77 replies to this topic

[settingsons]

I am an nVidia user as well. Wasn't there a problem with ATI cards until only recently which has been sorted out by the Catalyst drivers? Maybe now it is time to give ATI a go? Seeing some of the impressive FPSs quoted makes me wonder.

I know a lot of people in this thread are saying they run nVidia fine, and I did for many years on a low spec PC using desktop tables. It was only when I started introducing a 2nd screen and recently a 3rd screen that I have gone on a constant 'life-long' tweaking quest, disabling services, switching backglass to 16-bit, setting infinitty, overclocking the processor, standing on one leg, etc., etc. to get a stutter free game. The tables look so good you forget you are not playing a real table, until you get a stutter... and then you are reminded. I think most nVidia people here have had to tweak their PCs a fair bit to get where they are now - especially for the 2/3 screen setups.

I am not complaining about all this effort - in some ways it makes the hobby all that more enjoyable (). Also we are using the software in ways it was never designed to work.

I think the nvidia and ATI cards from the last 2/3 years are power monsters, and they both should be able to run a 2/3 screen setup with their hands tied behind their backs. All this CPU and GPU power and when you monitor the CPU and GPU they are hardly being utilised. There has to be some kind of communications bottleneck between the apps.

An nVidia and ATI side-by-side FPS comparison would be very interesting. It certainly sounds like ATI should be taken seriously from now on.

Edited by settingsons, 23 March 2011 - 09:25 PM.

[Bob5453]

VP9.0 and above all use Ultracade's reworked version of VP. Ultracade used Nvidia in their UltraPins, so their VP is geared to work for Nvidia. The current devs work on stuff that they find enjoyable, sort of like VP authors, I don't think anyone is spending much time trying to troubleshoot graphics cards. If you read this forum regularly, no one with VP source credentials has recommended any card except Nvidia, it is what they use, so anyone who did their research for wanting to play tables with the most suitable card would have chose an Nvidia for a new one if they wanted it for VP.

It doesn't matter which card is the best, it's more of a which card works the best for VP and I think most forum threads on this topic will steer you to Nvidia every time.

My pc specs are in my signature, I can't play JP's Game Show, I can't play most of UW's table releases from last year. I use 1920x1080 resolution, I'm not setting that down, I'd rather recycle bin the tables I can't play. JP's new RoadShow plays fantastic here. JP's Xfiles table played like a turd until I reset every alpha ramp to Acrylic, not it plays smooth. There is a need for a little VP editor knowledge to fully play a lot of these tables.

There are a ton of settings for graphics cards, I doubt if there are more than a few members who know what all of those settings mean. There is a thread with a few screenshots of some members settings, I think the biggest problems lie in those settings, but I also don't know what those settings mean or how to set them, I have played with them though.

I'd like to see screenshots of the Nvidia graphic card settings of people who say they can play all of these tables as smooth as butter with an old pc without using resolutions like 1024x768. Once you play at a higher res, it's tough to go backwards.

How does ps3 do it for such a small price? Zen Pinball is doing some amazing things on the screen and I get no stutter.

[Mitchell]

Rob did you clean out rest of ATI drivers with the Driver Sweeper. If you haven't then try it. Maybe those are effecting the Nvidia drivers somehow. I only have issue with the drain graphics and tables loading only with the hardware devise rendering. You seem having the lagging and other problems that I don't have. Be sure check all the ATI boxes on the Driver Sweeper. If the issues still there then Uninstall the Nvidia and then reboot. After that use the Driver Sweeper clean it out as well. Reboot again then reinstall Nvidia drivers. Reboot one more time. If the issues still there I don't know what is going on with it.

I got the Driver Sweeper from here at http://phyxion.net/Downloads/

[destruk]

How does ps3 do it for such a small price? Zen Pinball is doing some amazing things on the screen and I get no stutter.

Perhaps because PS3 uses a single brand and model and driver? Even still the iPhone 4 Slasher Pinball game is nearly unplayable it skips frames so much and they keep selling that.

[Blitz17]

On my ATI HD4850 I could never get the tables to render correctly. I tried drivers and every combination of settings I could find. Tried both an Nvidia GTS450 and GTX460 and both run VP, FP, and HyperPin great.

[rob046]

On my ATI HD4850 I could never get the tables to render correctly. I tried drivers and every combination of settings I could find. Tried both an Nvidia GTS450 and GTX460 and both run VP, FP, and HyperPin great.

I'm talking about ATI's 5xxx series or higher. I know the older ATI cards do have issues with rendering, but it seemed pretty well fixed.
This is why I posted what I did. Things have changed.
Get a 5870 or something along those lines, & it will likely make your Nvidia cards look like "droopy eyed, armless little children" as Chuck Sheen would say.

