Noob question - Best Drivers for new card?

  • Thread starter Thread starter evil Homer
  • Start date Start date
E

evil Homer

Hi all.

I'm making the switch from my NV GF4 Ti4200 to a Radeon 9800 pro and just
wanted to know what the best drivers were around to try out.

Many Thanks.

Homer
 
4.4, IMO.
Click to expand...

What about the Omega drivers at <http://www.omegadrivers.net/>? My friend
just told me about them (I'd never heard of them), and claims he's gotten
noticeably better performance with them than the Catalyst drivers (around
7fps increase in some of the games he's playing). He also claims they look
better, but admits that it might just be in his head. Can anyone else vouch
for these, and say whether or not they're worth switching to?

--
Erik Harris n$wsr$ader@$harrishom$.com
AIM: KngFuJoe http://www.eharrishome.com
Chinese-Indonesian MA Club http://cimac.eharrishome.com

The above email address is obfuscated to try to prevent SPAM.
Replace each dollar sign with an "e" for the correct address.
 
What about the Omega drivers at <http://www.omegadrivers.net/>? My friend
just told me about them (I'd never heard of them), and claims he's gotten
noticeably better performance with them than the Catalyst drivers (around
7fps increase in some of the games he's playing). He also claims they look
better, but admits that it might just be in his head. Can anyone else vouch
for these, and say whether or not they're worth switching to?
Click to expand...
The omega drivers are great and have ATI's blessing though not
"approval". Sometimes I use the omegas sometimes I don't. I always
give them a try though.
I'm currently using the straight Catalysts 4.4s myself.
 
I'm making the switch from my NV GF4 Ti4200 to a Radeon 9800 pro and just
wanted to know what the best drivers were around to try out.
Click to expand...


Hi,
I used Cat 3.7 for ages and just recently switched up to Cat 4.5. Didn't
notice any FPS improvement but the control panel is more refined.

Also had a good experience with ATITool for overclocking. I started with a
Sapphire *Atlantis* 9800/w Samsung 3.3 (325/290) which clocked to 421/346
using stock cooling. Then I added an Arctic VGA Silencer which boosted my
GPU overclocks up to 441MHz, finally I flashed my 9800 to a 9800Pro which
somehow boosted my ram overclock to 394MHz, final tally 441/394.

I have still to add some BGA-Ramsinks that have been sitting here for
9months!! Hoping to make 400MHz (800DDR) :P
 
What about the Omega drivers at <http://www.omegadrivers.net/>? My friend
just told me about them (I'd never heard of them), and claims he's gotten
noticeably better performance with them than the Catalyst drivers (around
7fps increase in some of the games he's playing). He also claims they look
better, but admits that it might just be in his head. Can anyone else vouch
for these, and say whether or not they're worth switching to?
Click to expand...

I'll put it this way; I won't use anything BUT Omega's drivers!

They are awesome. Better IQ and lots of goodies included. Check them
out for sure.

Pluvious
 
Inglo said:
What about the Omega drivers at <http://www.omegadrivers.net/>? My
friend just told me about them (I'd never heard of them), and claims
he's gotten noticeably better performance with them than the
Catalyst drivers (around 7fps increase in some of the games he's
playing). He also claims they look better, but admits that it might
just be in his head. Can anyone else vouch for these, and say
whether or not they're worth switching to?
Click to expand...
The omega drivers are great and have ATI's blessing though not
"approval". Sometimes I use the omegas sometimes I don't. I always
give them a try though.
I'm currently using the straight Catalysts 4.4s myself.

--
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it
means." Inigo Montoya

Steve [Inglo]
Click to expand...

here we go again! I love it when this happens! :o)
"My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father....prepare to die! MY
NAME IS...." !!

I just installed the Cat 4.4's today. With this new 9800 Pro, I started
off with 4.5, then tried 4.6, and both give me the corrupted textures.
More in OGL, but also in D3D! SO, someone recommended the 4.4's...so
now off to try Far Cry (I finished it! FINALLY! Geez!) and Halo and
Q3A and see wha's UP now :)
McG.
 
Inglo wrote:


here we go again! I love it when this happens! :o)

"My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father....prepare to die! MY
NAME IS...." !!

I just installed the Cat 4.4's today. With this new 9800 Pro, I started
off with 4.5, then tried 4.6, and both give me the corrupted textures.
More in OGL, but also in D3D! SO, someone recommended the 4.4's...so
now off to try Far Cry (I finished it! FINALLY! Geez!) and Halo and
Q3A and see wha's UP now :)
McG.
Click to expand...
Did you experience any heat problems when you first got your 9800 Pro?
It seems like all my temps have gone up 5-6C since installing this card.

I'm looking to get a Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer, they can be had for
$15. Actually I'm still trying to find out if heat is the problem or
perhaps something else... disabled FastWrites via the SMARTGart tab and
upped my AGP voltage to 1.6.
I was playing Halo yesterday for about an hour (at 1280x1024 w/ ~80 FPS
:-) ) and it locked up, also had it lock up after a couple of minutes in
Prince of Persia. No other funky stuff that usually comes with heat
(artifacts, funny lines etc...) so i reinstalled my sound drivers
(3dMark03 was giving me errors during the sound test, now its not), see
if maybe problem is unrelated to new card.

Have you played Max Payne 2 on your Radeon 9800 Pro? That's the game
that caused the problems to start. I would just barely get into the
game, beyond whatever cut scenes and it would crash to desktop. Then I
started getting the errors in 3DMark and the other two game crashes, I
had played DX:IW, before the MP2 problem, for like 2 hours without a
hitch (and that's a flaky game).
Grrr, getting all one's hardware to play nicely together is always a
bitch.
 
evil Homer said:
Hi all.

I'm making the switch from my NV GF4 Ti4200 to a Radeon 9800 pro and just
wanted to know what the best drivers were around to try out.

Many Thanks.

Homer
Click to expand...

Homer, I just recently switched from GeForce 3 to ATI 9800 Pro. Here's my
2 cents.

1. I had an issue trying to upgrade to new ATI driver. Turns out I should
have uninstalled the old ATI driver before installing the new one. (note:
others will tell you that installing new driver over old shouldn't be a
problem. but it sure messed my pc up).

2. Make sure you get the driver for your version of Windows. My brother
has XP and can get latest ATI drivers. However, I was on the phone with
ATI tech support trying to resolve #1 above, and was told that CAT 4.3 is it
for WinME. ATI is no longer going to update drivers for older MS OS. So
make sure you go to http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html and pick your OS.
(if you compare WinME to WinXP driver dates, you'll notice the WinXP is
newer).

3. Recommend that you check out RadLinker
http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/ This enables you to customize
each games 3D setting.

So I guess the answer to your question would be based on which OS you are
running.

JLC
 
Back
Top