ati graphic card driver installation question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alexander Mahr
  • Start date Start date
A

Alexander Mahr

Hi Newsgroup,

I wanna install the graphic driver for my new ati radoen 9800pro.
In the installation program for the graphic card driver I have several
thing which could/should be installed. Since I don't wanna install
everything which is offerd me in the installation wizard

(which is:
ati display driver,
ati control panel,
hydravision,
directx)

I wanted to ask you wether someone could tell me which of the things
mentioned above is esetntial for getting the full performance of
the graphic adapter.

As far as I know hydrovision is just a software for
switching monitores.... (and not necessary for full performace => in
other word unwanted "crap").

But what is with the "ati control panel"?
Do I need it to be installed for full speed? Or what exactly is it good for?


For answer help or a point to another NG dealing with things like tat
I'd be very happy ....


CU Alexander
 
alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati

As an owner /user of ati cards I can tell you that:
1 ATI control panel is NOT needed although it does give you some
diagnostics that you may find helpful
2. hydrovision, as you said, is not needed for performance
3. If you have had a Nvidia (or any card) card prior to the ATI, make
sure you get rid of ALL driver files and software
4. Use the CD that came with your card, then a visit to the ATI site
for the newest files would be in order. There you will find an ALL IN
ONE download of drivers. This will eliminate a concern of which order
to install the various files. Then a second download of the newest MMC
(multimedia center) software would be a suggestion. Sometimes it would
be advised to use the drivers that came with the card for awhile to
make sure all is stable before dabbling in the upgrades. There are
also OMEGA (third party) gaming drivers ( www.omega.com ) I can tell
you, if you want to use your card for things other than gaming
(animations / cad etc.) steer clear of those.

HTH
 
Why? My experience with ATI is that their video cards suck. Great
paper specs. piss poor backward compatibility. In other words, their
cards are terrible on older games.

hawk
 
Alexander Mahr said:
Hi Newsgroup,

I wanna install the graphic driver for my new ati radoen 9800pro.
In the installation program for the graphic card driver I have several
thing which could/should be installed. Since I don't wanna install
everything which is offerd me in the installation wizard

(which is:
ati display driver,
ati control panel,
hydravision,
directx)

I wanted to ask you wether someone could tell me which of the things
mentioned above is esetntial for getting the full performance of
the graphic adapter.

As far as I know hydrovision is just a software for
switching monitores.... (and not necessary for full performace => in
other word unwanted "crap").

But what is with the "ati control panel"?
Do I need it to be installed for full speed? Or what exactly is it good for?
Click to expand...
I would still install the ATI control panel if I were you. It allows
you to check (and change) various graphics options for the card, such as
D3D and OGL performance settings, AGP speed, fast-writes etc
 
ooooo A nvidia fanboy.....heh, I play 'leisure suit Larry on a ATI
card how far back do you want to go? centipede pac man? what?
 
You call those games? I imagine even an old DOS system and CAG would
be sufficient for Larry, centipede and pac man.

Regards, hawk
 
starcraft - warcraft -command and conquer- unreal 1 -quake1-
diablo -simms- hitman -max pain 1 -sof 1 , like i said name the
genre' and the year that won't play on an ATI card!
 
Well, you are obviously an ATI fan. I have never been a fan of any
particular video card. But, I have this older flight simulator, a
classic, Jane's FA-18. My desktop came with an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 128
MB in an Asus P4PE motherboard AGP 4X slot. It is in a WinXP Home
system, DirectX 9.0 with a 2.4 GHz P4, 1 GHz RAM, two 40 GB Hard
Drives and a 17 inch G70f ViewSonic monitor. I could never get the
game to play without serious problems. An ocean surface that looked
like a chess board with grid lines, double writing on the HUD that
made it un-readable, frame rates that would slow to less than 10 fps
and frequent crash to desktop. And I tried all of the tweaks that the
Sim geeks could offer. Radlinker, turn off water sparkle, turn off low
level noise, turn down graphics quality, etc. The one thing I refused
to do was to set up my new WinXP system to run as if it was an old
Win98fe system. (One of the "fixes" suggested by the experts.)

