Cat 3.8 finally got it right

  • Thread starter Thread starter Craig
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Craig

I have been somewhat disappointed with the Radeon 9700 and 9800 pros that I
have as although they are very fast, they have always had choppy frames or
stuttering. The Catalyst 3.8's have completely smoothed out the rendering
in games and benchmarks. They are not faster for me, just very smooth. My
Geforce 4 was very smooth but of course, not as fast. Finally the best of
both worlds. Anyone else notice this?
 
Actually... No, I haven't.

You know it really disturbs me that there is such an inconsistency between
various people's experiences with CAT drivers. I love the 9800 Pro's
hardware, and when it's being driven correctly it flys... however, the CAT
drivers, whether it be 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, whatever... do not compare to the
detonator drivers in terms of quality, consistency, and ease of use.

God damn it ATI, get your act together and leverage your powerful hardware
with some decent drivers. And next time... FIX more things than you BREAK
with a CAT release :(
 
And next time... FIX more things than you BREAK
with a CAT release :(
Click to expand...

You got that right! These CAT 3.8 drivers are NFG with Il-2-FB. Some
of us still like flightsims ATI!
 
You know it really disturbs me that there is such an inconsistency between
various people's experiences with CAT drivers. I love the 9800 Pro's
hardware, and when it's being driven correctly it flys... however, the CAT
drivers, whether it be 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, whatever... do not compare to the
detonator drivers in terms of quality, consistency, and ease of use.

God damn it ATI, get your act together and leverage your powerful hardware
with some decent drivers. And next time... FIX more things than you BREAK
with a CAT release :(
Click to expand...

hmmmm ... Ive never had any probs with ATi drivers ... Cat's or even their
old, pre-cat drivers.

I do perfer the Cats over their old drivers. And nVidia Dets are not exactly
doing so well at the moment. (and imho, have never been as good as everyone
claims)
 
"And nVidia Dets are not exactly
doing so well at the moment."
Click to expand...

- Set aside any image quality or Pixel shader issues that the most recent
incarnations of the DET drivers might have. You still have a plethora of
driver releases to fall back on that work almost flawlessly (that's peace of
mind). However, the bugs that afflict CAT drivers often result in a game
simply not being playable.

Also the fact that you've "never had any probs with ATi drivers ... Cat's or
even their
old, pre-cat drivers." just reaffirms the inconsistency between the
Click to expand...
customers personal experiences with the drivers. Something is very flaky
somewhere.
 
some of this is soft mods and hard mods.....some posters won't say that's what they've done, as it leads automatically to their
botched mod. maybe not the majority But there is a good %
 
- Set aside any image quality or Pixel shader issues that the most recent
incarnations of the DET drivers might have. You still have a plethora of
driver releases to fall back on that work almost flawlessly (that's peace of
mind).
Click to expand...

The same can be said about the Cats's ... the only thing I can see that's
bad about them is that one release something is borked and in the next
release they fix that and bork something else ... which leads me to:
However, the bugs that afflict CAT drivers often result in a game
simply not being playable.
Click to expand...

I dont play a wide enough variety of games to notice this - and I base my
graphics choices more on my desktop apps than my 3d games. And for 2d work,
nVidia has always been inferior to ATi no matter the driver issues. I love
ATi's crisp 2d over nVidia's washed out, almost blurry 2d.

To be fair, I have owned only one nVidia product and that was when I borked
my old SiS card (this was a few years ago lol) and I bought a TNT 2 to
replace it. I could not get the thing to even install. Took it back and
traded it for a Voodoo3 card (now there was driver support for ya - I miss
3dfx) - after the V3 I got a V5500 and then a Radeon64 vivo. Since the Rad64
I have enver looked back. I do have a friend who swore by nVidia (traded his
GeForce cards in every time they had a new card come out) until he started
having issues with Det drivers (mostly that good ol Infinite Loop prob) ...
he recently picked up a Rad9600 and loves it drivers and all.

To each their own I guess ... the graphics companies make their coin off
this kind of rivalry ....
Also the fact that you've "never had any probs with ATi drivers ... Cat's or
even their
customers personal experiences with the drivers. Something is very flaky
somewhere.
Click to expand...

At least they are on top of Cat updates though. Before they started with the
unified drivers us ATi supporters had to wait 6 - 7 months before a driver
update would show ...
 
Getting it RIGHT would be no carry over quirks and defects, this is NOT the case, this is a case of 'closer' to getting it right. I
could do very well without ?easylook?(that name doesn't fit). and 'shaders'(can you record using shaders? hell no, so the point of
that would be?) I haven't used any other cards after diamond left the market. ATI has been my only card of choice.....they have
never gotten it RIGHT.....that is to say without DX problems and the like. I will not go down the N path as I have gotten used to
the ATI quirks I would hate to begin from ground zero again.
 
you said:
dont play a wide enough variety of games to notice this - and I base my
graphics choices more on my desktop apps than my 3d games. And for 2d work,
nVidia has always been inferior to ATi no matter the driver issues. I love
ATi's crisp 2d over nVidia's washed out, almost blurry 2d.
Click to expand...

So speaking of 2d.... Have you ever heard of game called Subspace? or better
known now as Continuum? It is an old style top-down 2d scrolling Massively
Online Multiplayer space shooter. It uses directdraw to accelerate the 2d
affects. Since the voodoo3 I have enjoyed frame rates steady at 100fps
1024x768. I had no issues with any of my nvidia cards, and up until cat 3.8
no issues with my ati card. Well... all good things must come to an end...
especially when it comes to CAT driver updates. In comes 3.8 and down goes
frame rates to 8-10fps in Continuum. Thanks ATI.
 
