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ATI TruForm

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First post, by RaVeN-05

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Which is the most latest/powerful video card that support ATI TruForm?
I heard some cards do it on hardware some on software mode?

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Reply 1 of 29, by F2bnp

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I think the fastest is the 8500, with the 9xxx series they moved it to software for a while. It's a pretty cool technology, but since it wasn't a DirectX standard, it didn't really get adopted, very few games actually take advantage of it.

Reply 2 of 29, by shamino

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I think hardware TruForm was in just one GPU - the one used on the 8500/8500LE.
One of the lower 9xxx cards (not sure which one) is also said to be equivalent to an 8500LE, so maybe it also does Truform, but that card isn't as fast as the "full" 8500/8500DV.

I tried Truform on a 9800 Pro but that was software based. It needed an older driver to make it work - the feature was removed in later drivers. It worked but it was so slow that I decided not to use it. This was with an Athlon XP 2100/200 (3000+).
If you have an overpowered CPU then maybe software Truform would be more usable.
I've never tried Truform on an 8500, but since it's supported in hardware I presume it's a lot better at it.

Reply 3 of 29, by slivercr

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As said in previous posts:
Latest card to do it is the Radeon 9100 (which is a rehash of the 8500LE).
Most powerful card to do it is the Radeon 8500.
These 3 cards do it on hardware, other cards sort of emulate it, but usually leads to messed up graphics.

My contribution:
The last drivers to support the tech are Catalysts 5.8, it was removed afterwards because no one cared about it 😒

I like using it for Neverwinter Nights, but I feel its a very niche technology.

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Reply 4 of 29, by Munx

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Like others said, 8500 is the strongest one to properly support it. Then there are 8500LE and 9100 (same cards, different name) which are the lower-clocked versions.

So far I've tested a couple TruForm games on my 9100 and they run quite smoothly (UT and Counter-Strike). FEAR is said to support it, but I'm not sure how that would run, since it demands a GF4 Ti minimum 😕

Also so far I'm having a lot of trouble locating Truform patches for other games as all the DL links I find seem to be dead 😵

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Reply 5 of 29, by SPBHM

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I remember trying it on the 9100 with Counter Strike, it worked but made the weapons look terrible, also maybe on BF1942 (?), yet I don't remember getting bad performance with it enabled.

as previously stated it's "R200" (8500/LE/9100) exclusive in hardware, not even the 9000 supported in hardware, not sure about the software implementation, but the R300 (9500/9700) cards offered it.

Reply 7 of 29, by slivercr

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swaaye wrote:

Which games actually look better with it?

NWN looks nice, it makes the characters look better. There are some environmental errors—barrels come to mind—that result from the "rounding".

With an R200 card you can't really play at high resolutions/enable AA/etc, so "looking better" is kind of subjective. I keep a 9100 and once a year (or more) plug it in to play NWN, the rest of the time I play at the highest resolution possible with another card.

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Reply 8 of 29, by swaaye

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slivercr wrote:
swaaye wrote:

Which games actually look better with it?

NWN looks nice, it makes the characters look better. There are some environmental errors—barrels come to mind—that result from the "rounding".

With an R200 card you can't really play at high resolutions/enable AA/etc, so "looking better" is kind of subjective. I keep a 9100 and once a year (or more) plug it in to play NWN, the rest of the time I play at the highest resolution possible with another card.

Hey that's not entirely true. Radeon 8500 is quite capable of running 16bit color depth games well at even 1920x1200 sometimes. I've been playing Undying on a slew of different cards and comparing their 16bit dithering. Flipping to 32bit color is a killer but many old games actually look as good or better at 16bit color. The dithered textures tend to look better than the conversion to 32bit. The pre D3D9 Radeons certainly have an interesting form of active error diffusion dithering.

I have played around with Truform before but I can't remember which games used it well. I want to say RTCW though. I have not tried NWN. Morrowind unofficially supports it and it is beneficial there but I think it can BSOD your machine.

Reply 10 of 29, by slivercr

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swaaye wrote:

Hey that's not entirely true. Radeon 8500 is quite capable of running 16bit color depth games well at even 1920x1200 sometimes. I've been playing Undying on a slew of different cards and comparing their 16bit dithering. Flipping to 32bit color is a killer but many old games actually look as good or better at 16bit color. The dithered textures tend to look better than the conversion to 32bit. The pre D3D9 Radeons certainly have an interesting form of active error diffusion dithering.

I have played around with Truform before but I can't remember which games used it well. I want to say RTCW though. I have not tried NWN. Morrowind unofficially supports it and it is beneficial there but I think it can BSOD your machine.

I'm not dissing the Radeon 8500, its a very capable card. All I'm saying is the 8500 can't handle high-res with AA and other improvements, but it gives you TruForm. Games that I know of supporting it: NWN, Serious Sam, UT2003/2004.

leileilol wrote:

You still don't believe me?

"Only Radeon 8500 supports native Truform. Not even R200's variations do. The wide variety of Radeons I do own don't support Truform either. There's not enough consumer CPU power in the world currently on emulating 3d cards that new anyway, it'd probably have to be vulkan'd for best results."

I don't know whom this is directed to, but could you please elaborate? In a back to back test with the 5.8 Catalysts I had a 9100 perform TruForm correctly and a 9800 giving graphical glitches/using more CPU; so, AFAIK, the 9100 performs TruForm correctly without CPU impact => done in hardware.

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Reply 12 of 29, by slivercr

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I'm just confused by "R200's variations", I guess (s)he means R200 as the family and refers to R2x0 and others?

I misunderstood 8500le/9100 as R200 (8500) variations.

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Reply 13 of 29, by gdjacobs

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F2bnp wrote:

The Radeon 9100 is an 8500 card, so for all intents and purposes, it should do pull off Truform just as well as an 8500.

Yes, the 9100 is a full R200 GPU with lower specced RAM, so it's clocked down at 250/250 instead of 275/275.

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Reply 14 of 29, by SPBHM

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gdjacobs wrote:
F2bnp wrote:

The Radeon 9100 is an 8500 card, so for all intents and purposes, it should do pull off Truform just as well as an 8500.

Yes, the 9100 is a full R200 GPU with lower specced RAM, so it's clocked down at 250/250 instead of 275/275.

mine had 400 (200) MHz memory, and it couldn't even OC to 430MHz, still the core could OC to 310 from the stock 250,
I think plenty of 9100 and even some 8500LEs had slow memory like that

but yes, same GPU different configuration in terms of clocks,

unlike the Radeon 9000 for example which was another DX8.1 Radeon related to R200, but it used a different physical GPU the RV250 and lacked hardware Truform, was also simplified in other ways and a little slower,

Reply 15 of 29, by RaVeN-05

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leileilol wrote:

I believe you but want more deep dig here.

What about radeon 9200 ???

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Reply 17 of 29, by silikone

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What does the lack of hardware support mean for the otherwise more capable Radeon cards?

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Reply 18 of 29, by shamino

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silikone wrote:

What does the lack of hardware support mean for the otherwise more capable Radeon cards?

Several years ago when I tried TruForm in Morrowind on a Radeon 9800 Pro, it looked nice but the slowness was bothersome. I didn't measure it but it felt like the frame rate was cut in half. This was at 1280x1024 with an Athlon XP 512KB Barton at 3000+ settings (2.1GHz/200).

I wonder how the ATI driver's TruForm emulation performs with dual CPUs though, maybe in that case it could be nearly free.