Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.71 (Catalyst 5.9)

[Wolfram]

Just an FYI for ATi card owners that Omega drivers for our cards out based on 5.9 version.

Those interested find them here:

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

I used them last night & issue I had with 5.9 stock drivers gone; I got some stutter when ships were burning, that is now resolved with these drivers. (default settings) I think its the Fast Writes that causing my problems - last set of Omega I used resolved things for me too...

Keep in mind this was for my machine, maybe not work for others. Advise also to read the README files....

g/l

:arrgh!:

[Dowly]

I`ve used Omega´s for awhile and all I can say is GJ whoever makes those!

[Syxx_Killer]

Are the Omega drivers really that much better than the ATI ones? I've seen them mentioned quite often. Are there any issues with these drivers?

[Dowly]

I dont know if I imagine it or is it true, but Omega drivers seem to give me slightly (2-5fps) more fps in some games.

Haven´t encountered any problems so far.

[Wolfram]

Are the Omega drivers really that much better than the ATI ones? I've seen them mentioned quite often. Are there any issues with these drivers?

For myself I swap out drivers about as often as I change underwear - about once per month ;)

So I have learned for my machine the best methods of exchanging and experimenting with drivers.

I do not do any OC'ing either with the GPU.

The Omega series can be a hair loss exeperience for some people I have seen. So a caveat is "use at your own risk."

The Omega series might also impact other games you have, I just seem to have the best luck with them and strange as it sounds best ones for me been numbered/based on odd numbered ATi 5.9, 5.7, 5.5 etc...

Maybe worth a try but if any of the instructions seem confusing or are misunderstood it could lead to problems...

:arrgh!:

[Beery]

I must admit I go with the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. If I start getting problems running a game, I'll install new drivers at that point. For now I'm happy with what I have.

[AlanSmithee]

I've had great luck with the Omegas, mostly since I'm using a Radeon Mobility 9000 for a Dell laptop. Since Dell doesn't provide much in the way of updated drivers, and the stock Catalyst drivers give me blue-screen-of-death, Omegas have been the way to go. If anyone else out there is unfortunate enough to be using a Radeon Mobility, Omegas are the way to go.

[benetofski]

Wolfram,


Thanks for the update on the latest driver release....

I have mentioned the Omega drivers on here before - I could not imagine playing (any) sim or graphic intensive game without them - I was an avid flight simmer and stock drivers just did not hold a candle to the Omegas! :rock:

(I am using the Omega 2.6.53 release)

BTW, If anyone is in doubt - just d/l, instal and then run the DXDIAG graphics tests - that bouncing ball and spinning (I think it is a cube - if it slowed down!) should convince you!

They are also available for NVIDIA....

"If it aint broke - fix it!" :up:

[JohnnyPotPie]

I used to play LOMAC and IL2 alot and everybody recomended Omega drivers. So I gave Omega a try, and found them to work just as good as the stock drivers. Im gona have to jump on the "if it aint broke" bandwagon here.

[thasaint]

I must admit I go with the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. If I start getting problems running a game, I'll install new drivers at that point. For now I'm happy with what I have.

agreed, back when i was using my geforce ti4200 i used about year old drivers which gave me better fps in all games than the newer ones, sometimes up to 20 fps better (CFS3)

newer drivers for newer cards i guess, and if your stuff's already working, why mess with it?

[vils]

I must admit I go with the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. If I start getting problems running a game, I'll install new drivers at that point. For now I'm happy with what I have.

agreed, back when i was using my geforce ti4200 i used about year old drivers which gave me better fps in all games than the newer ones, sometimes up to 20 fps better (CFS3)

newer drivers for newer cards i guess, and if your stuff's already working, why mess with it?

..because they increase stability, increase performance, fixes loads of invis bugs etc. No need to upgrade every single driver all the time, but one should atleast read the readme applied. And personally i would never ever install second part drivers, thats suicide! Drivers at best at www.ati.com, say no more :)

[Beery]

I must admit I go with the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. If I start getting problems running a game, I'll install new drivers at that point. For now I'm happy with what I have.

agreed, back when i was using my geforce ti4200 i used about year old drivers which gave me better fps in all games than the newer ones, sometimes up to 20 fps better (CFS3)

newer drivers for newer cards i guess, and if your stuff's already working, why mess with it?

..because they increase stability, increase performance, fixes loads of invis bugs etc.

