smithpd on 22/4/2007 at 22:27

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Ah, yes, but I am afraid that this time you may have missed the point.:) With a 7950 GT (which I am getting) there is no Nvidia upgrade path that works for Thief, so SLI or ATI would be the last gasp before going the two-computer route.

I have decided to upgrade to an entire new computer with a PCI-E 7950 GT card and SLI capability but defer the second 7950 GT. My wife gets the current rig.

highlights:
Lian Li PC-7B Plus II case (2 120 mm fans w/ space for others)
Corsair 620 Watt power supply
MSI P6N SLI Platinum mobo (no fans)
Core 2 duo E6600 (yes, I know Thief only uses one)
XFX GeForce 7950 GT 512 MB (passive, no fan!)
2 GB Mushkin DDR2 800 memory
WD Raptor 10000 RPM 150 GB
Creative X-Fi
XP Pro

bikerdude on 28/4/2007 at 17:03

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here yah go.

The images have the gamma is all the way up @ 100%...and you can clearly see the problem..

8800GTX(nvidia) on the left... and My laptop(intel/ati) on the right... )

http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/4131/dump18800dz0.jpghttp://img261.imageshack.us/img261/2092/dump000re7.jpg

biker

smithpd on 30/4/2007 at 07:50

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Back to topic.

I assembled the new computer this weekend. It has XP Pro, a Core 2 duo E6600 processor, and an XFX 7950 GT PCI-E graphics card. I first went through all the XP movie things and dual core affinity things. Those worked fine. T2 ran fine with 93.71 drivers.

T1 menus worked, but T1 crashed on loading any mission, with one of those messages to send error or not to send. The rest of this post has to do with getting T1 to work (maybe).

I tried 84.56 drivers mentioned by biker, but they do not recognize the 7950 GT. Only 7900 GT and 7900 GTX. So I went back to 93.71, which came with the 7950 GT card.

I tried the fix mentioned in another thread to edit cam.cfg, changing the line
game_screen_depth 16
to
game_screen_depth 32
This supposedly makes something mysterious happen such that it goes into software rendering, and when you change it back to hardware rendering T1 works. I could not get that to behave reliably. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Mostly not, and I could not figure out the pattern. Anyway, this procedure is hokey at best.

Then I loaded up driver version 101.09, which I found on Guru3D.com. Not on Nvidia's site. This failed in a similar way, at first. While playing around with it, I found that if it fails then, if you start up Thief and change to software rendering , it works again. Then if you change it back to hardware rendering it sometimes works. Similar to the cam.cfg thing, but simpler. A little more experimentation, and I found the apparent key to making it always work was to disable hardware audio acceleration. I have an Audigy X Fi Gamer. So, with that turned off in the T1 menu, it is working now. Apparently an audio problem is at the root of this.

I still have a lot of testing to do to see what combination of things works and which do not, including various driver versions, onboard audio, etc. I'll report back when I think I have a definite pattern.

In the meanwhile, does anyone have T1 working with a 7950 GT PCI-E, and if so, what is your video driver version, audio system, and what are your audio and video settings in Thief?

smithpd on 1/5/2007 at 18:41

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Thanks, biker. I am waiting with bated breath. BTW, the 84.56 driver at Guru3D had a long list of supported cards, and 7950 GT was not among them. I haven't had time to do any experiments with audio.

YogSo on 3/5/2007 at 12:15

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Biker, could you post the link to Guru3D where those tweaked 158.19 drivers can be downloaded, please? The site is quite confusing and I always have a hard time finding something specific in there.

Also, I get you posted (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1588910) this after your post above, so the 8-bit rendering bug still persists...?