FX5200, Radeon 9200, Pixel Shader 2, Halo, DX2

[Atelo]

I have a Geforce FX 5200 and get a really crappy framerate in both Halo and Deus Ex 2. I have a friend with a radeon 9200 with the same problem.

We have discovered these low end cards are adequate to run both games, you simply have to turn off the use of Pixel Shader 2.0. Low end cards that support this can't run it well enough.

With Halo you can pass a parameter to the EXE, -use11 to use pshader 1.1. With this setting, Halo now runs perfectly on my FX 5200, just as it did with my older Geforce2 pro.

I have searched the forums with no luck to find a way to force Dx2 to use Pixel Shader 1.1 instead of 2.0. I am sure it is using the newer 2.0 version and that's why the game sucks on these cards.

Please tell us how to use the older pixel shader, or atleast give the option to force it with a patch to the game.

The other option is a driver tweak to turn off pshader 2.0.

Thanks for the help...

-Atelo

[8675309]

Actually, the game sucks on high end video cards and CPU's too. Take it back to the store and get Prince of Persia.

[nightspore]

Actually DE2 doesn't use pixel shader 2.0, it only uses 1.1

[Atelo]

After much searching, I finally found a small utility that allows me to force Pixel Shader 1.1 on the video card. I can now play Deus Ex 2 with a decent framerate on my FX 5200.

Higher end card owners should give it a shot as well. It would appear the game does use 2.0 if it detects it.

You can get it at:
http://www.tommti-systems.de/main-Dateien/files.html
It is called 3DAnalyze. Click on the screenshot of the program to download it. You must have Winrar to extract it.

Force Max Pixel Shader version 1.1 will make the game work good on low end cards.

You can even try force low precision shader for more performance.

-Atelo

[nmysytes]

First my specs:

AMD XP 2000+ 1.7
256 DDR PNY
Geforce FX 5200 Ultra 128


I was having problems with running DX2 at first, but after checking that my bios settings were correct i.e. AGP settings and Apature sizes and then going through the nView options and setting them what I thought they should be, DX2 is running smooth as glass @ 1024 x 768 with all settings high. The 5200 might be a the low of the high ends but if you take the time to set everything up right then you'll get the performance that we all demand.


Other games I run smoothly all at high settings:

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
The Neverwinter Nights Line
The Morrowind Line
Battlefield 1942
Americas Army
HALO

BTW I upgraded from a Geforce 4 MX 440........nVidia needs a spanking. :p