First off I want to say before getting the PC version of Rage I finished the game on my xBox and really enjoyed it. It ran super smooth on Xbox but I hated not having a mouse and keyboard. Seeing some PC enhancements were in the works I wanted to replay the game on my PC with better looking textures etc... I returned the xBox version to Gamestop for a little cash and took the plunge on the PC version despite reading about all the issues on this forum. I've dealt with my share of PC issues over the years and figured I could probably solve any problems my system might have with Rage. Here is how it went down.

After first installing Rage on my PC I had a lot of AMD problems described throughout the forum. I was using a Radeon HD 4670. The graphics were corrupted the first time I tried to run the game with the grey patches over most of the screen. I then installed the AMD Rage preview Driver 2 and had the same issues. Following that fail I uninstalled the ATI driver and used Driver Sweeper to clean house. I rebooted and reinstalled the preview 2 drivers and the game began working pretty well. The Rage patch came out and things even got a little better visually.

Then curiosity got the best of me and I tried installing the AMD Preview 3 drivers. I experienced errors during my first two attempts to just install the drivers. On the third attempt the drivers appeared to install without errors but Rage was all screwed up again sending me back to square one. I eventually got the game to work but performance was notably degraded over the Preview 2 drivers and the game felt like it was lurching when I moved around (almost like skpping frames). To make matters worse occasionally I had a 3-5 second freeze in the middle of playing. Driving around the Wasteland was now noticeably choppy. I cleaned out the drivers and reinstalled the preview 3 drivers a second time but no improvements with performance. Strangely, with the AMD preview 3 drivers I had to have Catalyst AI enabled or I ended up with all kinds of graphics corruption. I kept the Catalyst AI disabled with Preview 2 drivers. Also under the CCC I had to keep Vsync set to either completely on or off. The two middle settings caused the game to crash when I tried to change a video setting with Rage.

In the end, I was disgusted with the numerous problems AMD's flakey drivers exhibited. Furthermore, reading about the all the frustrating issues people were having on this forum made it clear to me that AMD was the problem and I picked up a nvidia GTX 550ti today. The hardware and software installed perfectly and Rage runs super smooth without a single issue right off the bat. I feel bad for id because I think Rage is a great game with stunning level design and graphics. It’s a real shame AMD dropped the ball with their drivers and caused such a horrendous launch for the game. However, I also feel id could have prepared the game better for the PC launch. I'm confident id will make things 100% right for PC users soon. AMD on the other hand should be ashamed of themselves and I’m glad to rid of their lousy drivers. I will never purchase one of their video cards again.

Eric

I am rocking it on higher settings than I see most nVidia users using and I am running beyond smooth. I have all my CCC settings maxed out and nothing set to application (not even Anisotropic Filtering is maxed out to 16X without using application settings.)

And just now I changed my vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly values to 16384 which is the highest it can go and before the preview 3 drivers none of this was possible and the vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly 16384 was unnoticeable but now everything is beyond perfect and I see a huge difference in the textures with the cache at 16384.

My specs:

OS: Windows 7 x64 Home Premium (S.P. 1)
CPU: QuadCore Intel Core i7-875K, 3200 MHz (24 x 133)
MB: Intel Ibex Peak P55, Intel Lynnfield
MEMORY: 8183 MB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
GPU 2: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series

nVidia is dandy and all, but don't bash AMD. Myself and tons of others would take our AMD's over nVidia's any day of the week.

That being said, I am positive with a little more patience you could have got it running smooth on your AMD.

I've been an ATI user for many years without any major issues in the past. With Rage I had spent too much time with trying to make it run right. I've never had to screw around with a video card just to make a game work as much as I did with Rage and I ran out of patience. Also, I've never seen so many problems just simply trying to update a video card driver. So I figured I would try the nvidia card since I had 30 days to test it out without restocking fees from Best Buy. Granted I think my HD4670 was struggling a bit at my native resolution of 1920 X 1200 but Rage was working farily well at one point. After trying out the preview 3 drivers I could never get it back to where I was and that was unacceptable. I think it is kind of sad a clear solution has not been discovered for everyone by now. I thought about trying a higher end AMD card but I felt like it would just be more of the same.

I'm glad yours is running well and I wish I knew why. What resolution are you running at? It seems like the luck of the draw for Rage/AMD users.

With prewiew 3 driver it works like a charm,but i had to start over a new game i deleted all configs and cleared cache.

I am running at 1920x1080

This, in a nutshell, is exactly what the problem is.

I remember developing OpenGL programs back in 2001/2002, and ATI (as they were then) were always a constant source of trouble. Problems I encountered were missing OpenGL entry points, missing support for extensions that were required for the OpenGL version they claimed to support (blend squaring was one I particularly remember), etc. Even more recently, AMD benchmark at over 6 times slower than NVIDIA for glTexSubImage2D calls (which, if I'm guessing right, are at the core of the megatexture technology) under OpenGL, and a modern Radeon benchmarks over 3 times slower than a 5 year old integrated Intel at dynamic texture updates in Direct3D.

They're hard figures that can't be argued with, and these are the technologies that Rage is so reliant on. It is any surprise that there were problems with AMD?

Yes, AMD are fine if the engine code restricts itself to doing stuff that AMD ain't rubbish at. Otherwise the limitations of their driver come to the fore in a pretty dramatic fashion.

I can't think of many games besides Brink and Rage that had ATI specific problems.

Rage worked fine for me though, so given those circumstances I'd go for ATI any day because of their better price to performance ratio.

dont forget their was alot of problems with nvidia cards at launch too, in fact some of them were with the very card you just bought

This line made me lol so hard,

Stunning level design (it's a linear corridor shooter) and graphics (you blind, look at the textures!).

I do however agree with you that nvidia have MUCH better drivers than AMD. And again, I lol @ the kids saying "I got it working in ccc with little to no tweaking and changing configuration files".

I'll ask this question, what do you do with Rage after you zip through and campaign and co-op on nightmare? This game gives you a week of entertainment max.

I agree it's too much on rails and most games are but I think the overall artwork and design on this game is second to none. Yes it would be nice to see higher res textures throughout the levels but I don't need that to get pulled into the world they created and get immersed in the action. I don't spend my time playing games with my nose against the walls examining textures. I first played through the game on the xbox and the textures were not nearly as good as they are on my PC but that did not detract from a very positive experience. I'm enjoying the game even more on the PC now that I have it running flawlessly.

What game would you say is the opposite of Rage as far as non linear, great textures, exciting game play and adequate play time?

Most shooters I've played have only given me around 20 hours of play time. Rage took me about 23 hours to complete on the xbox and I skipped some of the little things like field goals. At a cost of $60.00 that is less than $3 an hour which I think is fair. In most cases I go back and replay my favorite levels/missions for another 10+ hours of game play. With Rage I'm already on 20 hours in of PC play for a total of 43 hours of playtime and I have not completed my second play through yet. I take my time with the missions and try to be tactical with my attacks. I don't like the run and gun approach. Furthermore, I have not tried any of the coop levels either.

Chronicles of Riddike: Assault on Dark Athena did, too.