Which drivers..?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick Catton
  • Start date Start date
R

Rick Catton

Sorry to be dim, but after long being a fan of Nvidia products I've just
jumped ship and installed an HIS Excalibur 9800Pro. Not knowing anything
about the drivers for ATI cards should I go for the drivers out of the box,
or install the equivalent of the Nvidia Detonators (Catalyst - are they the
ones?)

If recommending anything other than the boxed drivers, I'd really appreciate
some help knowing where to look.

Thanks in advance, and sorry to ask such a simple question - but we've all
got to start somewhere!

Rick.
 
Sorry to be dim, but after long being a fan of Nvidia products I've just
jumped ship and installed an HIS Excalibur 9800Pro. Not knowing anything
about the drivers for ATI cards should I go for the drivers out of the box,
or install the equivalent of the Nvidia Detonators (Catalyst - are they the
ones?)
Click to expand...

Personally I like the 4.4 Catalysts, but if you want to be up to date,
then get the latest Catalysts from ATI.
 
Rick said:
Sorry to be dim, but after long being a fan of Nvidia products I've
just jumped ship and installed an HIS Excalibur 9800Pro. Not knowing
anything about the drivers for ATI cards should I go for the drivers
out of the box, or install the equivalent of the Nvidia Detonators
(Catalyst - are they the ones?)
Click to expand...

ya same deal as nvidia
just get the latest cat drivers and in they go

make sure you uninstall old cat drivers before you install new ones
also some poeple have problems with nvidia drivers not uninstalled properly
or some such
 
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ is the place to find video drivers that have
been tweaked for highest performance by some highly gifted programming
sammaritan out there in cyberspace. He gets the drivers from ATI and changes
things here and there, then releases them on his site. In my experience they
tend to give better performance than the official, un-tweaked ATI drivers.
 
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ is the place to find video drivers that have
been tweaked for highest performance by some highly gifted programming
sammaritan out there in cyberspace. He gets the drivers from ATI and changes
things here and there, then releases them on his site. In my experience they
tend to give better performance than the official, un-tweaked ATI drivers.
Click to expand...

I tried those a couple of weeks ago on my 9700 Pro and the Doom 3 demo
ran like a 2 legged dog before crashing after about 30 seconds. I went
back to the smooth performance I get with the ATI 4.4's. I don't
understand the hero worship these drivers seem to get.
 
Andrew said:
drivers.

I tried those a couple of weeks ago on my 9700 Pro and the Doom 3 demo
ran like a 2 legged dog before crashing after about 30 seconds. I went
back to the smooth performance I get with the ATI 4.4's. I don't
understand the hero worship these drivers seem to get.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm still on 98 so I haven't used them for a while as he stopped
supporting 98/ME in February. My experience was always positive though.
Usually ATI would release new drivers that would fix one thing and break
another. The Within a day or two, Omega would release a tweaked driver set
that fixed everything. The Catalyst releases of a couple years ago were not
at the current level of polish.
 
Rick Catton said:
Sorry to be dim, but after long being a fan of Nvidia products I've just
jumped ship and installed an HIS Excalibur 9800Pro. Not knowing anything
about the drivers for ATI cards should I go for the drivers out of the
box,
or install the equivalent of the Nvidia Detonators (Catalyst - are they
the
ones?)

If recommending anything other than the boxed drivers, I'd really
appreciate
some help knowing where to look.

Thanks in advance, and sorry to ask such a simple question - but we've all
got to start somewhere!

Rick.
Click to expand...

Just go to www.ati.com and download the latest drivers for your OS.
They are also known as Catalysts - just a fancy name ATI gave their drivers.
Check the release notes for current info on whats fixed and what isn't.
Go to www.rage3d.com which is the best ati fansite and read the forums.
Thats where you'll find info on any issues ppl have with certain game/driver
combinations and which drivers work best. Currently I'm using the 4.10s and
they are fine with all my games - Doom3, Far Cry, Half-Life, Call of Duty,
UT2004 and
Ground Control 2. www.omegadrivers.net is where you'll find a 3rd party
tweaked
version of the Cats which many ppl swear by but I say stick with the
official ones
for starters.
 
Make sure you have cleared out all of the NVIDIA drivers,
I believe you can use the program called detonator destroyer.
Then load the ATI drivers that came on the CD.
Then install the latest drivers from ATI's website.
you need to have the ATI CD in the CD-ROM or DVD drive
when you update drivers, the ATI DVD software needs it.

I myself update with out the ATI CD, but use PowerDVD for playing DVD.
 
BeingAnonymousMakesMeObnoxious said:
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ is the place to find video drivers that have
been tweaked for highest performance by some highly gifted programming
sammaritan out there in cyberspace. He gets the drivers from ATI and
changes
things here and there, then releases them on his site. In my experience
they
tend to give better performance than the official, un-tweaked ATI drivers.
Click to expand...

They are tweaked for stability, not performance. I usually get a lower
benchmark score with these, however they do prevent crashes. You have to
make absolute sure you uninstall all drivers from ATI before installing
these, and vice versa. Use Driver Cleaner from DriverHeaven.net to make sure
everything is uninstalled. Best to do this from Safe Mode.

http://www.drivercleaner.net/
 
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