intel 965 Express rendering problem - left bottom quarter of the screen

[nero_six]

Hello,

as I couldn't find any solution for this I decided to post it here, maybe someone can help.
Hope I put the topic on the right place.

It happens in Battlefield 2. The problem is, that exactly the bottom left quarter of the screen
has a kind of strange behaviour. The 3d scene itself is rendered allright there but if any text
shows up in the bottom left quarter of the screen it is badly "rendered" (grey colour instead of
the original and kind of shifted a little, almost unreadable). Also game control elements
(e.g. healthbar) which should be in the bottom left corner showed on top of the 3d scene do
not show up at all. Other parts (the remaining 3 quarters) of the screen display texts and
other game elements correctly.

Simply said: 3D scene is OK, only text messages and healthbar "projected" over it is either
missing or not correctly shown. And on top of it all this happens only in the bottom left screen
quarter.
(I will get a screenshot of this and put it here if needed).

Seems as the graphics chip renders the screen divided into quarters and the left one is the last
and has not enough memory? (probably this is a stupid question)

The system I got the problem on is a
- Toshiba A205 S5855 notebook
- processor: intel Core 2 Duo T5550, 1.83Ghz
- Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
- 3GB memory
with the mentioned intel 965 Express chipset

the current installed graphics controller driver version is: 15.12.1.1608 (7.15.10.1608)

I will be very grateful for any idea to solve this.
Thank you very much in advance.

[delacy__david]

Quoting - nero.six

Hello,

as I couldn't find any solution for this I decided to post it here, maybe someone can help.
Hope I put the topic on the right place.

It happens in Battlefield 2. The problem is, that exactly the bottom left quarter of the screen
has a kind of strange behaviour. The 3d scene itself is rendered allright there but if any text
shows up in the bottom left quarter of the screen it is badly "rendered" (grey colour instead of
the original and kind of shifted a little, almost unreadable). Also game control elements
(e.g. healthbar) which should be in the bottom left corner showed on top of the 3d scene do
not show up at all. Other parts (the remaining 3 quarters) of the screen display texts and
other game elements correctly.

Simply said: 3D scene is OK, only text messages and healthbar "projected" over it is either
missing or not correctly shown. And on top of it all this happens only in the bottom left screen
quarter.
(I will get a screenshot of this and put it here if needed).

Seems as the graphics chip renders the screen divided into quarters and the left one is the last
and has not enough memory? (probably this is a stupid question)

The system I got the problem on is a
- Toshiba A205 S5855 notebook
- processor: intel Core 2 Duo T5550, 1.83Ghz
- Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
- 3GB memory
with the mentioned intel 965 Express chipset

the current installed graphics controller driver version is: 15.12.1.1608 (7.15.10.1608)

I will be very grateful for any idea to solve this.
Thank you very much in advance.

its probably not using vsync to flip the front and back buffers and since that area is last to be updated it may be that the frame buffer doesnt actually have that data in it when it shows the picture
a screen shot will help to see what it looks like


or that part is done with blt's and disabling gdi makes this go away...

[nero_six]

Quoting - beerandcandy

its probably not using vsync to flip the front and back buffers and since that area is last to be updated it may be that the frame buffer doesnt actually have that data in it when it shows the picture
a screen shot will help to see what it looks like


or that part is done with blt's and disabling gdi makes this go away...

Hello beerandcandy,

thank you for your reply.
Please take a look at the screenshots attached.

Notes:
screen002 -- bottom left, text is strange grey and blurred (should be something like above/see upper left corner)
screen003 -- "battle com" interface, left side of it and bottom, on the left should be THANK YOU, and on the bottom
FOLLOW ME (only W ME is there instead)
on both screenshots bottom left: the healthbar is missing (looks same as the bottom right, just showing health not ammo)

If this may be because of what you wrote above (vsync or gdi) where should I set/change these?

I also tried to find something regarding this, on an intel page I found that vsync could be toggled by Anisothropic filtering On/Off in the driver settings, but it also says that this applies only to OpenGL apps (as far as I know BF2 is direc3d based).
I did not manage to find anything about the possibility to disable gdi.

Thank you.

[Chuck_De_Sylva]

Quoting - nero.six

Hello,

as I couldn't find any solution for this I decided to post it here, maybe someone can help.
Hope I put the topic on the right place.

