Hello Conetic,

We have been having problems with Shader 3.0 and 3DGS on a Vista 64 bit machine.

Here is what is happening. On the Vista 64 bit machine, the 3.0 shader does not crash, but any entities, terrain, etc using the Shader 3.0 just doesn't render. Even though you can see the bounding boxes etc when you hit F11 twice.

So far on this Vista 64 bit machine we have tested 2 video cards, a ATI Radeon HD 4870 and a ATI Radeon HD 3300 card with the latest drivers for each. Both of these video cards are Shader 3.0 compatible.

We have been trying to figure out why the shader is not rendering, but have been unable to do so. The only thing we can figure out at this time is the Vista 64 OS might somehow be causing this in tandem with 3DGS for some reason. We have testing this machine a various other Shader 3.0 games with different engines and even on ShaderMarkv2.1 and 3dMark06. The Shader 3.0 seems to work fine on everything except the 3DGS engine with this Vista 64 bit system with these Ati HD cards.

Here is a picture of what is being rendered on this machine with Shader 3.0:



Here is what is rendering on various other systems we have that are XP or Vista 32 with a variety of Nvidia and Ati cards:



You will notice that any models or the terrain are not being rendered on the Vista 64 bit when using Shader 3.0. Like I said we have checked this system on various other games and engines without this Shader 3.0 rendering problem. Also, this system renders fine with 3DGS on Shader's that are below Shader 3.0 with 3DGS.

I guess the first question is, have you tested Shader 3.0 with the 3DGS engine on a Vista 64 bit machine? Because from our test so far this seems to be where the issue is, although there is still slight possibility that it could be the newest Ati cards or their drivers also not liking Shader 3.0 on 3DGS for whatever reason.

We are going to go ahead and install XP on this machine for further test to make sure it is not a Ati driver problem with these newer cards (thus possibly verifying it is a Vista 64 with 3DGS issue), but need to know if you have had actually ran Shader 3.0 with Vista 64 bit on any of your machines or if you have received any other reports on this particular problem? Whether it be the newer Ati HD cards/drivers or Vista 64 bit issue with 3DGS.

We are also planning to put a Nvidia 9800gtx card into the same system for test if we have too, but would prefer not to waste the money to do this test if at all possible if you already have any information on this issue.

Your help would be appreciated with this matter,
Sincerely,
Frederick