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View Full Version : Catalyst A.I Is Impressive

Special7
10-11-04, 04:59 PM
Well I thought I would do a test last night with Catalyst A.I and Far Cry, I first ran a test with A.I disabled, which gave me around 31FPS, with A.I set to normal I got 33FPS, and with A.I set to High I got 36FPS, so I came to the conclusion that if you have a slower system, A.I set to high will give better performance than any other setting. :)
Albuquerque
10-11-04, 07:55 PM
You should try it on an X800 card :D FarCry at 1600x1200x32 at 4xAA and 8xAF never looked so good!
dreIU
10-11-04, 07:57 PM
You should try it on an X800 card :D FarCry at 1600x1200x32 at 4xAA and 8xAF never looked so good!

DO you have yours at high or normal?
YellowDart
10-12-04, 12:33 AM
You should try it on an X800 card :D FarCry at 1600x1200x32 at 4xAA and 8xAF never looked so good!

Stop trying to make me jealous! :p

Is there really that big a difference (noticibly) across the board??? How is the IQ in compairison to 4.9???
Albuquerque
10-12-04, 10:28 AM
In FarCry, NFSHP2, UT2K3, GTA3, Q3 and a few others I have the AI setting at high because I'm not able to really tell a difference. In Doom3 I have it set to normal, because at high you start getting the moire patterns on the floor grates (texture filtering optimization -- trilinear first stage, bilinear other stages). The framerate jump is pretty good in both.

As far as IQ, so far as I can tell it's exactly the same as the 4.9 betas -- in some cases it's even better. I also like the fact that the optimizations are "optional", so that I can decide for myself if I want them or not. With the new drivers, that texture stage optimization (trilinear first layer, bilinear other layers) only turns on if you've got AI turned on. The control panel also has settings for temporal AA and the associated framerate threshold.

It seems to me that the 4.9b's visual quality is basically the same as the new drivers with AI on "normal". I honestly can't tell a difference at all between AI off and AI normal, but the framerate change is definitely there.
covana2244
10-12-04, 11:25 AM
where do you get AI?
iNterBeiNg
10-12-04, 11:29 AM
where do you get AI?

Its a feature in the drivers, the newest omegas have it
Albuquerque
10-12-04, 03:22 PM
Yup. I'm using the Omega 8.07's and loving it. I had one hell of a time getting them installed, but I've chalked that up to something wierd on my machine. I've never had any problems with previous versions of Omega drivers. Unfortunately this time I had a hard time uninstalling my Catalyst 4.9 Betas (non-Omega), which I believe was the reason why machine went stupid trying to install the 8.07's.
Yuriman
10-12-04, 03:30 PM
You said you didnt see much of a difference in most games, but I though AI was only setup to work on like 3 games so far? I dont think it works with just any program.
Albuquerque
10-12-04, 05:36 PM
I dunno, that's why I basically leave it at "high" unless I'm playing D3 (application profile). You may actually be right, but what's the harm of leaving it on? :)
thenerd
10-12-04, 05:47 PM
what the hell is ai? whats the side effects of it?
Albuquerque
10-12-04, 06:43 PM
Beyond3D has a great in-depth technical writeup of Catalyst AI: http://www.beyond3d.com/misc/catai/ They do some Doom3 benchmarks, and as you can tell, AI can have a dramatic impact when high res + high AA + high AF settings are applied.

I also liked another website's description of AI, but Elite-sons-without-legitimate-fathers isn't allowed to be linked here ;)