As I stated earlier. With my $200 5870 (& I'm about to do testing monday with a low end 5xxx card), default blank table with ball resting & ball AA enabled at 1920x1200, I get well over 6,000 fps in vp912. Without ball AA it might be as much as 10,000 fps. & ball is smooth as silk.
With my brand new Nvidia superclocked GTX 570, those same settings the blank table runs in the 2,000 fps range. But also there are severe fluctuations. It may go as high as the 4,000's but as low as the hundreds. With my ATI I get solid FPS that barely fluctuate, which while gaming does make a difference & elminates any stutter.

Testing JP's Game Show with those same settings & with alpha slider set halfway, I get a steady stream of nearly 800 fps. Ball smooth as silk.
While my beastly nvidia card clearly stutters, fps fluctuates a ton, & even at its highest it doesn't hit 500 fps. More importantly is that to my eyes the performance is clearly much worse, but the fps just happens to correlate.

I know my Nvidia card has the juice to chew up this table & spit it out, while running Crysis 1 & 2 in the background!!! But for whatever reason, the VP/Nvidia handshake is sloppy.
I'm about to do some more interesting testing using a lower end 5xxx card on monday. & I've done something very interesting with my current setup but I'll start a new thread about that. Very interesting indeed.

P.S. Not only do those benchmarks contrast quite a bit, but I should note that I also had my ATI card optimized for those tests & had advanced settings enabled, such as 16x AF & the highest texture quality settings. While my Nvida was in its default setting which are pretty low. If I defaulted my ATI card settings, which I'll probably try on monday, I bet the benchmarks will be even higher.

Edited by rob046, 25 March 2011 - 09:35 PM.

[Hos_Nos]

VP9.0 and above all use Ultracade's reworked version of VP. Ultracade used Nvidia in their UltraPins, so their VP is geared to work for Nvidia. The current devs work on stuff that they find enjoyable, sort of like VP authors, I don't think anyone is spending much time trying to troubleshoot graphics cards. If you read this forum regularly, no one with VP source credentials has recommended any card except Nvidia, it is what they use, so anyone who did their research for wanting to play tables with the most suitable card would have chose an Nvidia for a new one if they wanted it for VP.

It doesn't matter which card is the best, it's more of a which card works the best for VP and I think most forum threads on this topic will steer you to Nvidia every time.

My pc specs are in my signature, I can't play JP's Game Show, I can't play most of UW's table releases from last year. I use 1920x1080 resolution, I'm not setting that down, I'd rather recycle bin the tables I can't play. JP's new RoadShow plays fantastic here. JP's Xfiles table played like a turd until I reset every alpha ramp to Acrylic, not it plays smooth. There is a need for a little VP editor knowledge to fully play a lot of these tables.

There are a ton of settings for graphics cards, I doubt if there are more than a few members who know what all of those settings mean. There is a thread with a few screenshots of some members settings, I think the biggest problems lie in those settings, but I also don't know what those settings mean or how to set them, I have played with them though.

I'd like to see screenshots of the Nvidia graphic card settings of people who say they can play all of these tables as smooth as butter with an old pc without using resolutions like 1024x768. Once you play at a higher res, it's tough to go backwards.

How does ps3 do it for such a small price? Zen Pinball is doing some amazing things on the screen and I get no stutter.

Hey Bob.

I just wanted to say thanks for the X-Files tip to turn the ramps to Acrylic. The game played terrible with alpha ramps but is really smooth now. I don't even notice that big of a difference in the look really so thanks!!!!!


Nos.

[cupid]

VP9.0 and above all use Ultracade's reworked version of VP. Ultracade used Nvidia in their UltraPins, so their VP is geared to work for Nvidia. The current devs work on stuff that they find enjoyable, sort of like VP authors, I don't think anyone is spending much time trying to troubleshoot graphics cards. If you read this forum regularly, no one with VP source credentials has recommended any card except Nvidia, it is what they use, so anyone who did their research for wanting to play tables with the most suitable card would have chose an Nvidia for a new one if they wanted it for VP.

It doesn't matter which card is the best, it's more of a which card works the best for VP and I think most forum threads on this topic will steer you to Nvidia every time.

My pc specs are in my signature, I can't play JP's Game Show, I can't play most of UW's table releases from last year. I use 1920x1080 resolution, I'm not setting that down, I'd rather recycle bin the tables I can't play. JP's new RoadShow plays fantastic here. JP's Xfiles table played like a turd until I reset every alpha ramp to Acrylic, not it plays smooth. There is a need for a little VP editor knowledge to fully play a lot of these tables.

