Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

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john_iv
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Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

Post by john_iv »

Hello all, long tenured player from the old old Links: Challenge of Golf days. :)

I had occasion to go through some video card updates recently and thought I'd give a warning as to the state of play with the latest cards from the red and green team. This is on a desktop system.

I previously had an AMD Radeon 390. With current drivers (20.02.2) this card played Links fine, it did anistropic filtering at 16 and did anti-aliasing at 8X.

Unfortunately I had to replace it and moved up to the new navi architecture based 5600XT. This is when things went south. The drivers plus the card produced a very ugly checkerboard effect on the golfer and other places where it was trying to anti-alias. I reported this to AMD in this thread:
https://community.amd.com/thread/249039

I returned the 5600XT and got a Radeon 590 which was the prior generation. That worked ok again with Links and the latest drivers, but it was overheating in other areas so that went back.

I then decided to try team Green for the first time in 12 years or so, and got a Geforce 2060. Apparently NVIDIA has long had problems with Links 2003 and anti-aliasing and I hit that, certain graphic elements are missing with AA turned on. However, you can get around this by turning on FXAA which applies an anti-aliasing to every pixel. This works better in fullscreen mode, NVIDIA now also has sharpening options so you can sharpen the image up a bit when using FXAA. Using NVIDIA you also get access to the opaque shadow for the golfer if you want. I urged NVIDIA to fix the problem too, here:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/fo ... links-2k3/

I don't have a late model AMD to see if they have fixed the issue yet w/ 20.03.1. NVIDIA is working alright w/ FXAA as mentioned for now. Good luck!
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john_iv
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Re: Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

Post by john_iv »

[removed post, issue still remained at this point]
Last edited by john_iv on February 23rd, 2021, 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Still Linksing
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Re: Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

Post by Still Linksing »

AA issue has been reported a million times over the years to Nvidia. They never did anything when Links 2003 was still kinda new, I certainly wouldn't expect anything now. There are so many new games coming out every day with the majority of people using Nvidia they worry about keeping up with the new games.

FXAA works but only with the newer cards.
For all the old golf games visit:
Golf Sim Clubhouse
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john_iv
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Re: Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

Post by john_iv »

Unfortunately, it looks like Links 2K3 is still not working 100% with AMD NAVI generation cards and current (6/7/20) driver 20.5.1.

I picked up another 5600XT card on the news it was working; having returned my prior for a 2060. This is an XFX Thic III Pro and with anti-aliasing on you get a white spike sticking out of the golfer's leg in close up mode.

Also, even worse, it's not respecting the anisotropic filtering driver setting so we lose our precious fore to midground detail on high res texture courses. :(

New thread here:
https://community.amd.com/message/2980417

Getting closer to what was working w/ older cards, laugh. [Update 6/7] Have played w/out anisotropic filtering for a few days and just can't do it. I have the prior gen Radeon 590 Fatboy arriving Wed. which based on previous experience should work fine with Links (AA and AF). I'll let the two cards co-exist until I have to send one back; hopefully the drivers get fixed for the newer more powerful cards.
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Re: Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

Post by john_iv »

Good news for AMD Radeon NAVI and better card (5500XT and upwards) players!
With today's 21.1.1 driver they have re-implemented anisotropic filtering in Links2K3 so we look great again! Been waiting a while. :)

Note there are still some residual issues outside of that:
Windowed mode, no anti-aliasing, white polygon spike from the golfer's ankle.
Fullscreen mode, anti-aliasing works, white polygon spike from the golfer's ankle.
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Re: Links 2003 current state of affairs with AMD / NVIDIA cards.

Post by john_iv »

Note there are still some residual issues outside of that:
Windowed mode, no anti-aliasing, white polygon spike from the golfer's ankle.


I found a workaround for getting anti-aliasing to work in windowed mode, you just need to fire up Links 2003 in windowed mode and then alt-enter to go into fullscreen mode, it will anti-alias at that point and you just alt-enter back to windowed mode and it will retain the anti-aliasing for that session.

Not perfect but at least if you are a windowed play fan it's smooth now.
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