ATI video cards with KotOR2

[Bazooka]

My experience with 9800 Pro:

 

4.11 Catalyst: No errors or bugs so far (praying)..... Game is running like a dream...

[Master Dahvernas]

My experience with 9800 Pro:

 

4.11 Catalyst: No errors or bugs so far (praying)..... Game is running like a dream...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I just want to add to the list and confirm:

 

Graphics Card: 9800 XT

 

4.11 OGL driver (in the KOTOR2 directory) is letting me run the game relatively well, although, I haven't gotten to Dantooine yet.

 

I tried 4.2, and 5.2 and performance dropped and looked significantly worse than 4.11.

 

The easiset way to do this is just do what I did and that is download 4.11, let the installer extract the files, cancel the installation, go to the driver folder and unzip the atioglxx_ file with Winzip and then extract the atioglxx.dll and drop it into the KOTOR 2 directory.

 

This way, you get the latest DX9c improvements for D3D games if you have 5.2 Cats installed and the 4.11 OGL benefits for KOTOR 2 at the same time.

 

Also, I am using the "Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1" command as well.

[Kaftan Barlast]

This thread should be made sticky.

[AngeFIN]

Guys, i' sent an e-mail to the LucasArts Technical Support and they found the problem, and the way to fix it (actually works):

Hi,

Thank you for your message,

You may need to edit one of the game's settings files to correct this.

 

Open the folder for the game on your harddrive. The default location is

C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR2:

- Open My Computer.

- Open the Local disk (C:).

- Open the Program Files folder.

- Open the LucasArts folder.

- Open the SWKotOR2 folder.

 

Double-click the swkotor2.ini file here (and choose Notepad.exe if it

asks what you want to open the file using) and under [Graphics Options]

please add the following line:

 

Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1

 

Click File on the menu bar and choose to save the changes, close the

window, and then try running the game once more to see if the game now

plays properly.

[Boba Fett]

We've all been there, tried that. Lucas support probably picked up this useless tip themselves from reading the boards

[TigrisJK]

Fixed... sorta. Using 5.2 Catalyst drivers, I still get the occasional crash, and the entirety of the outdoor sequences on Dantooine are hellishly slow, but that can be reset by changing something in the advanced graphics options (like AA) every time it gets slow. A pain in the bum... but it's worth it.

 

Now, another bug that's been bugging me is that my NPCs keep switching from lightside (I beat it darkside with no problems except occasional loading screen crashes and the problems on Dantooine) to lightside whenever and whereever I go.

 

That, I highly doubt can be blamed on the ATI drivers. =D

[TNT220]

I have 2 laptops with ATI Radeon 9600 cardsw and a stationary using a Nvidia 5900XT, on my stationary I have no problems, but I have experienced the blach screen one one of my laptops...

 

I do however believe that (at leest for me) it is actually 2 problems:

 

Problem 1: Do not initiate a fight with the handmaiden sisters, if you do your party will break, (unable to add party members) and regardless of black screen or not after leaving Telos the character will be locked.

 

Problem 2: the black screen occuring after playing the Atris movie sequence. <_<

 

One my first laptop (a Gericom) I tried to change everything driver related going first with the latest Omega drivers , reverting to 4.11 and a mixture (copying files into kotor 2 directory) I could get the black screen to go away with 4.11

drivers, but if I removed "Frame Buffer Effects" I would get black screen again.. Further regardless of ini file editing the screen flickered like mad. However as I had not by then realized that I had the party breaking problem I couldn't do anything.

 

One my second laptop an IBM using these drivers http://www-900.ibm.com/cn/support/download...X7/1rd612ww.exe

 

The game died when about to play the Atris sequence... I then ran the swconfig.exe in the kotor 2 directory and disabled movies and voila everything worked fine.

 

By then it was pretty late, but when I get from work today I'll experiment more with the IBM drivers on my Gericom laptop and/or start from a savegame without having fought the handmaiden sisters... I'll try to be systematic "

 

I'll post my findings here, but by now I believe the problem can be solved with some sort of workaround until a patch is released. :cool:

[Bazooka]

I now visited dantooine and still no problems at all with my 9800 Pro and 4.11 drivers.... I notice no drop in framerates...

[Kaftan Barlast]

Im currently running 5.1 with my 9700 and I just cant shake the "split-face" (a vertical black line is visible between the sides of the face when seen from a distance, disapears up close) bug. This happened in KoTOR also.

 

All drivers Ive tried(4.9, 4.11, 5.1) had it except 5.2 where the whole face disapeared...

[Sithmasteryoungy]

Well at least most of you can actually play the game! I can't do anything after the intro scene. I am very fustrated!

[sys64739]

catalyst 4.11 the best?

 

also for x800 cards?

