driver maturity = less posts

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tony DiMarzio
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Tony DiMarzio

I've noticed a steady decline in the frequency of posts to this NG in the
past months. All other things besides driver maturity being equal, I'd have
to conclude that there is a direct and inverse correlation between the
frequency of "alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati" posts and the qualitative
state of the Catalyst driver package.

Seems the ATI crap driver stigma is fading to a distant memory, and rightly
so.
 
Tony said:
I've noticed a steady decline in the frequency of posts to this NG in the
past months. All other things besides driver maturity being equal, I'd have
to conclude that there is a direct and inverse correlation between the
frequency of "alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati" posts and the qualitative
state of the Catalyst driver package.

Seems the ATI crap driver stigma is fading to a distant memory, and rightly
so.
Click to expand...

ATIs drivers have been pretty good in Windows for over a year.

At last, they're making headway in Linux too.

Can't wait for the next driver release. (Thats 'cos I'll be setting up
my new AMD64 / X800XL tomorrow.)

Ben
 
Ben Pope said:
ATIs drivers have been pretty good in Windows for over a year.

At last, they're making headway in Linux too.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test ATI's current Linux driver
implementation because the Linux kernels don't yet support the K8T800 series
chipsets... which means no GART support, which means no 3D acceleration. I
can only test the fglx driver in 2D.
Can't wait for the next driver release. (Thats 'cos I'll be setting up my
new AMD64 / X800XL tomorrow.)
Click to expand...

I've been seriously considering the X800XL AGP. Let me know how it works out
for you.
 
Tony said:
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test ATI's current Linux driver
implementation because the Linux kernels don't yet support the K8T800 series
chipsets... which means no GART support, which means no 3D acceleration. I
can only test the fglx driver in 2D.
Click to expand...

Really? How annoying. I take it the internal GART driver doesn't work
either, then. Or is that 2D only?
I've been seriously considering the X800XL AGP. Let me know how it works out
for you.
Click to expand...

Will do. It's sitting at a nice price/performance point.

I wanted to go with a PCIe board, and didn't want to spend over £100 on
an X700 and gain nothing over my 9800 Pro... so I decided the XL was my
best bet, should double my performance, or thereabouts. Will end up
costing me in the region of £100 anyway.

Ben
 
I've noticed a steady decline in the frequency of posts to this NG in the
past months. All other things besides driver maturity being equal, I'd have
to conclude that there is a direct and inverse correlation between the
frequency of "alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati" posts and the qualitative
state of the Catalyst driver package.

Seems the ATI crap driver stigma is fading to a distant memory, and rightly
so.
Click to expand...

Additionally, the 'pros' that are in the group have contributed to the
finding the solutions to the tough problems and the 'smarter by the
day' users know how to research for solutions to their problems.
 
Really? How annoying. I take it the internal GART driver doesn't work
either, then. Or is that 2D only?
Click to expand...

That's right. Neither the internal ATI bundled GART driver nor the kernel
GART driver will work. Which means I have no GART support and only 2D
acceleration. Apparently, there is a kernel patch that can be applied to
2.6.x kernels to get K8T800 and other newer chipsets supported.... but it's
such a hassle. I'm just gonna wait for an official stable Linux kernel with
support for the new Athlon64 chipsets before I dive in again.

It really is a shame that it takes so long for Linux to catch up with new,
state-of-the-art PC hardware. From a gamer's perspective, one of the main
reasons for sticking to windows is driver support out of the box in windows
and not in Linux.
Will do. It's sitting at a nice price/performance point.

I wanted to go with a PCIe board, and didn't want to spend over £100 on an
X700 and gain nothing over my 9800 Pro... so I decided the XL was my best
bet, should double my performance, or thereabouts. Will end up costing me
in the region of £100 anyway.
Click to expand...

I'm going with an AGP board because it was only in September that I bought
an FX-53/Asus A8V combo :) No way I'm upgrading my $180.00 mobo that
quickly. Gotta get a year out of it at least right?!
 
Tony said:
That's right. Neither the internal ATI bundled GART driver nor the kernel
GART driver will work. Which means I have no GART support and only 2D
acceleration. Apparently, there is a kernel patch that can be applied to
2.6.x kernels to get K8T800 and other newer chipsets supported.... but it's
such a hassle. I'm just gonna wait for an official stable Linux kernel with
support for the new Athlon64 chipsets before I dive in again.

It really is a shame that it takes so long for Linux to catch up with new,
state-of-the-art PC hardware. From a gamer's perspective, one of the main
reasons for sticking to windows is driver support out of the box in windows
and not in Linux.
Click to expand...

I was suprised because as far as I know, the nForce4 / AMD64 situation
is quite good in Linux. In front of MS Windows... (Which still doesn't
have a 64bit OS or apps.)

But yes, the graphics drivers for ATI have been somewhat dissapointing,
I'm going with an AGP board because it was only in September that I bought
an FX-53/Asus A8V combo :) No way I'm upgrading my $180.00 mobo that
quickly. Gotta get a year out of it at least right?!
Click to expand...

Yeah, understood. Would like to point out that PCIe boards don't
require GART. As far as the OS is concerned, it's a PCI slot.

