Arrested Anti-aliasing - please help

I have a Hercules Radeon 9800 pro, which has proven to be a right nice card... but I have a problem.

I installed an overclocking/tweaking utility, and I have now lost the ability to enable/disable fast write... it's just disappeared from the options. I wouldn't really have noticed accept for Max Payne 2, which reminded me that I had not got it on and could only play the game with reduced performance... not that it seemed to be a problem :)

I think I may have lost other features as well.

It now seems that fullscreen antialiasing only works when the game has that feature in the options, as in aforemention MP2. Games such as Raven Shield, Unreal 2 and GTA Vice city no longer seem to use it, even with them all turned on.

Anyone else out there had this problem?

;) Right well fastwrites is about as much use as AGP8x or 256MB of gfx RAM. Along with Sideband it was touted as the next big thing but only held theoretical improvements and you really won't notice any real diff whether it's on or off. You can try diff mobo and gfx drivers as well as checking the mobo BIOS for any Fast Writes options. Perhaps trawl through o/c'ing sw if you wish too.

:confused: The drivers should be able to force AA+AF on in virtually any game, perhaps fully remove then (re)install the latest drivers and see if it helps, may help FW too. Try running a game in 640x480 as that should be VERY evident whether AA is on or not. Try the drivers with AA=OFF and AA=4xAA.

Good ideas, thanks. I know anti-aliasing is not quite photoshop quality on high-end cards, but it is quite noticeable when it's off... once you've lost the jaggies, it's hell having them back.

So fast write is a load of poo then? Maybe that's why the tweaker binned it.

I am still unable to get more than 12000 3Dmarks on 2001, which I find a bit poor, browsing the online results.

Maybe I'm just expecting too much...

:confused: You should be higher than 12000, is your CPU a little slow (by today's standards)? Do rem that most 3Dmark results are from hideously o/c'ed systems, most people only post if they're near the top scores so it all inflates things. FW is fine and it's better to have it on (just like AGP8x) even if it does VERY little actual good.

;) BTW, I get 14000+ with my o/c'ed XP1700+/XP2500+ and quite mildly o/c'ed Rad9500PRO. I got 12000 with the 9500PRO stock.

i get over 16k so im happy :D

upgraded/overclocked a lot since, this wot i got now:
1700+ @ 2.2ghz, 768mb pc3500, nf7-s rev1.1 @ 230fsb, 9700np @ 380/313.5
also unrealted to 3dmark scores i have: 300gb hdd total, 4x dvdrw, mx212 lcd, 21" monitor
:D

aa is very noticable but unfortunatly not enuf.. 6xaa in cs at 1600x1200 and i can still see jaggies :(
is there any way to add 8x to the list? i assume that AA on dx9 cards is all done in the pixel shaders? = software = upgradable = 16xAA, plz :D

I got a 2000 Athlon XP on a KX-400+ motherboard, not that old fashioned... Nothing's O/Cd though and I've got a feeling something's not set up optimally. Might even be windows.