ATI Radeon HD 5570 and shiny water

[Legacy_LordTShil]

               Pardon if this is a covered subject but my searches can find nothing about after the 2004.  Can any one tell me if Shiny water can be enabled using the Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 5570.  I have not been able to find any patches that say it is fixing this problem. I am running NWN with both expansions and it is patched to 1.69.  my card is running with the Driver Packaging Version 8.773-100907a-109395C-HP.   Thanks for any info.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               As I remember, this is one issue ATI never cared for, so it was never fixed. They blamed the problem on Bioware. It was one of the many, many, many reasons I decided to buy Nvidia from then on...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Leito89]

               I had a GeForce 9800gt and shinny water was enabled without problems, now I bought a ATI Radeon HD 6970 and the shinny water is messed up, so, you're not the only one with problems.
Also, sometimes I have to disable "enviromental mapping on creatures" because some creatures become invisible '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               As I said, this is a problem related to all ati cards, as far as I know.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MingWolf]

               Shiny water doesn't look that great anyways.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               

Jedijax wrote...

As I said, this is a problem related to all ati cards, as far as I know.

Only since the "HD Series" of ATI cards it's been messed up, brfore that it worked like a champ.

ATI before the AMD aquisition left out old OpenGL API calls since it was changed in the newer OpenGL
version of the API and AMD didn't bother to add them back in which I find pretty lazy since they already
have the "Code" somewhere in previous versions of the ATI Drivers and all they'd have to do is put it
in a (IF...THEN...ELSE) loop by detecting a number of older games that made use of older OpenGL. But they'll
have you beleive that it would take weeks of work and thoulsends of dollars in salery for them to do so
which is uter BS, but you get what I'm sayin.

Anyhow, yeah since the HD series DirectX 10 era, NWN ATI customers are getting the shaft from AMD for
the awesome Shiny Water Effect. 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gorath Alpha]

               

Jedijax wrote...

As I said, this is a problem related to all ati cards, as far as I know.

Both NWN and KotOR are less about Direct3D than about OpenGL, and Radeons following after the X1n00 generation have never been good at OpenGL (that series was released in 2006, so the Radeons were working for three years and three generations: 9n00, Xn00, and X1n00). 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Guest_Lowlander_*]

               Things are just as bad with newer hardware on the NVidia side.GTX 4xx + cards run slow as molasses.

I run a NVidia 8800GT which is supposed to be a very good card to  run NWN with, but it still has some issues with shiny water.  It works, you get the shiny water effect, but I would crash in some (not all) modules with Shiny water on, so I now run with Shiny water disabled as well.

I don't know what cause the issue with invisible enemies mentioned above, but that also happens on my 8800GT.

I wouldn't choose a card based on Shiny water and right now on modern HW AMD at least seems to run faster than the latest NVidia cards which have a real performance problem.

Your best overall card for running seems to be one of the NVidia GTX 2xx cards...
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Lowlander, 14 mai 2011 - 05:52 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OpposingForces]

               i have the same issue with my ati radeon x1600, shiny water is all messed up and glitchey. even with shiny water disabled most water is messed up. any un official files to fix this issue?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gorath Alpha]

               All of the X1n00 Radeon cards will work fine, but must all be using drivers that are more appropriate for OpenGL than those newer than that Radeon generation.  The drivers need to be older than the HD 2n00 cards are.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 06 juin 2011 - 02:10 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               What would be the best combo then, according to your approach? I used to have a 512 megs HD3870 and NWN was slow as a snail (and of course, no shiny water). I bought my Nvidia GTX 285 and there was an immense performance leap (even with shiny water activated), so I'm guessing earlier Ati's wouldn't play as nice.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gorath Alpha]

               I have played NWN1 with two different GF3s, one a Ti-200, one a Ti-500. with one GF4, a Ti-4200, and with an FX-5700 from nVIDIA, nothing newer from there.  I've also played it with a Radeon 9700, a Radeon 9800, and a Radeon X800.  All of those Radeons were faster than all of those Geforces.  

I currently have an elderly PC with an AMD XP 2800 Barton CPU, running Windows 2000, with a Radeon 9800 Pro, 256 MB card, that runs like a charm with either NWN1 or KotOR (I don't get it out very often any more, though).