There are a ton of settings for graphics cards, I doubt if there are more than a few members who know what all of those settings mean. There is a thread with a few screenshots of some members settings, I think the biggest problems lie in those settings, but I also don't know what those settings mean or how to set them, I have played with them though.

I'd like to see screenshots of the Nvidia graphic card settings of people who say they can play all of these tables as smooth as butter with an old pc without using resolutions like 1024x768. Once you play at a higher res, it's tough to go backwards.

How does ps3 do it for such a small price? Zen Pinball is doing some amazing things on the screen and I get no stutter.

Hey Bob.

I just wanted to say thanks for the X-Files tip to turn the ramps to Acrylic. The game played terrible with alpha ramps but is really smooth now. I don't even notice that big of a difference in the look really so thanks!!!!!


Nos.

Just set the alpha slider to the left in video options... it will perhaps play smooth then. That's what it's for.

Cupid

[Hos_Nos]

VP9.0 and above all use Ultracade's reworked version of VP. Ultracade used Nvidia in their UltraPins, so their VP is geared to work for Nvidia. The current devs work on stuff that they find enjoyable, sort of like VP authors, I don't think anyone is spending much time trying to troubleshoot graphics cards. If you read this forum regularly, no one with VP source credentials has recommended any card except Nvidia, it is what they use, so anyone who did their research for wanting to play tables with the most suitable card would have chose an Nvidia for a new one if they wanted it for VP.

It doesn't matter which card is the best, it's more of a which card works the best for VP and I think most forum threads on this topic will steer you to Nvidia every time.

My pc specs are in my signature, I can't play JP's Game Show, I can't play most of UW's table releases from last year. I use 1920x1080 resolution, I'm not setting that down, I'd rather recycle bin the tables I can't play. JP's new RoadShow plays fantastic here. JP's Xfiles table played like a turd until I reset every alpha ramp to Acrylic, not it plays smooth. There is a need for a little VP editor knowledge to fully play a lot of these tables.

There are a ton of settings for graphics cards, I doubt if there are more than a few members who know what all of those settings mean. There is a thread with a few screenshots of some members settings, I think the biggest problems lie in those settings, but I also don't know what those settings mean or how to set them, I have played with them though.

I'd like to see screenshots of the Nvidia graphic card settings of people who say they can play all of these tables as smooth as butter with an old pc without using resolutions like 1024x768. Once you play at a higher res, it's tough to go backwards.

How does ps3 do it for such a small price? Zen Pinball is doing some amazing things on the screen and I get no stutter.

Hey Bob.

I just wanted to say thanks for the X-Files tip to turn the ramps to Acrylic. The game played terrible with alpha ramps but is really smooth now. I don't even notice that big of a difference in the look really so thanks!!!!!


Nos.

Just set the alpha slider to the left in video options... it will perhaps play smooth then. That's what it's for.

Cupid

Thanks for the tip Cupid but I already did that. Still had some stutter (only this table for some reason). Thanks though, cause I may not have known that....

Nos

[Bob5453]

Just set the alpha slider to the left in video options... it will perhaps play smooth then. That's what it's for.

Cupid

That's the first thing I did. The table was still unplayable, so setting the slider all the way to the left does not turn off the feature.... Maybe you could make it turn off the feature or switch all Alpha ramps to Acrylic somehow. The table looks the same, it just doesn't have real alpha transparency when the ball goes under a ramp.

[flpennstater]

Just set the alpha slider to the left in video options... it will perhaps play smooth then. That's what it's for.

Cupid

That's the first thing I did. The table was still unplayable, so setting the slider all the way to the left does not turn off the feature.... Maybe you could make it turn off the feature or switch all Alpha ramps to Acrylic somehow. The table looks the same, it just doesn't have real alpha transparency when the ball goes under a ramp.

How do you switch the ramps to acrylic? I only was aware of the alpha slider.
I've been using a single 9800 1gb nvidia to run a 40" playfield and a 24" backglass monitor, but the latest releases seem to make there be a delay whenever I press the flipper button. Ordered a second card to handle the backglass and would like to switch the ramps to acrylic if that will give me better response time with the flippiers.

[sleepy]

How does ps3 do it for such a small price? Zen Pinball is doing some amazing things on the screen and I get no stutter.

Perhaps because PS3 uses a single brand and model and driver? Even still the iPhone 4 Slasher Pinball game is nearly unplayable it skips frames so much and they keep selling that.

