AO Video Card Detection.

[jorricane]

I've read through the thread several times already, what AO seems to be blind to is the DisplayDriverGUID on the machines that don't see their cards listed.


DisplayDeviceGUID can only be one of these:

a4665c60-2673-11cf-a31a-00aa00b93356 = Direct3DRGBDevice (RGB Emulation)
84e63de0-46aa-11cf-816f-0000c020156e = Direct3DHALDevice (Direct3D HAL)
f5049e78-4861-11d2-a407-00a0c90629a8 = Direct3DTnLHalDevice (Direct3D T&L HAL)

DisplayDriverGUID seems to be either all 0s or in your/Pint0's cases : 67685559-3106-11d0-b971-00aa00342f9f, now that specific GUID copied into the non listed cards prefs files isn't helping them since it obviously doesn't match...

Can you search that value in the registry and post here under what path(s) it's listed there (if at all)?

Search the registry, can't seem to find it tho.... :/

Anothe addendum to that - my other currently detecting machine is using a completely different gfx card (5200FX), different drivers, and a different OS (XP32), and the DisplayDriverGUID that AO lists is the exact same as mine and pint0's...this whole mess doesn't make sense to me lol.

[Solsssss]

Keep crackin

[Pint0]

haven´t had any time recently to dedicate to this subject but im 90% sure that the GUID is pulled by the DrvGetDirectDrawInfo command

see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms793057.aspx

That means it is a driver related problem, wich would be consistent with the fact that 95% of the cases are Nvidia hardware and XP OS.

[CriticalDmg]

Ok, so... I didn't mention my GFX card yet, so here it is: nVidia GeForce 9400 GT.
I used to have a GeForce 7600 GT a few months ago (till my mobo semi-fried & I got me a mobo+gfx in a 'deal' price, as crappy as they are...).

Both of them weren't recognized by AO.


Yesterday I felt a little adventurous... and played with Windows XP's "Hardware Profiles" to test my on-board gfx card.
After uninstalling & disabling the PCIe card (the nV 9400) in the BIOS and enabling the on-board ATi Radeon HD3200 card & installing it's drivers... it appeared on the AO gfx selection list.
(the on-board ATi was set as the primary in the BIOS (if it wasn't primary the BIOS wouldn't even enable it then) & the GeForce was set as secondary)

However - after checking the frame rate using the newly installed card with both the "Primary Display Driver" & the "Radeon HD3200" selections - they both yielded the same results (using both "HAL" & "T&L HAL" respectively). Needless to say the frame rate was lower then the better GeForce card too, ~25% less.

The DisplayDriverGUID that was given to that ATi card was 67685559-3106-11d0-b971-00aa00342f9f, same as the rest of the people having their cards recognized.
As far as I can tell that specific GUID is for "second display adapter" (not secondary but second, the on-board one being the first).

Then I tried enabling both the cards in the BIOS... as some of you might already know, having more then one graphics card (except all the dedicated SLI/Crossfire twins) can make a load of problems, especially if they're from different brands. While they didn't "work together" the GeForce card was finally recognized by AO, but as it was totally dysfunctional the game screen was simply black... The game didn't really totally load up too, it was taking around 50mb of ram.


As this yielded no benefits whatsoever, I returned it all back as it was, and AO stopped recognizing both the cards again...


From what I understand the 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 DisplayDriverGUID is simply a link to everything "default", and no matter how you manually change it it won't matter as the game gets a new DisplayDriverGUID on each startup.
Not getting a valid (non "default", all 0s) DisplayDriverGUID seems to be a Windows\DirecX problem to me. And it seems to effect only the non-on-board GFX cards (PICe on my systems).


Either way, that on-board Radeon HD3200 card should be enough to run AO @ 80+ fps nearly at all times, but it didn't, even when recognized. In my opinion even if you get AO to see the card it won't really "use" it...
(the reason why jorricane had a performance boost might have been some side effect that can be otherwise enabled)



p.s. AF works @ 32 bit for me, AA doesn't.

[Questra]

bump, having the same problems with a 9400 GT

have installed the Nov 08 DX on my XP Pro SP2 OS, but my ddraw.dll is dated 2004

the 2 lines in my prefs files are

<Value name="DisplayDeviceGUID" value='&quot;f5049e78-4861-11d2-a407-00a0c90629a8&quot;' />
<Value name="DisplayDriverGUID" value='&quot;00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&quot;' />

starting to see some black lines poking out of my char after playing awhile, and distortion lines appearing on my planet map when i restore AO after it's been minimised

i just lost my 7600 to AO, and almost the mobo, but luckily i only needed to replace the BIOS chip. hopefully i won't have to repeat that process so soon after AO screwed my system up last month

[Omutb]

i just lost my 7600 to AO, and almost the mobo, but luckily i only needed to replace the BIOS chip. hopefully i won't have to repeat that process so soon after AO screwed my system up last month

Oh? what happened?

[Kvark]

Bump? :S
Guessing(hoping perhaps?) this issue will go away when the new engine upgrade
arrives sometime in the future, but still...would be nice to get this working now:P

[zerorate]

Bump.

Atleast someone from Funcom can tell us they have read and acknoleged there is a problem.

Choppy framerate, overheating cpu, it's unacceptable and should be at the top of the todo list.

XP sp3
amd 4200 X2
7950 GT
2gb

[Devilmonkey]

Having the same problem, tried everything but the registry stuff and nothin.




I'm running Xp, Sp3, Nvidia GTX 280.

[IHaveHugeNick]

bump, fix the detection plx.

[Devilmonkey]

bump, fix the detection plx.

not just detection, make us able to use our gfx cards, my comp runs like total trash on this game, it saddens me. someone w/ a blue name just tell us it'll be fixed with the new gfx engine and i'll be ok

[Tlatoani]

Question for you all, do you have your OS installed in a different language than English?