[capcaunul]

hello guys

 

I received last night my KOTOR2 and I was a bit worried. at first it did not want to instal , it just crashed during second disk instalation. but in the end i don't know how I instaled it. the next bug was the game keept stoping after movies....but I made that switch in swkotor2. ini. and now works perfect, the movies and all...

my sistem is a amilo A fujitsu laptop ( AMD 64 3200+, ati 9700 with 128 mb, 512 MB, and driver nec 6500 DVD-/+ rw)

I am not using catalist 4.11.

[nyder]

I have an ATI 9600 Pro and I'm using 5.2 with pretty much no problems. There has been some graphics mess up (on Pegasus, whole textures disappeared by the ebon hawk at the end). Sometimes the game errors out when it's loading a new section. Not all the time, maybe once every 5 times. But it saves before it loads so I don't lose anything. I just make sure I quicksave often just in case. I'm not to Dantonine(sp?) yet (on my way there now) but I haven't had slowdowns in open spaces. Quite the opposite actually, I get my best frame rate in open spaces. using fraps, I was up in the 50's & 60's outside, why getting 30-40's inside, with the occasionaly 10-11 fps (which is probably a program I have running that is accessing the harddrive). I did recently turn the shadows off since they were ugly and not essiential to the game.

I run the game in 1024x768 85hz 32bit color (of course), I'm pretty sure all the textures are high, but no AA or any of that.

I also, in my graphics card driver part (control panel) I have Fastwrites OFF (most 9600 owners will get increase stability with this set to off)

and I have VPU recover set OFF . I also have my D3D and OpenGL setting to Performance, with application control for AA, FSAA, Truform, and V-Sync

and as I stated above 5.12 ATI drivers (not the Catylist Control Center, it's a waste, get the one with the normal control panel)

 

As for peoples BSOD and stuff, there can be a number or reasons why it happens to you. You can have other software running that doesn't play well with KOTOR2, you can have memory that just a little bad, motherboard drivers that aren't current. I guess that's why you need friends like me that can usually get things working. =)

 

and for the person who asked about installing drivers and uninstalling drivers, this is what I do:

I make sure I have the new or other display driver I want to install downloaded.

I delete c:\ATI directory and everything in it (including sub-directorys)

I go into Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs

I remove the ATI Control Panel First.

When it ask if you want to Reboot, I click NO.

I then have it remove the Display Driver

This time when it asks if you want to reboot, I click yes.

 

While it's booting up, it will say its found New Hardware, and then usually the name of your Vid Card, if it asks if you want to install any drivers for it, click NO or CANCEL

or, like my system, it just automaticlly loads the ATI display driver that comes with XP Pro.

I then click on the display driver I want to install and follow it's directions.

 

When ATI installs it's drivers, it writes the install files to "c:\ATI\..." That is why i delete that directory before I install new drivers so when I reboot, it doesn't look there for drivers (it shouldn't, but it's not a big deal to delete it)

 

This works for any of the other drivers I have installed (like Omega's).

If you are having trouble getting drivers uninstalled or anything, boot windows up in safe mode (hold F8 when booting) and uninstall them from there.

 

have fun and good luck

[Aryanne]

My game ran fine on a ati 9200 se til i hit the transfer from xnun to ordenon.I was using the 4.11 driver.After 8 ctd in a row after trying to level up on that planet went and got the 5.1 catalyst.Runs fine now but my god it looks horrible with the new driver compared to 4.11.

 

Turn anti aliasing on and lips change from red to pink eh.Red is better

 

Whats really funny is prior to getting the 5.1 cat driver is if i ran scan hardware-is that it always said i had a nvidia card when i have a ati card.Only damn nvidia thing in my system is the chipset on my MOBO lol.The game configuration tool is bugged

 

LIl trick for u ati users and this worked in the first game between level transition and heavily populated areas turn your graphics to low.Transition.Then change em back to high or medium.

[TNT220]

I got around my black screen problem with my Laptiop + Radeon 9600. by disabling movies using the swconfig.exe file in the KotOR2 directory and avoiding the handmaiden sisters bug... <_< Oh and of course having the "Framebuffer Effects" enabled too (they seem critical to make it work)

 

So actually now I'm using the latest drivers from Omegacorner and it runs pretty smooth..

 

However there are so many dialogue/storyline bugs that I think I'll put the game on hold until a patch or two arrives... I played 3 hours last night only to discover that I accidentally talked "too much" with a person and now have to replay all three hours

 

This is the buggiest software I've ever encountered

[rahaney]

Hi,

 

I'm running an ATI 9600 Pro @ 1280 x 1024 and Ati's Opengl driver 4.11 in the KOTOR2 directory.

 

Other than my initial bug of not starting - due to using Plantronics Headset the game runs well except for the annoying windowed mode that it starts in.

 

I have checked the config file and fullscreen is 1 - any ideas people?