And maybe because the ps3 games are limited to the same precise graphics resolutions and parameters, file sizes, etc. If ps3 is doing it like the first PS, the OS or subpart is sometimes on the disk (Main.exe).
Funny though. I thought the .exe extension belonged to M$ DOS/Windows.

I read somewhere that ps3 uses NVidia. XBox360 uses ATI.

[Hos_Nos]

Just set the alpha slider to the left in video options... it will perhaps play smooth then. That's what it's for.

Cupid

That's the first thing I did. The table was still unplayable, so setting the slider all the way to the left does not turn off the feature.... Maybe you could make it turn off the feature or switch all Alpha ramps to Acrylic somehow. The table looks the same, it just doesn't have real alpha transparency when the ball goes under a ramp.

How do you switch the ramps to acrylic? I only was aware of the alpha slider.
I've been using a single 9800 1gb nvidia to run a 40" playfield and a 24" backglass monitor, but the latest releases seem to make there be a delay whenever I press the flipper button. Ordered a second card to handle the backglass and would like to switch the ramps to acrylic if that will give me better response time with the flippiers.

You need to go into the editor and select each "part' of the ramp with a mouse click. On the right side of the editor you'll see a bunch of menu options. If you have selected the a valid ramp the Alpha selection on the right should be "ticked". You'll need to select the acrylic option and do that for every "part" of each ramp. Not too difficult, just have to make sure you do it for all the ramps.

Cheers,
Nos

[rob046]

Just an update. Been doing some more testing. Very interesting stuff. I have a setup right now where I have both my beastly ATI & Nvidia cards installed. Its like SLI with none of the benefit! Though the perk is being able to switch from a high end Nv card to a high end ATI card in a matter of seconds. Kinda nice! I honestly didn't even know it was possible to do this, but I gave it a try & it worked, & it was quite simple & hassle free, apparently you just need a mobo that supports SLI & a good enough PSU.

While hopefully I'll end up not needing this setup, it is pretty damn cool that it is even possible. After all there are other reasons why somebody might be be running both Nv & ATI in the same PC & on the same monitor like I am (or multiple monitors is of course possible).
Might be especially useful for the VP devs out there to be able to do some testing. For those using Nv, I believe even lower end 5xxx ATI cards work great with VP (I'll be finding out on monday) & you can get those for $100 or less.


When I started this post, I certainly wasn't saying Nvidia cards just didn't have the firepower in them to perform as well or better on average than ATI. I was just saying that for whatever reason, the last couple years my experience has been pretty bad in terms of performance & FPS, but who knows why.
But at least I don't complain about stuff unless I'm bound & determined to figure out a solution. I paid good $$ for my Nv card, I like Nv, & sure would love to sell off the ATI card & let the Nv card do its thing full time.

Anyhow, got some interesting results today.
Now, I'm starting to think the problem lies more in consistency. A bug of some sort. Why? Because for no good reason, I switched over to my DVI port that has my GTX 570, was doing some other stuff, figured I'd fire up VP on that side some more. & tonight for some reason, the FPS on JP's X-Files & Game Show were as high or maybe even a tad higher than my ATI card for once! Still lower in the blank table test, though higher than they were. But bottom line the card seems to be performing as it should.

OK, so now I'm afraid to even restart my PC cuz surely things will go back to how they were. Maybe after all the other programs I was running on the Nv side tonight & other fiddling around I was doing, I somehow plugged up a VP memory leak or something strange along those lines.
I almost wish I didn't have this happen! Cuz now I'm gonna test away until I figure out what is happening behind the scenes when VP is struggling, & what is happening when its flying. I only got the Nv card to "fly" twice now, hopefully I can get it to happen again & that there is a solution to this.
But bottom line, my GTX 570 is more than capable of matching or beating my 5870, it just chooses not to most of the time!
If that is going to continue being the case, then my original question still stands. Why does VP hate Nvidia?

If any of you computer geeks out there have some ideas of things I can do to log & isolate what is going on when VP is & isn't running well (in the background, with VP, or whatever), I'm all ears. Right now I don't see anything obvious being different, even am keeping tabs on task manager.
I have a thing or two up my sleeve yet that I'm gonna try, but not getting my hopes up.

Edited by rob046, 27 March 2011 - 04:33 AM.

[sleepy]

If you can, find out if the drivers are turning off Direct Draw hardware acceleration in the System settings (not the VP setting, or maybe???). Another member got faster FPS on their ATI with it turned off.

Edited by sleepy, 29 March 2011 - 04:06 AM.