I have noticed something along those lines also....Old red alert....2d scroll and many units and the game dies....reboot and all is
well for 2-3 hours then if I restart the game...no go too choppy.....ME or XP..
revert back to 3.7 no problems.....I think I'm seeing memory leak problems again
 
quite possible

--
Tony DiMarzio
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
JAD said:
I have noticed something along those lines also....Old red alert....2d
Click to expand...
scroll and many units and the game dies....reboot and all is
 
hmmmm ... Ive never had any probs with ATi drivers ... Cat's or even their
old, pre-cat drivers.

I do perfer the Cats over their old drivers. And nVidia Dets are not exactly
doing so well at the moment. (and imho, have never been as good as everyone
claims)
Click to expand...

You have to test the CAT's on more than two games.
 
I dont play a wide enough variety of games to notice this - and I base my
graphics choices more on my desktop apps than my 3d games. And for 2d work,
nVidia has always been inferior to ATi no matter the driver issues. I love
ATi's crisp 2d over nVidia's washed out, almost blurry 2d.
Click to expand...

Yea, that is true but if you don't play many games then you are not
qualified to be in this thread. Move along.
 
And for 2d work, nVidia has always been inferior to ATi no matter the driver issues. I love
ATi's crisp 2d over nVidia's washed out, almost blurry 2d.
Click to expand...

I can sure agree to that. My brother has an old GF2 Ti. While
it's old, it was a top end card back then, and when you compare his
desktop to my Radeon 9000, the GF2 hurts my eyes. My old Rage Fury
Maxx did better 2D than the GF2.
I have another PC with a GF3 ti200 with a 21" display. I can
tell the difference between the crisp Radeon, and it, but the GF3
display is not as fuzzy as that GF2. Can't say if the new GF FX line
is any better though.
 
you got that right! I do QA for a Linux based OS that my company produces
and if I were to let bugs like the ones that plague 3.8 through they'd give
me the boot!

Thy should have a team of guys testing each driver release for a large list
of games and applications and perform regression testing as well, unless
they want to call each release a beta.
 
you said:


So speaking of 2d.... Have you ever heard of game called Subspace? or better
known now as Continuum? It is an old style top-down 2d scrolling Massively
Online Multiplayer space shooter. It uses directdraw to accelerate the 2d
affects. Since the voodoo3 I have enjoyed frame rates steady at 100fps
1024x768. I had no issues with any of my nvidia cards, and up until cat 3.8
no issues with my ati card. Well... all good things must come to an end...
especially when it comes to CAT driver updates. In comes 3.8 and down goes
frame rates to 8-10fps in Continuum. Thanks ATI.
Click to expand...


I had noticed that Freelancer would start to get choppy when
alot ships where in combat near me. I thought it was the CAT 3.8
drivers at first. Before installing the new drivers, I decided it was
time to do a format, and reinstall of Windows. I also decided to
change my old soundcard out with a newer cheap PCI 3D card. The old
one was an old Xwave QS3000 PCI.
Affter everything was installed, and updated, I fired up
Freelancer, and it kept getting choppy in large combats. I then
noticed that even though my HUD was turned away from the ships, with
empty space in the display, it still got choppy.... When explosions,
and lots of laser fire sounds where heard. I went into the Sounds &
Multimedia Audio settings, and lowered the playback sound
acceleration. Now the game is smooth as it was before.
Can't say if it's just the cheap soundcard's fault, or the CAT
3.8, but it's something maybe people can try. I have a Radeon 9000,
and a GF3. The GF3 is my favorite at this time for games, but most of
my games work just as well on the Radeon as they do on the GF3. Some
that work on the GF3 won't work on the Radeon, and vice versa, so I
keep both products.
 
hmmmm ... Ive never had any probs with ATi drivers ... Cat's or even their
old, pre-cat drivers.

I do perfer the Cats over their old drivers. And nVidia Dets are not exactly
doing so well at the moment. (and imho, have never been as good as everyone
claims)
Click to expand...

Most of the 'problems' people report are due to their lack of understanding on
how to properly install them correctly. Or flakey systems that are not
configured right.

Pluvious
 
So speaking of 2d.... Have you ever heard of game called Subspace? or
better
known now as Continuum? It is an old style top-down 2d scrolling Massively
Online Multiplayer space shooter. It uses directdraw to accelerate the 2d
affects. Since the voodoo3 I have enjoyed frame rates steady at 100fps
1024x768. I had no issues with any of my nvidia cards, and up until cat 3.8
no issues with my ati card. Well... all good things must come to an end...
especially when it comes to CAT driver updates. In comes 3.8 and down goes
frame rates to 8-10fps in Continuum. Thanks ATI.
Click to expand...

I was actually referring to 2d as in Photoshop, Flash and the desktop in
general ...
 
i noticed bad stuttering with the initial drivers (2.2?) on my old 9700 Pro,
especially in Morrowind. it was finally corrected in the Cat 2.5 drivers.
since then i've upgraded to a 9800 Pro and the only problem i had was in
Duke Nukem Manhattan Project. i had to disable Fast Writes with the 3.5
drivers to get the game from freezing up. it was corrected in the 3.6
drivers.

all the other games i have (and i have many, old & new) have run without a
glitch, though i still see that people are having problems with IL-2
Sturmikov even with the 3.8 drivers. i've heard that ATi will be putting
their efforts into stability of the drivers over the next few driver
releases rather than performance (performance should remain the same). i
think i saw that on Rage3d.com (not sure).
 
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