[jorricane]

Mine is installed in english, can't speak for anyone else tho.

[Polmansol]

Same prob as everybody else here, no detection. I think i got the 181.something drivers installed.

Dutch Win XP 32bit (SP3 etc)
nVidia 7900GT 512mb ram
Athlon XP-M @ 2.3Ghz
1gb DDR400 Ram
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo

That's my old rig, gonna install ao on new rig, but since that has an nVidia card too, i'll prolly have the same result ...

[Khalem]

not just detection, make us able to use our gfx cards, my comp runs like total trash on this game, it saddens me. someone w/ a blue name just tell us it'll be fixed with the new gfx engine and i'll be ok

No blue name, but i can pretty much assure you that the issue will be solved with the engine upgrade.

The real problem with the current situation is that Anarchy Online is primarily DX7 with some DX8 which iirc was introduced with shadowlands which moved some of the nano effects over to DX8. However it has been a long long time since drivers and hardware was optimized for DirectX7, and even DX8. This leads to newer cards performing worse than older cards (My old Voodoo 5 still plays AO better than my current rig with an Radeon X1950 pro despite the CPU being superior, since the Voodoo 5 actually accelerates DirectX7 calls (or at least that whats it seems like)) Newer CPU's help as they are doing a lot of the actual rendering, not your GFX card.

However do keep in mind that the new GFX engine will also have higher requirements, but will use your GFX card. However i cannot help but worry slightly given that the new engine will be DX9, and by the time it's out, DirectX11 will likely be about to come out. I just hope we won't get into the same old dance with support for DX9 optimization being left behind in the dust too fast.

On a side note, AO is very I/O sensitive in general. Especially your HD I/O matters, as it is the primary cause of the stutter you get when you enter a crowded place. There was a major difference between XP and Vista in this area since Vista actually had some decent I/O improvements (shame the rest of it sucked)

I only hope that Funcom gets rid of legacy OS support while they are at it too and rids themselves of Windows 98 support once and for all. It's one of the areas where i like Eve, they made a clean cut in order to provide a better experience for those who don't have stone age computers.

[NoGoal]

http://tinyurl.com/cx6lxj

<Value name="DisplayDeviceGUID" value='"f5049e78-4861-11d2-a407-00a0c90629a8"' />
<Value name="DisplayDriverGUID" value='"67685559-3106-11d0-b971-00aa00342f9f"' />

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 8800 GTS
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0193&SUBSYS_2A72107D&REV_A2
Display Memory: 640.0 MB
Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.7519 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 5/16/2008 13:01:00, 6108928 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: n/a
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: nv4_mini.sys
Mini VDD Date: 5/16/2008 13:01:00, 6557408 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-42D3-11CF-926E-790A03C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x0193
SubSys ID: 0x2A72107D
Revision ID: 0x00A2
Revision ID: 0x00A2
Registry: OK
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Enabled

My ddraw.dll is from 12 31 2002, version 5.3.2600.2180

[Mastablasta]

Not sure if it's relevant, but I don't really notice any performance difference between "Direct3D hardware T&L" and "8800GT Hardware T&L" ... (vista 64)

[jorricane]

Not sure if it's relevant, but I don't really notice any performance difference between "Direct3D hardware T&L" and "8800GT Hardware T&L" ... (vista 64)

On machines that handle AO really well there is not a huge difference to be honest. On my main machine (a Vista64, 9600GT) theres maybe a 10fps difference between the 2 modes - the major difference is that in HW T&L the post-processing effects (FSAA and AF) don't seem to function.

However, on my media PC (and yes I know its a gimp MPC) with an FX5500 in it, the difference is about 40 FPS between the two modes (yes, for some reason that system with WinXP detects the card in AO, still not figured out why). The difference is between a slideshow and very playable on a 37" HDTV.

Still waiting on any kind of official respose on this - I know the code gurus at FC are chugging away on the new engine, but seriously...one of them must know the vague general way that AO detects gfx cards currently, and even a post with some minimal (but exact) info would be a great boon to a temporary fix for graphics lag for many players.

[jorricane]

Same prob as everybody else here, no detection. I think i got the 181.something drivers installed.

Dutch Win XP 32bit (SP3 etc)
nVidia 7900GT 512mb ram
Athlon XP-M @ 2.3Ghz
1gb DDR400 Ram
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo

That's my old rig, gonna install ao on new rig, but since that has an nVidia card too, i'll prolly have the same result ...

nVidia cards actually seem to be the most likely to detect, altho the 7900s don't seem to want to. Have you set up the new rig yet? And if so, any difference, is it detecting?

[wormx]

As already pointed out earlier in this thread and on other places on the forum;
The inability of AO to discover what card I have came with a patch.

Now, people might think that a patch would be something that adds more compability instead of taking it away.

Iirc my card was detected up until the patch that removed the option to save our passwords. You can see the same thing happen on the screenshots of the OP.

I'm not 100% sure now, since I'm at work, but I think if you use the old launcher, it will detect more gcards. Problem is, you can't log in using the old launcher

When I built the rig I have now, I had great performance in AO. The only changes I've done to my comp after that is remove an unused HDD who was driving me crazy cause of the high pitched noise it made.

In conclusion I'd say that the problem has to do with the "new" launcher.

I think I've posted my specs before but just incase :
Q6600 @2.4ish
Gigabyte P35-DS4 rev2.0 mobo
Corsair XMS2 2gb ram
Gigabyte GV-NX88T512HP rev1.0 (8800 GT) gcard with 512mb ram
Running Swedish Winxp pro sp2.