Then I bought a Sony laptop for times when I travel, PCG-GRT150. It is
a WinXP Home system, DirectX 9.0 with a 2.8 GHz P4M, 512 MB RAM, a 60
GB Hard Drive and a 16 inch LCD monitor. And it has an Nvidia GeForce4
420 Go with 32 MB, AGP 4X. I had no intention of running the Jane's
FA-18 on the laptop, but then one day just for kicks I installed FA-18
and tried it. FA-18 ran perfectly with no tweaks of any kind to the
default game parameters or to the Nvidia default settings. Then I
installed a newer simulator, Ubisoft's LockOn. It also ran perfectly
with no tweaks.

So, I did a little research and found an Nvidia for my desktop that I
thought had specs. similar to the Sony laptop. It is an Nvidia
GeForce4 Ti4200, AGP8X with 128 MB by Jaton. I removed all ATI drivers
and software and made sure that only windows generic drivers were
installed when I shut down to install the Nvidia video card in the
AGP4X slot.

I followed installation instructions for the hardware and for the
software. Guess what? Jane's FA-18 and Ubisoft LockOn both run
perfectly with no tweaks to any default game parameters or to any
default Nvidia settings. So, I have become an Nvidia fan.

End of story.

Regards, hawk
 
actually I have many different cards and like you, never really
considered myself a fan of any particular 'brand' of anything, but
when you make a generalized statement like your first, I have a hard
time accepting that. There are always certain games and software that
don't play well with particular hardware. Many of those software
companies will patch or simply fix it in a later release if the title
is a winner ($). I cannot recall anything that didn't play on my
geforce as well as the ATI card of a comparable power. However, if you
look hard enough or even seek out a particular game that has problems,
many times it ends up being a matter of the latest and greatest
mainboard and chipsets that haven't been tested by the software
developer, rather than the vidcard. Which comes back to the patch or
release of a new edition. I don't think that any developer would
intentionally make a piece of software that would limit their customer
base by leaving out one hardware maker for the sake of another. I
find that flight simms seem to be one of the more troublesome ones
when having convos about this subject. So rather saying don't buy an
ATI ,nvidia, diamond etc., it should be, use caution when buying
software that doesn't play well with your hardware of any brand.

Laptops, IMO, were not (and still in many cases -are not) designed
very well to take on gaming. Mobility CPU's are coming of age
currently, but prior to a couple of years ago, were seriously lacking
in the 'gaming' realm.

Dealing with ATI's drivers can be a headache that is for sure. The
more we demand from them the more complicated it gets it seems. As you
know, the relationship between your OS and DirectX / OGL are big
players also.
 
JAD said:
ooooo A nvidia fanboy.....heh, I play 'leisure suit Larry on a ATI
card how far back do you want to go? centipede pac man? what?
Click to expand...

I recently bought a 'gaming' card. ATi seemed pretty good. The card is
okay (maybe it's my motherboard, but the card won't run at 8x, I have to
set it to 4x or it crashes on last year's RTS games!!), but the drivers
suck arse in a big way. I re,e,ber having problems like this with
nVidia's drivers around the time WinXP first came out. I'm unimpressed
enough with ATi that next time I'll pay a little extra and go with
nVidia simply to avoid the driver hassles.
 
Well, the FA-18 simulation hasn't been updated for 4-5 years. One
release and one update. The Ubisoft simulation was just released late
last year, with one update out and a second one in progress. So, it is
not the software developer who is making the difference. It seems to
me that Nvidia is doing something with their hardware/drivers that
results in more backward compatibility. I think the FA-18 was written
for about DirectX 7.0. I suppose it is even possible to argue that
Nvidia hasn't implemented as many advanced features as ATI. What ever
the reason, I have become an Nvidia convert.

Regards, hawk
 
sooky grumper said:
I recently bought a 'gaming' card. ATi seemed pretty good. The card is
okay (maybe it's my motherboard, but the card won't run at 8x, I have to
set it to 4x or it crashes on last year's RTS games!!), but the drivers
suck arse in a big way. I re,e,ber having problems like this with
nVidia's drivers around the time WinXP first came out. I'm unimpressed
enough with ATi that next time I'll pay a little extra and go with
nVidia simply to avoid the driver hassles.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that you're having problems with the ATI drivers. I've
been using ATI cards for six years and I've had good success with
their drivers and driver upgrades. They do a very good job these days
in issuing driver updates, much better than they did in the past.
 
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