Morrowind on a Windows 7 64-Bit

[isiolia]

So is there anything that ATI cards are good for? It seems like every game either works the same on both, or has horrible glitches on ATI cards.

nVidia cards have issues too. Just varies. Heck, at different times in the game's life, and different series of cards/drivers, FFXI has had issues with both brands

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I've been playing it on win7 64-bit for a while. Only real issue that appears is if you have an ATI graphics card the sun appears to just be a giant black spot in the sky.

So is there anything that ATI cards are good for? It seems like every game either works the same on both, or has horrible glitches on ATI cards.

Well, ATi cards seem cheaper.

For the record since getting this computer with the 6850 I haven't had any problems aside from some heat issues. That was easily fixed with some in-case rearranging and a quick dust-off though.

It may be just me, but it almost seems like AA isn't quite as nice as it was on my laptops nVidia card. Maybe I'm nuts.

[Cronozilla]

No, you're not. It depends on the techniques the card uses. I think nVidia is somewhat better at graphics algorithms it seems, and they implement that on their cards. For example, they developed CSAA, AMD developed QEAA, they're entirely different techniques. (Now nVidia has TXAA coming out on the GTX680 series. It looks very nice)

[isiolia]

It may be just me, but it almost seems like AA isn't quite as nice as it was on my laptops nVidia card. Maybe I'm nuts.

The 6000 series introduced MLAA (for PC graphics cards), which is a quick, cheap, fairly universal post-processing AA method...but doesn't result in quite as high quality an end result as AA during rendering (larger explanation here). You might check and see what method is being utilized.

There might be other considerations too, such as different native panel resolutions or pixel pitch.

ATI/AMD has/had been doing very well with price/performance though, and heat/power use, and rolling in certain features (like Eyefinity).

[RyaNtheSlayA]

It may be just me, but it almost seems like AA isn't quite as nice as it was on my laptops nVidia card. Maybe I'm nuts.

The 6000 series introduced MLAA (for PC graphics cards), which is a quick, cheap, fairly universal post-processing AA method...but doesn't result in quite as high quality an end result as AA during rendering (larger explanation here). You might check and see what method is being utilized.

There might be other considerations too, such as different native panel resolutions or pixel pitch.

ATI/AMD has/had been doing very well with price/performance though, and heat/power use, and rolling in certain features (like Eyefinity).

I checked in my driver settings and MLAA isn't on. I think I'm crazy.

It might be because I was using CSAA before, which obviously isn't an option on ATi cards and probably looks a bit different.

[Cronozilla]

That stuff isn't set in the driver (unless you force it) it'll be set in the 3D application you're running.

[neilencio]

I've been zigzagging my upgrade choices between nVidia and ATI cards for the past 5 years now, and in my experience, both brands tend to have problems in the same areas, just in different generations. IMO, nVidia seems to be more known for heat issues, while ATI's bad rap is in driver support/bugs.

ATI seems to offer better price/performance ratio, but nVidia has the cheapest low end cards. And it's doing them good. A lot of consumers don't really bother getting the most out of their money's worth and just want to focus on getting the cheapest functioning product.

[isiolia]

That stuff isn't set in the driver (unless you force it) it'll be set in the 3D application you're running.

One of the advantages of MLAA is that it actually works for games that don't otherwise support AA, like a lot of more recent Unreal engine based games, or render-to-texture stuff like Silent Hill 2 or FFXI.

[Cronozilla]

The only forced versions that have trouble are techniques like MSAA, some games (like HL2) have blocks on them. You have to run some commands in the game to allow the driver to alter the render pipeline.

If it can always be on, because of it's position in the pipeline, that's neat. But, that would also explain why it might not look as nice.

[MrEco]

This topic is no longer about Morrowind.

Anyway, thanks for the help guys. I guess it sounds like Morrowind should work on my computer and I'll see about getting it soon since I have some money coming my way.