It happens in Battlefield 2. The problem is, that exactly the bottom left quarter of the screen
has a kind of strange behaviour. The 3d scene itself is rendered allright there but if any text
shows up in the bottom left quarter of the screen it is badly "rendered" (grey colour instead of
the original and kind of shifted a little, almost unreadable). Also game control elements
(e.g. healthbar) which should be in the bottom left corner showed on top of the 3d scene do
not show up at all. Other parts (the remaining 3 quarters) of the screen display texts and
other game elements correctly.

Simply said: 3D scene is OK, only text messages and healthbar "projected" over it is either
missing or not correctly shown. And on top of it all this happens only in the bottom left screen
quarter.
(I will get a screenshot of this and put it here if needed).

Seems as the graphics chip renders the screen divided into quarters and the left one is the last
and has not enough memory? (probably this is a stupid question)

The system I got the problem on is a
- Toshiba A205 S5855 notebook
- processor: intel Core 2 Duo T5550, 1.83Ghz
- Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
- 3GB memory
with the mentioned intel 965 Express chipset

the current installed graphics controller driver version is: 15.12.1.1608 (7.15.10.1608)

I will be very grateful for any idea to solve this.
Thank you very much in advance.

nero.six,

Can you display the driver version you are using (i.e. a DXDIAG dump)? You are certain you have the latest version correct? Also did you try to run the game in minimum settings?

- Chuck

[nero_six]

Quoting - Chuck De Sylva (Intel)

nero.six,

Can you display the driver version you are using (i.e. a DXDIAG dump)? You are certain you have the latest version correct? Also did you try to run the game in minimum settings?

- Chuck

Hi Chuck,

please take a look at the dxdiag dump attached. I think the driver is correctly installed - I did not get errors or anything.
Running the game with min. setting gave the same result:(

Thanks for your help.

[nero_six]

Hi all,

I think I figured it out. Here is what I did:
- ran regedit.exe and found all the entries called ~BF2.exe
- all of these had values set to 1, I changed that to 0
now it works, framerates in the game seem to be as before (used an ingame console command to check)

It is said (on some forums) that this should enable hardware shaders (T&L or something).
Setting these values to 1 enables software shaders, 0 disables them = enables hardware shaders.

Seems like the hw shaders can cope with this better in BF2.

It is also mentioned that some games perform better with sw shaders and some with hw shaders, however BF2 seems to have the same framerate regardless the setting, just without artifacts with hw shaders.

Would be nice if the intel guys put this option in the driver settings, so people would not have to tweak the registry.

Regards,
N.

[Chuck_De_Sylva]

Nero.six,

Very interesting. So you put the app in HW Vertex Processing mode (1 is SW). We set some of the apps (Esp. the ones compiled for Dx8 to SW- so they'll run faster as our pipeline is tuned for Dx9+). I'm surprised that the frame rate was the same either way. We validate these things pretty thoroughly before setting them in our .INF. Hmm, your driver is current. Are you sure that the game has all the latest patches and such?

- Chuck

[nero_six]

Quoting - Chuck De Sylva (Intel)

Nero.six,

Very interesting. So you put the app in HW Vertex Processing mode (1 is SW). We set some of the apps (Esp. the ones compiled for Dx8 to SW- so they'll run faster as our pipeline is tuned for Dx9+). I'm surprised that the frame rate was the same either way. We validate these things pretty thoroughly before setting them in our .INF. Hmm, your driver is current. Are you sure that the game has all the latest patches and such?

- Chuck

Hello Chuck,

I have the latest patch for BF2 installed (version 1.41).

As for the framerates I checked them using the "renderer.drawFps 1" command in-game - what is probably not the
most precise way of doing this.
However this showed very similiar numbers (basically the same as with SW Vertex Shaders) and gameplay felt the same too. If there is another method to test framerates (average or something like that) I am ready to compare the two shaders.

Could it not be that in the time the driver INF files where set there was an older BF2 patch available and in the current patch of the game BF2 just performs better with HW shaders? - just a thought.

N.

[ernis1100]

Quoting - nero.six

Hello Chuck,

I have the latest patch for BF2 installed (version 1.41).

As for the framerates I checked them using the "renderer.drawFps 1" command in-game - what is probably not the
most precise way of doing this.
However this showed very similiar numbers (basically the same as with SW Vertex Shaders) and gameplay felt the same too. If there is another method to test framerates (average or something like that) I am ready to compare the two shaders.

