's different."

That's weird... I get the reverse. To speed this up in earlier apps though I wrote a DLL to manually destroy the process rather than letting DBP do it.

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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the_winch
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 20:36
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I have a 3-4 second wait for the dbpro program to exit, in patch 3 it was un-noticable. When the dbpro program is not run by the ide it quits straight away so it's only a problem when writeing and testing code.

I have a powervr kyro II so it's not an ati issue.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 21:05
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(^_^) ... i still remember the first remark that PCGamer UK made about the Radeon 9700Pro, now that was definately amusing.
I get an enourmous bootup overhead whenever i start the program, it starts 5 secs disappears from the taskbar then finally goes in taking another few secs. But never noticed a powerdown one.

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Galiem
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 21:50
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To use old Radeons with DBPro, simply find the updated drivers, which have software support for newer graphics card features. When coding at work (on lunch break), I have an ATI so old it's not even funny. DBPro works for me now, since drivers were updated.

Just look on ATI's site. They don't seem to mug you into upgrading like some less than ethical companies by removing support for older products. What this means, is even y'all out there with ancient ATI's can run DBPro.

Now if only I could find a solution for those still stuck with VooDoo

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 9th Apr 2003 22:41
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the Voodoo driver SDKs are now GPL... just takes a skilled coder to release a viable update - but no one touchs 3dfx with a 10ft barge pole now so i wouldn't hold your breath on it

Galiem remember its only recently ATi have decided to fully support older hardware again in a similar style to nVidia, and they still don't support as far back as nVidia's Detontator Drivers do.
Unfortunately this added support means in the past 2years the drivers have gone from 4mb to 40mb! i mean there are a few other tools but it is ridiculous... and to be honest if your graphics card is really that old it can't possible hope to perform anywhere close to what you expect them to now.

i mean look at it DarkBasic Pro requires a DirectX 8.1 8mb Direct3D card to run ... SiS 6326 is in this catagory, but i wouldn't play games on that card if my life depended on it! (not that there would be a freaky twist of fate where my life would be in jeopary if i didn't lol)

i whole heartedly support the manufacturers idea to just stop supporting old hardware - but at the same time i think they should release the old Drivers into the community like 3dfx did when they were boughtout, because that means that IF the community still needs newer drivers they'll become available due to demand... but the original company is free to 100% support thier new hardware rather than worry about hardware which should've been taken out of service by now.

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EddieRay
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Posted: 10th Apr 2003 08:13
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I've noticed the exit pause (2-5 seconds) on both my Radeon 8500 AMD system and my GF2Go P3 system. So I agree that it's not an ATI problem. But it certainly changed for me with patch 4. There was no exit pause with patch 3 for me.

Oh... and by the way, try "HIDE LIGHT 0" in your progrma compiled with patch 4. You get a nice hang when you exit (I've never been patient enought to wait long enough to see if it ever really exits, but I waited a good 3-4 minutes and it never did)... If I comment that line, exit is fine (except for the 2-5 second pause on exit), but if I put that line in, hang city. Anyone else see that? (I saw this problem on my GF2Go system - didn't try it on the Radeon system).

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Dave J
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Posted: 10th Apr 2003 14:57 Edited at: 10th Apr 2003 14:57
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If the ATI fix is true then I'd hope they release a 4.01 Patch (or something) ASAP and not wait for a major release becuase waiting so long for a game to load wastes lots of time, lots of time.

"Computers are useless they can only give you answers."
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