RADLINKER - What it is, a guide!

[Woody27]

Dear All,

There are quite a few peaple asking about the ATi cards fitted in VAIOs at the moment and a comomon suggestion is to use the Omega drivers (www.omegadrivers.net). I thought I might tell you about a little known (and hence used) feature of this driver set which is quite useful!

This is RADLINKER.

It allows you to set graphic card options for individual programs. This is handy as say, for example, you may want to set you grahics card to high quality for something that is easy to run (i.e. Quake III Arena) but to high performance (and hence low quality) for something a bit more demanding (i.e. DOOM 3).

Heres how to use it (assuming you have installed the latest Omega drivers and they are functioning correctly):

1. Right click on the Icon (say DOOM3) and select 'Create RADLINK'.
2. A new icon will appear that is similar to the one you just clicked on, it will have a slightly different name.
3. You can now delete the original icon (and rename the new one, if you so wish).
4. If you now right click on this icon, you will find a whole new set of options for the graphics card which are for this file only!

Smart eh!

CW

PS DO NOT USE the overclocking options, mobile chips cannot cope with the associated heat increase and will quickly fail!

[kee-lo_]

That is rather handy, thanks Woody

[Woody27]

That is rather handy, thanks Woody

It's really handy for games....

....remember Half-Life 2 is released today (I may be offline for a while! ):smileygrin:

CW

[Twisted-Rizla]

That's an interesting suggestion Woody. Even more interesting now that I'm trying to run Doom3. Problem is it keeps hanging.
I'm running an RZ504 desktop with a 3.40 GHz P4 with an ATI Radeon 9600XT with 128 MB DDR SDRAM. Thing is, I would have thought the machine is man enough to run games like Doom3 without too much difficulty - that's one of the reasons I bought the thing!
I managed to get a longer run with the game by disabling the shadows and a couple other features in advanced set-up but it still hangs - albeit further into the game. (I'm running it in 800x600 mode)

Do you think this sounds like a driver problem?

[robpaxton]

It sounds like a driver problem to me. You shouldn't have any problem downloading the drivers for your computer direct from the ATI site. Only notebook owners need to modify the drivers.

[TygerTyger]

Ah. Now I know what that thingy is, thanks Woody. There's such an incandescent aura of charm around 'Dear all' precluding a post, don't you think? Well I do. :smileygrin:.

By the way please let me know how Half Life runs if you have a laptop, I'm dying to buy it.

[kee-lo_]

The pics look good TT

[Woody27]

That's an interesting suggestion Woody. Even more interesting now that I'm trying to run Doom3.  Problem is it keeps hanging. 

Do you think this sounds like a driver problem?

Yeah,

It is a driver problem... ...those crappy ones that Sony supplies!

Install the latest Omega Drivers (they are still better than the official ATi ones) and use RADLINKER to set the graphics options to best performance.

I can run this about 40-60 fps (perfectly playable) is the resolution is set to 1024x178, low resolution... ....it still looks gorgeous! (and this is only on a ATi Mobility Radeon 9200 with 64 Mb!).

Yes, I recommend turning the shadows off as they have a real impact on the performance of the game! It's a shame as they look really cool, but with all that frantic action you don't notice them after a while anyway!

Also, if you do a web search there are loads of DOOM3 tweak guides to let you get that little bit more speed out of the engine!

Hope this helps!

CW

[Woody27]

By the way please let me know how Half Life runs if you have a laptop, I'm dying to buy it.

Yeah I will,

I was ill yesterday and spent most of it in bed!

I hope to have a good look tonight and then I'll get back to you!

CW

[Twisted-Rizla]

Thanks Woody.
I'll check them out.