Could it not be that in the time the driver INF files where set there was an older BF2 patch available and in the current patch of the game BF2 just performs better with HW shaders? - just a thought.

N.

Hello, ive been experiencing same problem with same video chipset after i reinstaled windows and instaled later video card than earlier, before doing that my bf2 worked fine. ill try the reg thingy the video card update mustve changed it. thanks for the post cuz i was totaly outta ideas what to do :D

[john_jones1991]

Quoting - nero.six

Hi all,

I think I figured it out. Here is what I did:
- ran regedit.exe and found all the entries called ~BF2.exe
- all of these had values set to 1, I changed that to 0
now it works, framerates in the game seem to be as before (used an ingame console command to check)

It is said (on some forums) that this should enable hardware shaders (T&L or something).
Setting these values to 1 enables software shaders, 0 disables them = enables hardware shaders.

Seems like the hw shaders can cope with this better in BF2.

It is also mentioned that some games perform better with sw shaders and some with hw shaders, however BF2 seems to have the same framerate regardless the setting, just without artifacts with hw shaders.

Would be nice if the intel guys put this option in the driver settings, so people would not have to tweak the registry.

Regards,
N.

hi, i have the same problem.
can you help me, please, because i can't find any bf2.exe in regedit.
can you tell where it is?
thanks

[Chuck_De_Sylva]

Quoting - ernis1100

Hello, ive been experiencing same problem with same video chipset after i reinstaled windows and instaled later video card than earlier, before doing that my bf2 worked fine. ill try the reg thingy the video card update mustve changed it. thanks for the post cuz i was totaly outta ideas what to do :D

search for "~3dmark" in the registry. add a dword key in the same area called "~bf2.exe". Set it to 1.

[john_jones1991]

Quoting - Chuck De Sylva (Intel)

search for "~3dmark" in the registry. add a dword key in the same area called "~bf2.exe". Set it to 1.

are you talking to me? if you are, i didn't find anything by typing in "~3dmark".
help me please

[msllarson2]

Quoting - nero.six

Hi all,

I think I figured it out. Here is what I did:
- ran regedit.exe and found all the entries called ~BF2.exe
- all of these had values set to 1, I changed that to 0
now it works, framerates in the game seem to be as before (used an ingame console command to check)

It is said (on some forums) that this should enable hardware shaders (T&L or something).
Setting these values to 1 enables software shaders, 0 disables them = enables hardware shaders.

Seems like the hw shaders can cope with this better in BF2.

It is also mentioned that some games perform better with sw shaders and some with hw shaders, however BF2 seems to have the same framerate regardless the setting, just without artifacts with hw shaders.

Would be nice if the intel guys put this option in the driver settings, so people would not have to tweak the registry.

Regards,
N.

It took me a while to retrace your steps, but I was able to do it... And it worked for me too(first solution I have found in about 3 hours of searching.

To translate what you said:
Search in windows for regedit.exe

go to Edit - Find search for "~BF2.exe"

Change the value to "0" (Zero)
(There should be two files... after you change the first one, "Find Next" and change it also)

I have included screen shots... forgive the hand writing... it's with a mouse :)

[mainostoimisto]

Quoting msllarson2

Quoting - nero.six

Hi all,

I think I figured it out. Here is what I did:
- ran regedit.exe and found all the entries called ~BF2.exe
- all of these had values set to 1, I changed that to 0
now it works, framerates in the game seem to be as before (used an ingame console command to check)

It is said (on some forums) that this should enable hardware shaders (T&L or something).
Setting these values to 1 enables software shaders, 0 disables them = enables hardware shaders.

Seems like the hw shaders can cope with this better in BF2.

It is also mentioned that some games perform better with sw shaders and some with hw shaders, however BF2 seems to have the same framerate regardless the setting, just without artifacts with hw shaders.

Would be nice if the intel guys put this option in the driver settings, so people would not have to tweak the registry.

Regards,
N.

It took me a while to retrace your steps, but I was able to do it... And it worked for me too(first solution I have found in about 3 hours of searching.

To translate what you said:
Search in windows for regedit.exe

go to Edit - Find search for "~BF2.exe"

Change the value to "0" (Zero)
(There should be two files... after you change the first one, "Find Next" and change it also)

I have included screen shots... forgive the hand writing... it's with a mouse :)

Thank you. This was driving me grazy but I did finally get it right. Although I did need to reboot five times.

Tommi Heinonen