[rob046]

Yeah, tried the directdraw thing long ago. Btw my ATI card is awesome, it is the Nvidia cards having issues.
Anyhow, people are gonna think I'm crazy, but I found a fix for this problem, but it is FAR from conventional.
While certain programs are running in the background, my Nvidia cards runs at its full potential. Yup. For example, if I have yahoo messenger running, VP runs great. Exit Yahoo messenger, VP drops tons of frames & stutters. Another program, "The core media player", an older media player not updated anymore, but I still think its the best out there. I don't even need to play a movie or mp3 in it, just simply opening it doubles or triples VP's performance just like yahoo messenger does.
Another program that does this is Newsleecher.

W...T....F!

I tried looking into processes to see if these programs were launching something in common, but nothing, just the main exe of these programs is shows up in task manager, so there are no extra processes in common between the programs.
& for all I know, there may be many other programs that unlock the card's full potential for VP. These 3 are the ones I basically just found on accident & with a little trial & error.

Outside of that, I've tried all other things including setting options on the exe compatibility tab, none of that made a difference, though I did find that using NO compatibility mode & disabling desktop composition did net me a few extra fps, nothing major but I made note of it.

OK, so anyhow, this is where I REALLY would like some help of those smarter than me in figuring out why having one of these programs mentioned opened makes VP run full speed ahead. What is with these programs that isn't in others? What might they have in common?

Lastly, again sounding crazy, way back in '04 I now recall having the EXACT same issue, once again with Nvidia cards. You know the default ms messenger that loads up with XP? Well, I had disabled that since I didn't use it, thinking it would gain me performance, only to find out one day that actually having it enabled easily doubled my performance. I mentioned this on the old forums back then & people thought I was nuts or it was a freak thing. But that was years back with a totally different card & rig.
Cut to 7 years later, now another messenger (yahoo) is giving this same benefit but only on nvidia cards (plus the other 2 programs I mentioned).

Also, maybe somebody smarter than me could tell me why ATI doesn't have this problem.
What is going on with the Nvidia drivers or with VP that is causing this issue, & why are certain programs running in the background fixing it? When I asked 7 years ago nobody had a clue, but since its still happening, I'd love some answers this time around & would also love to see other people test this out.

The core media player is an easy download, just google it, & its free.
Would like some Nv users to check fps on games as it is now, run on of these programs I mentioned then check again. I truly wonder how many other people out there are running VP with FAR LESS performance than they should be, whether they notice it or not.
But for me, when these programs aren't running, I even get some slight ball jittering in the blank table.

JP's new Game Show & X-Files are a good test. Btw I have win7 64 bit, latest drivers.
But with those tables, with ball AA enabled, 1600x1200, hardware rendering, unlimited textures, & alpha slider halfway... they should run very smooth if you have a decent rig & your card is running optimally. If you have a decent rig & Nvidia GPU & have stuttering on these tables with these settings, I might bet your card like mine is not running as well as it should be.

I really hope this post doesn't get ignored! Even if I'm the only unlucky person in the world that this keeps happening to over the years (which I doubt), I'd still like some answers, or at least like to know that I'm not alone.
Thanks!

[chriz]

tried "The Core Media Player 4.11" running in background, but no change in fps here.

[rob046]

So even though this same thing happened to me 7 years ago with XP & VP6, nobody else has discovered this same thing? Again, considering it happening to me on multiple machines over the years, I wonder how many people this does happen to & they don't know it.
Maybe some people simply launch with enough startup programs that at least one of them patches this problem, as crazy as it sounds.

I don't, basically only my A/V launches at startup, also I disable services I don't need. Next I'm gonna go through some of those & see if any of these other programs are kicking on a service set to manual. A service that perhaps nvidia needs to run 2D properly?

Oh, & I forgot to mention, but a big sign that things aren't running up to speed. Is that when I launch a table, the table loads slowly, & in the VP progress bar I even get a "not responding", as if VP freezes for a few seconds before it finally loads.
When I'm running one of these other programs that fixes my speed issue, this doesn't happen, the tables load quickly.

[Mitchell]

"I launch a table, the table loads slowly, & in the VP progress bar I even get a "not responding", as if VP freezes for a few seconds before it finally loads."

That happen to me before.

[sleepy]

Is there a control in the Display Panel > Advanced for setting the card's performance to either program preference or to always on?

I don't know. The extra programs like a media player sound like they are correctly enabling the Overlay function, especially when the VP fill bar behaves differently without it.

Do you have trouble with the Player window opening behind the editor screen? Could be an issue with the HWND function and the drivers.
HWND is about a program getting control of the active window on the screen, say the Player window when it is first created, and shifting the interactive focus to it.