FF7 anti-aliasing results with Radeon 9700

[sanjiyan]

FF7 settings

Nvidia patch applied, under Windows XP, using XP patch.

(ATI Radeon 9700)
driver
ver:  6.13.10.6166
date: 8/15/2002

Results (XP's compatiblity mode not enabled)
Game runs fine at driver's default settings.

Game runs fine in 3D modes with "highest quality" enabled, but anti-aliasing does not occur (in spite of "Application Preference" being unchecked). Backgrounds also display the usual rectangular "tiles."

FMVs totally unaffected.

Please append your results with the ATI Radeon 9700 here.

[Jedimark]

Hmm.. I've never paid much attention to graphics cards in the past because I've never had any good ones... but maybe you could answer this question I have:

I have just got a new Laptop and it has the Mobility Radeon 7500 Graphics Card in it.... now... what IS anti-alising? What does it do? And how do I get it to work to make FF7 better?

I can see in my Graphics cards options anti-alising options for Direct 3D and Open GL. They both are set to Optimize Prefererence: Quality and the Direct 3D option is set to Application Preference and the Open GL one is disabled.

[Evisc]

Anti_aliasing takes the "jaggies" out of the graphics.  If you look at the edges of the characters in the game, you notice how jaggedy they look.  AA blends the jagged edges into the color of the pixels next to them, for a HUGE improvement in look.  Even with these games running in relatively low resolutions, with AA on they can look like they are running at a higher res simply because the jaggies are less noticable.  I think the FF games use Direct 3d, so try turning it on in that option.  It may or may not work depending on your system since FF7/ff8 are so old.

[Jedimark]

Ah right... okay thanks.

- Jedimark

[tekwiz99]

yeah, in ATI's sense its called "smooth vision"

[sanjiyan]

Seems to crash when summoning Kujata and sometimes (rarely) at other random times. Here's hoping the drivers get better (damn and do things look just fine, too!)

--Sir Sanjiyan

[sanjiyan]

Turns out the current ATI drivers do not support FSAA for 16-bit games, which includes FF7 AND FF8. It may be enabled in future driver release; I've also e-mailed ATI driver feedback about the Kujata freeze-up thing, so if we're lucky, we might see that issue as well.

[ledmirage]

By the way, haven't u got the problem with Nvidia patch when you enter the world map or get out of it? Do you know about that?

I use ATi Radeon(Mobility),too.  I can't find a solution yet.

[sanjiyan]

Well, what is your issue? AFAIK, I haven't encountered any serious issues like loading time or graphical issues going in or out of the world map since I am using the Nvidia patch FF7 that has patched XP support. And the recent issue with freezing when summon Kujata seems to have disappeared as well with the driver update. ^_^

I don't know much about laptop chipsets, but I recommend updating to the latest drivers if it is a Radeon that you have. I get them from Guru3D.com

Look for this version number: 6.13.10.6193 if using WindowsXP.

Note: I have not tested compatibility under Windows9x.

--Sir Sanjiyan

[ledmirage]

Thanks for telling about drivers, I'm gonna try that.

And You got FF7 XP support patch? Where did you get it? Is it the same as XP chocobo race patch or different from that one?

[DigiToast]

Hi, this is my first time posting here, but I've been reading posts for quite a while.  Anyways, I had one of my RAID0 disks head crash on me over the weekend so I've had time to play around a lot while waiting for new disks to be shipped out to me.

My findings:
Win98SE-
I could not get the game to run at all in windows 98.  First off, I could not get the XP Patch to run, it has a built in OS check so it denied me when I tried to use it.  Following my attempt to use the XP Patch, I tried to run the config unpatched; this did nothing but blank my screen and crash my computer.  After this, I downloaded the 1.02 patch from eidos and installed it.  FF7Config ran perfectly fine and I configured everything, ran the game, and nothing...  the game would load up into a black screen and quit out.  This happened in both 128 and TNT settings.  I did not try software mode.
Software setup- ATI 4.13.9068, SiS-AGP 1.11, Directx 8.1b

WinXPSP1-
The game runs fine with the XP Patch installed.  As posted before, you can't enable AA or Anisotropic.  AA doesn't work, and Anisotropic will cause blocks to show up.
Software setup- ATI 6.13.6193, SiS-AGP 1.11, Directx 8.1b(XPSP1 Default)

[Goku7]

How the heck could it not run in Win98SE?!  Usually, 95/98 has the highest compatibility with it.