I'd go with patching the kernel... it's not that much hassle for a
working system.

Ben
 
Tony DiMarzio said:
I've noticed a steady decline in the frequency of posts to this NG in the
past months. All other things besides driver maturity being equal, I'd have
to conclude that there is a direct and inverse correlation between the
frequency of "alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati" posts and the qualitative
state of the Catalyst driver package.

Seems the ATI crap driver stigma is fading to a distant memory, and rightly
so.
Click to expand...


ATI's drivers are very good. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any
negative experiences in recent times, and I have quite a few games installed
on my main computer. Since I jumped from nVidia back to ATI in the spring
of 2003, I've been very happy overall. I appreciate the frequency of driver
updates too since there's nothing like having a driver problem and having to
wait a few months to have it fixed through an official update.
 
Tony DiMarzio said:
I've noticed a steady decline in the frequency of posts to this NG in the
past months. All other things besides driver maturity being equal, I'd
have to conclude that there is a direct and inverse correlation between
the frequency of "alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati" posts and the
qualitative state of the Catalyst driver package.

Seems the ATI crap driver stigma is fading to a distant memory, and
rightly so.
Click to expand...

I think it has more to do with the X series of cards not being that good
compared to 6600/6800 cards and most of us are stuck with 9xxx cards. My
9700 is still going strong for me but I do have to choose the right drivers.
Ive played Kotor2 recently - that required the 4.3 opengl and HL2 plays best
with the 4.12s but they stopped functioning on my machine and I wasnt even
overclocking. The only stable drivers Ive found out of the entire 4 series
that caused no glitches with any games were the 4.3s and the 4.8s were
pretty good. So the suggestion that ATI drivers are stable is rubbish. The
5.1/5.2 are known to cause huge slowdowns in HL2 for some ppl which is
completely unacceptable after all that crap about it running best on
Radeons.
 
I think it has more to do with the X series of cards not being that good
compared to 6600/6800 cards and most of us are stuck with 9xxx cards.
Click to expand...

That's quite a generalization you've made there. You should probably contact
ATI and tell them to stop making the X series of cards immediately and cut
their losses while they still can because they pale in comparison to the
competing NVidia card and no one will ever buy an X series card. A company
would pay good money for insider information like this. Oh, and tell them
that Kotor2 is still giving you problems so you're going to sue for pain and
suffering. They'll listen to you I'm sure.
My 9700 is still going strong for me but I do have to choose the right
drivers.
Ive played Kotor2 recently - that required the 4.3 opengl and
Click to expand...
HL2 plays best with the 4.12s but they stopped functioning on my machine
and I wasnt even overclocking.
Click to expand...

The drivers stopped functioning? Drivers are software. They do what they are
supposed to do from day one to day last and will execute identically each
time until some other change is introduced into the environment like a file
corruption or library change. I think you meant to say, "something changed
on my registry-bloated, p2p-loaded, ad-ware-infested windows box that made
my machine not work well with the 4.12 drivers." - that about right?
The only stable drivers Ive found out of the entire 4 series that caused no
glitches with any games were the 4.3s and the 4.8s were pretty good.
Click to expand...

Countless people have experienced no system instability issues what so ever
through the entire history of ATI drivers. I'm willing to bet that your
system is otherwise flaky and that the instability inherent to the flakiness
only manifests itself when the system is worked most rigorously (in
demanding 3D games).
So the suggestion that ATI drivers are stable is rubbish.
Click to expand...

If I could strip one word from your vocabulary it would be 'rubbish'. Giving
that word to you is like giving a loaded ak47 to a 4 year old.
The 5.1/5.2 are known to cause huge slowdowns in HL2 for some ppl which is
completely unacceptable after all that crap about it running best on
Radeons.
Click to expand...

Before you post to this NG, do you stop and just think for just a second,
"What am I going to pull out of my ass this time?"

5.1/5.2 both increased HL2 performance if anything. I've posted links to
reviews for those driver sets above. Read them.

Tony
 
NightSky 421 said:
ATI's drivers are very good. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any
negative experiences in recent times, and I have quite a few games
installed
on my main computer. Since I jumped from nVidia back to ATI in the spring
of 2003, I've been very happy overall. I appreciate the frequency of
driver
updates too since there's nothing like having a driver problem and having
to
wait a few months to have it fixed through an official update.
Click to expand...

I didn't have any problems either, until now after I changed
my mobo (from Asrock k7s8x -> k7vt4aPro) Catalysts 5.1
and 5.3 suddenly started to behave oddly and re-installing
them didn't help.

With 5.1's everything else was OK, but Dawn of War had
strange black&messy textures in main menu and finally it
crashed every time I tried to start a game.

With 5.3's there Mafia and Silent Storm had corrupted
textures. Map was completely screwed up in Mafia from
the beginning and all the other graphics got more and more
messy too while I played it.

5.2's seemed to work fine (so far). Interesting that 5.1's
and 5.3's worked OK with my previous mobo (SiS746FX
chipset) but not with this one. There shouldn't be any
known compatibility issues between these drivers and
KT400A-chipset either...
 
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