 

I have had no problems with textures and am running 2AA, 8AF, Vsync, Shadows, Grass , Frame Buffer effects.

 

I find running 4.11 is better than 5.2 @ same spec.

 

Cheers,

[TNT220]

I have checked the config file and fullscreen is 1 - any ideas people?

 

I saw in another post that there should be 2 fullscreen lines in the ini file like this

 

I solved the problem with KotOR starting in a window. Apparently there are 2 entries of the line "fullscreen=0" - under [Graphics Options] & [Display Options]. I had only noticed it under [Display Options] initially. When I fixed the one under [Graphics Options], I got full screen

 

Hope that helps

[rahaney]

Hi TNT220,

 

Many thanks,

 

I will try it as soon as i get home tonight ,

[Bifack]

I have a 9800 Pro and am having a slightly different issue with KOTOR 1 and 2. After cutscenes and some in-game movies, my brightness and AA settings are ignored and the game gets VERY dark and there's no AA. I can fix this by going into the Graphics settings and making ANY change to the AA and the brightness settings and everything is back to normal. I also have to do this every time I start the game. The funny thing is, the settings were as I left them... just ignored. I'm running the 4.11 drivers, which have fixed all the crashes, but this problem remains. Any advice? Anyone else getting this?

[poopiusmaximus]

i had the "pixel spread" issue in which pixels would "drag" throughout the screen and render gameplay impossible. both lucas arts and obsidian have acknowledged this problem and suggest getting the latest drivers for your ATI card. as far as i can tell, its the most rescent drivers that are causing this problem. so i just re-installed the drivers that came with my card. right now i have version 6.14.10.6360 and haven't had that issue again. had this same issue with kotor 1. but kotor 2 is still really glitchy, won't play it again until a patch comes out.

hope this helps someone.

[Can't Think Of A Name]

Bifack-

 

Had the same problems with KOTOR 1 AND 2. that makes me think it's a game engine thing...learned to live with fixing the gamma all the time

 

Someone else's help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Have had all the other problems relating to the drivers with KOTOR2; noticed that KOTOR1 was having problems as well...I'm fairly sure it's the 'new and improved' ATi Drivers. Will try the 'disable vertex...' and the driver rollback tonight. Thanks for all the help, gang!

 

Oh, BTW - specs are:

 

Dell Dimension 4100 1.0 Ghz

384 MB RAM

Sapphire / ATi 9600 256 MB

6 gig free on HDD

 

:ph34r:

[rahaney]

I have checked the config file and fullscreen is 1 - any ideas people?

 

I saw in another post that there should be 2 fullscreen lines in the ini file like this

 

I solved the problem with KotOR starting in a window. Apparently there are 2 entries of the line "fullscreen=0" - under [Graphics Options] & [Display Options]. I had only noticed it under [Display Options] initially. When I fixed the one under [Graphics Options], I got full screen

 

Hope that helps

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes! (w00t) woohoo! I have a fullscreen game,

 

Thanks to all especially TNT220!

[Bifack]

Bifack-

 

Had the same problems with KOTOR 1 AND 2.  that makes me think it's a game engine thing...learned to live with fixing the gamma all the time

 

Someone else's help would be greatly appreciated!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I was researching this problem on another msgboard and the problem seems to be that when a cut-scene runs, the ini gamma setting is somehow reset to 0. I haven't been able to test this. However, it doesn't account for the lack of AA too.

[Dellaster]

You can extract the OpenGL driver from the Catalyst 4.11s and drop it into your KotOR 2 folder. That way you have the latest Catalyst for everything else. This method worked perfectly for me with KotOR and my 9800 Pro, but I can't check it on KotOR 2 myself because I now have a GeForce 6800 GT.

 

Someone here may know how to do the extraction. Or you can do a Google search. I can't remember if I extracted it myself or downloaded it from someone who had already done the extraction.

[Sargoth]

I have an ATI 9600 Pro and I'm using 5.2 with pretty much no  problems.  There has been some graphics mess up (on Pegasus, whole textures disappeared by the ebon hawk at the end).  Sometimes the game errors out when it's loading a new section.  Not all the time, maybe once every 5 times.  But it saves before it loads so I don't lose anything.  I just make sure I quicksave often just in case. I'm not to Dantonine(sp?) yet (on my way there now) but I haven't had slowdowns in open spaces.  Quite the opposite actually, I get my best frame rate in open spaces.  using fraps, I was up in the 50's & 60's outside, why getting 30-40's inside, with the occasionaly 10-11 fps (which is probably a program I have running that is accessing the harddrive).  I did recently turn the shadows off since they were ugly and not essiential to the game.....

 

exactly my problem, but i think it has to do with that we are using a 64bit system, and that it makes calculation error which in turn shutsdown the game