Sounds more like a compatibility issue between the Vid card and DX, possibly.  SiS isn't exactly known for high-quality Video cards.

If software mode works, then I'm probably right about it being related to the video card.

Jeez....I must be the only one here who DOESN'T need any patching, nVidia or otherwise, to run it.  Of course, not getting rid of my 3Dfx card might have something to do with it.

Second, you do not need to run the XP patch on a Win98 system whatsoever.  Just because everyone else uses the XP patch as the first solution to fixing a problem with FF7, its usually because they are trying to run it on XP in the first place.

The XP patch usually fixes the Chocobo crash problem, and that problem is nonexistant on the Win9x kernal, so you should keep that in mind.

Still, I suggest you try updating your drivers.  Actually, for that matter, for the heck of it, try using some Win98 drivers that were released around the same time that the game was released.  In theory, they might be more compatible, but at the expense of losing DX8 support.  But, it would just be an experiment anyway.

[Aaron]

I'd try it in software rendering mode, cause if that works, you should at least have the problem narrowed down to compatibility with your video card.  Then, I guess you should try the newest driver available for your card, and if that doesn't work... mess around with some older ones like Goku7 said.

[DigiToast]

Seems to be some confusion as to what the SiS drivers I posted up above are..  They're the most stable AGP drivers for my motherboard/vid (Gigabyte 8SG667/ATI Radeon 9700) that are available.  The vid card is a retail boxed one from ATI (Canada make, not one of the OEMS).  Anyhow, I decided to not try software mode in win98 before I formatted because my purpose was to see if I could get AA/Anisotrpic to work (thus the XP Patch as well).

[sanjiyan]

To all:

First off, the XP patch that I was referring to is the XP chocobo race patch. This is the oddly huge AnimeVamp 9.x MB patcher that was linked from another article somewhere on the forums. I haven't had issues racing chocobos with it, so I assume it is one and the same with the XP chocobo race patch.

To DigiToast:

First off, do not use the any XP patch for any game running on Win9x. You'll just run into trouble. Experiment at your own risk.

Second, you mentioned you had ATI drivers, so I'll assume you have an ATI card. But which one? For general ATI cards I can only recommend the following.

If you can't get it running in Win98SE, I recommend you _uncheck_ the Nvidia check box and try running the game. You might still get a crash, but do it for testing purposes (after all, the patch was made with Nvidia cars in mind, not ATIs). Also make sure advanced options for your Radeon like FSAA and anisotropic filtering are turned off. For the latest drivers, just slide the Direct3D settings to Balanced. This may not work since I have not tested the game under Win9x.

If that still doesn't work, try software mode as a last resort. If that fails, you've got bigger issues to worry about my friend.

--Sir Sanjiyan

[DigiToast]

For some reason, it doesn't seem that anyone understands me at all, so I'm going to make another attempt to explain things again.  (This is why I usually don't post on boards)

First off, I'm was just trying to post some findings that I found during some spare time that I had.  I did this entirely because Sanjiyan said that he had not tested Windows98 compatibility, and since my system was dead and I had spare time, I figured I'd test things out myself and make a post for everyone.

Second, is that I have a retail ATI 9700Pro.  I did take the time to type this out in my second post.  In the first post, I assumed that most readers would have figured out that I had a 9700, as this is what the message thread's subject is about.

I do realize that the giant 9MB patch out there was meant for XP, but I tried to install it because I already had it on hand, and I did not have the Eidos 1.02.  I figured that it would accomplish the same task as if I were to go and download 1.02.  Using the XP patch in Win98 isn't the best thing to do but hey, feel free to shoot me for being lazy.  Either way, I didn't use it in the end, so no harm done.

Anyhow, I probably *should* have unchecked the Nvidia box and set into software mode in Win98 to make sure it wasn't something wrong with my computer besides FFVII.  I didn't, however, because I assumed that software mode works on every system, and I wasn't interested in compatibility.  I was interested in seeing if I could get hardware acceleration enabled, which I could not.  Thus, I stopped right after and dumped Windows98.  It probably would have been good to do try it, but I didn't..  and have already formatted my computer, so I won't be taking the time to go back and try it all again.

If you've made it through all of the stuff I've spewed out, then I hope that things made sense.  If not, then I give up.. oh well.

One last thing..  I never bothered to mess with any ATI settings beyond making sure that it was using DDC with my monitors so that I wouldn't have to manually install a monitor driver file.  All other settings were left at manufacturer defaults - untouched.. which means that AA and anisotrpic were set to "application pref," or off in the case of FFVII.