ATI Catalyst drivers, are the new ones any good?

[ryoko 0]

Hi, Just got the 3.10 drivers for a new radeon 9700 pro, nice upgrade from the 7500 I had. I had been using the 3.8 drivers as many gamers said the 3.9 were quite bad. In fact many said that they went back to the 3.7 drivers. So with a new card I really can't compare the new drivers. Anyone have problems that older drivers fixed, or are these keepers?

 

As for me, they seem to work great, but then I only played COD with them so far.

 

-Ry

[rainwulf 0]

im currently using them and i have no problems with them at all... im running a 9700pro.

[sapiens74 0]

Have you tried the omega drivers?

 

 

If not here ya go:

 

http://www.omegacorner.com/index_ati.html

[Ali 0]

My All-In-Wonder 9700Pro had problems with 3.9 and i had to use a Hot fix to get it to work with many games in the first place!!!! therefore have not dared to upgrade it to 3.10 yet!!! But my 9100 and 9200 cards all working fine with 3.10 (considering that these cards don't take advantage of many parts of that drivers they should just work!!!)

 

 

Maybe i install it tonight!!!

[pmistry 0]

ATI.com would be a good place to get drivers.

 

Omega's drivers are sometimes good and sometimes bad....

[duhmez 0]

APK, if you just download the highspeed link to the drivers, then you get it all in one package, like nvidia. The broken up bits are for convienience of slow bandwidth users.

 

Goto www.rage3d.com to learn eveyrthing you need to know about tweaking these.

 

Did you know, with a firmware upgrade, you can change a 9500PRo into a full, real, 9700 pro?

[ryoko 0]

Quote:

Did you know, with a firmware upgrade, you can change a 9500PRo into a full, real, 9700 pro?

Do you have a link to anything about that? I heard about a flash that will allow overclocking the 9500, are you simply saying it overclocks to the speed of a non overclocked 9700 pro, or is it the same card, just the 9700 pro is designed to higher tolerances... which allow it to be pushed faster?

[duhmez 0]

Re: Making a 9500 a 9700: the firmware upgrade makes it so it behaves exactly like a 9700. The 9500 has some features crippled (I think 4 texture paths instead of 8. or something) and it makes the ati driver think the card really is a 9700. So install driver, and it does 9700 driver, including clock speed.

 

Of course the higher speed ram and gpu may not work right because it's not rated to run that high, but people do it all the time without issues. Do it at your own risk. Ill post a link later about all the info.

[sapiens74 0]

My 9800xt should be here any day

 

 

I've had problems with Enemy Territory crashing after I exit the game.

 

 

I've tried every new driver version from 3.7 -3.10

[pmistry 0]

There are some OpenGL issues with recent ATI releases, I am sure they will get fixed, even though ATI claims there aren't any really, some people have been having problems with RTCW and Call of Duty. Try disabling VPU recover or Overdrive to see if it corrects it. Also AGP Fast Writes should be OFF.

 

I tried the 3.10 drivers with my old Radeon 8500 and they work well, I still have problems with texture popping in Call of Duty if I increase the texture detail to Maximum.

[pmistry 0]

Hey AlecStarr, if you are having problems with ATI's drivers and installing them, get the Catalyst Uninstaller from ATI's site.

 

They work really well for me:

 

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/misc/catalystutils.html

[Ali 0]

Quote:

I tried the 3.10 drivers with my old Radeon 8500 and they work well, I still have problems with texture popping in Call of Duty if I increase the texture detail to Maximum.

wow never noticed that with my 9700Pro.


ET crashes very often on all my computers. especially when you download a new map it crashes as soon as you join a team. when you restart the game and go to the same map it works perfectly fine there after!!! I have lots of problems with ATI's Linux drivers!!!! the simply SUCK!!!!

[DosFreak 2]

Odd, usually the CP is included with the drivers. Perhaps old Nvidia CP is messing with the ATI CP? I've never had any trouble.

[pmistry 0]

The uninstaller removes all traces of ATI Catalyst information, and I believe the control panel too. If it doesn't simply use Add/Remove to get rid of the ATI control panel. You simply just run the utility and off it goes. You might to look at some Registry Cleanup software to get rid of any old Nvidia entries you might have lying around too.

[Ali 0]

Quote:

(Part of WHY I stick to batchfile installs, very reliable... ugly as hell, but work under ANY circumstances & totally customizeable & analyzeable by end-users too!)

APK

If the "end user" is you. for my clients, they better use the "Canned" drivers!!! they can't cook!!!!

[jmmijo 1]

So since this is a thread about the latest Catalyst drivers I thought perhaps I'd sample any thoughts on compatibility with said drivers and/or ATi graphics cards and the game Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna.

 

A good friend of mine recently purchased the AIW 9600 and unfortunately DS crashes and/or locks up after about a minute or two.

 

He brought the machine over to my house to get it fixed so we flatlined his boot drive and re-installed XP Pro from scratch and I proceeded to do a base install with the latest drivers for everything.

 

Still it freaked out and I was beginning to think it's the graphics card and/or drivers.

 

Some forums seem to think there is some compatibility problem with this graphics card but who knows.

 

So any thougths would be appreciated on this issue, thanks

[Ali 0]

Quote:

So any thougths would be appreciated on this issue, thanks

With Cat. 3.9 they had a hot fix for All-In-Wonder cards as OpenGL and D3D games crashed. the hot fix worked perfectly fine for cat 3.9, but my A-I-W 9700 pro has no problems working with cat. 3.10. you could try the hotfix first (it does include the drivers also) and see if that helps.

[jmmijo 1]

Thanks for the info

[Ali 0]

Quote:

That's a point for sure... BUT, can they read?

I often skip over reading tech texts, who doesn't? BUT, guys like us have a HECK of alot of saavy in this field along w/ experience... & can usually work-around things w/out using those. BUT, there are times I wished I would have taken the time to take a read though FIRST too, I have to admit.

True!!! Like Techs say, "When every attempt failed, then consult the user's manual".




I personally deal with more hardware than software. and when you have 20 services to do everyday you may not have the time for cooking!!! so too many times a day I juat throw the frozen stuff in the microwave to save time!!! (use OEM preinstall kit/Ghost image) or use canned drivers when doing thigs from scratch for customers!!!
i do take the time to fix up myown computers in the best possible way. once they're set they just work because it is done properly. It happens alot tho, customers do their own installations and there are a lot of lose screws! and it just doesn't work the way they want it! sometimes they don't know there is a can they've got to open!!! it sometimes happens that people don't even know they must install drivers!!! so they don't even go for the can. they just starve!!!!