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kikkoman · Dec 2, 2003, 10:37 AM

How do I turn on the antialiasing on the stock 9800 that comes with the Powermac G5. I thought to install the retail driver but the ATI site specifically states it is not for use on the OEM card.

a2daj · Dec 2, 2003, 05:36 PM

For OEM cards, the game has to specifically support AA. If there's nothing in the GUI then you'll want to check out the readme files.

lenox · Dec 8, 2003, 01:01 PM

The newest ATI drivers for the 9800 support 'overrides' that allow you to override what the game specifies. This would allow you to use antialiasing in a game that didn't support it.

Be careful, however, because games that don't support it were not coded with it in mind and may end up looking buggy.

a2daj · Dec 8, 2003, 05:28 PM

He specifically asked about the OEM 9800 Pros. The ATI 3D Overrides do not support the OEM models, only the retail models.

kikkoman · Dec 9, 2003, 03:17 PM

I've been playing Medal of Honor Spearhead demo. I don't see a setting anywhere for it. Do have to buy the actual game to get antialiasing?

mac freak · Dec 9, 2003, 08:02 PM

Why in the world would the OEM 9800 not allow AA? That's ridiculous. One of the major bonuses of the last year of video cards has been their ability to render with 4XAA with negligible performance hits.

I can't imagine there's much actual difference between Apple's OEM 9800 and the retail version, save for the ports on the card.

Hydra · Dec 9, 2003, 09:12 PM

Originally posted by mac freak:
Why in the world would the OEM 9800 not allow AA? That's ridiculous. One of the major bonuses of the last year of video cards has been their ability to render with 4XAA with negligible performance hits.

I can't imagine there's much actual difference between Apple's OEM 9800 and the retail version, save for the ports on the card.

The OEM 9800 most definitely does AA. Apple supplies support for all it's OEM cards. ATI does so for it's retail cards as well. The Radeon 9800 (retail or OEM) can do AA. The thing (a nice one at that) that the retail has over the OEM model is the use of the ATI control panel to override game settings. If the game in question supports AA and has a setting somewhere inside to use AA it's no problem to turn it on (Star Trek Elite Forces II does and it looks very nice). If it does not you need to open the config file with a text editor and manually turn it on (this is the case with UT2003 and it looks pretty good too). You can install the ATI drivers for the OEM 9800 and the drivers will even work fine (I have and they do) the control panel will not work though.

-Jerry C.

a2daj · Dec 10, 2003, 02:04 AM

Originally posted by mac freak:
Why in the world would the OEM 9800 not allow AA? That's ridiculous. One of the major bonuses of the last year of video cards has been their ability to render with 4XAA with negligible performance hits.

I can't imagine there's much actual difference between Apple's OEM 9800 and the retail version, save for the ports on the card.

No one ever said the OEM cards don't allow AA. The 3D Overrides don't support the OEM cards. That's it.

mac freak · Dec 10, 2003, 08:09 AM

I guess I should have been clearer --

Most games don't have built-in AA settings. Over in the PC world, AA settings are generally set from the ATI control panel; since developers don't tend to add in-menu AA support to their games when they port them, most Mac games also would need a global "control panel" AA setting to run anti-aliased. It just seems silly to me that one of two nearly identical cards does not work with ATI's global controls...

I'll fiddle with it when my DP1.8 with a 9800 arrives, I guess

a2daj · Dec 10, 2003, 10:01 AM

ATI's retail control panel/display app has always been retail specific. There was an update where they allowed mobile Radeon cards to be recognized as something other than "unknown" but the features have been typical available just for retail cards. The only feature that I can think of in the recent past that worked on OEM and retail cards via the control panel was adaptive deinterlacing and that was added only because there was no other way to get it enabled since Apple never added support for it. And with 10.2 and 10.3 adaptive deinterlacing doesn't work...

Vash · Dec 10, 2003, 04:36 PM

Well, I must admit that control panel not working on OEM cards really pisses me off. Some games, actually quite a few, do not allow you to enable fsaa, even if you edit the config file, they just don't have the feature. Also, macfreak says that 4x FSAA doesn't barely effect the FPS, while that may be true on a PC, in UT2K3 2x FSAA cuts your FPS in 1/2 with a Radeon 9800 Pro OEM on a dual 2ghz G5. Seeing that, FSAA still severly effect your FPS on the Macintosh.

a2daj · Dec 10, 2003, 06:04 PM

Maybe on UT2K3 flyby benchmarks, but other benches and games don't see much of an impact until 1600x1200. Actual in game performance is usually not impacted. I can play UT2K3 at 1024x768 at 2x and 4x with no impact on performance.

Vash · Dec 10, 2003, 06:48 PM

a2daj, I'm talking about in game performance at 1600x1024, slightly smaller than 1600x1200....definetly not exactly half the fps, but still it will go below 30 quite a few times which is unacceptable at 2x FSAA.