But if the bugs are invisible, if the system seems perfectly stable, if the performance is perfectly good already, why bother? Why try to fix something that ain't broke? I mean if it works fine, why take the risk of upgrading to something that may be more buggy? I'm getting perfect performance with the original drivers I got when I installed my graphics card - no crashes to desktop, no lockups, no strange behaviour at all, with no apparent bugs whatsoever and fantastic framerates. Why should I upgrade? All I can see with new drivers is potential downside - I mean sometimes when I've uploaded new drivers in the past I've found I get a less useful and less intuitive control interface and sometimes I've got more crashes with newer drivers. I mean I just don't see why I should take the risk when my current drivers give perfect performance and stability. Sure, if I buy a new game and it runs horribly, then I'll get new drivers, but in the meantime, why bother?

[Syxx_Killer]

I have to agree with Beery. Even though I agree, I have been updating the video drivers with every release since 5.2. I probably should stop. XP will probably not likie something and I'll get the blue screen of death. That happened to me when I updated my chipset drivers. I've got a Nforce4 board. The drivers come with Nvidia's firewall. When I installed the new drivers (after uninstalling the old ones), and the firewall would popup asking for permission to let Firefox connect to the Internet I would get the blue screen of death (after clicking allow). I have since reverted back to the old drivers and they work fine. Go figure. :shifty: :x

[Beery]

You know what - I just foolishly took the advice of those who say that people should upload new drivers - uploaded the newest driver and Hey Presto, my machine runs SLOWER, the graphics card interface is much WORSE. There are not enough swear words to illustrate how I feel about this.

I knew I'd regret it. I can't believe I was so bloody stupid! Now I have to uninstall the bloody thing!

Thanks a lot for the advice, but next time I'll go with my own!

[Gizzmoe]

Did you check that the new drivers had exactly the same settings as the old ones? Antialiasing, Anisotropic Filtering, Catalyst AI...

[Beery]

It's not the settings. It actually slows down (drastically) the computer startup procedure. In SH3 the drivers aren't any better and so far they don't seem any worse. I have yet to try the other games I'm running.

[Reece]

Well that's a pain Beery! :-? reminds me of my brother who is allways changing/updating with the latest drivers etc & sure as shootin the phone rings & needs help or has to format his drive, keep telling him "if it aint broke don't fix it" but never sinks in. :dead:
I go one step farther in protecting my system, I ghost to a second hard drive once a fortnight or so and if something does go wrong I can install a previous version in about half hour! :up:
Hi Syxx_Killer, I notice that your favorite commander is the same as mine, Wohlfarth was certainly quite a character & can relate to him, when I installed SH3 Commander I was upset to find him not there so I will have to scan an image in with a little data! :yep:
I maintain that Catalyst drivers 5.6 & older were much better with ccc than newer version because new versions use the .net extensions, & boy does the old fps go :down:
Cheers.

[Gizzmoe]

It's not the settings. It actually slows down (drastically) the computer startup procedure. In SH3 the drivers aren't any better and so far they don't seem any worse. I have yet to try the other games I'm running.

That´s probably drive fragmentation (depending on what "drastically" means). Try "Bootvis", it´s a great tool (made by Microsoft), it speeds up the startup procedure by optimizing the position of all drivers and programs that are needed for startup. Or do a simple defrag, that could also help.

Get "Bootvis" here:
http://www.wintotal.de/softw/module/download.php?id=767

[Beery]

Well, initial anger is replaced by mild annoyance. The drivers don't seem to adversely affect my games - they don't improve them either. The computer startup issue is some kind of adjustment the drivers made regarding how the startup procedure looks - the developers obviously thought that I wanted the startup to have a nice slow fade effect rather than a quick 'let's get to the desktop' effect.

This whole experience raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels and now I'm stuck with a computer that starts up about 5 seconds slower (it used to flash the 'welcome' screen for about 5 seconds, whereas now it fades it in and fades it out - takes twice as long for a screen I don't want to see anyway). Like I said before, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In future I'm always ALWAYS going to take that advice.

[Gizzmoe]

it used to flash the 'welcome' screen for about 5 seconds, whereas now it fades it in and fades it out - takes twice as long for a screen I don't want to see anyway).

If you like you can deactivate the "Welcome" screen via Control Panel/Users.

[Beery]

No thanks. I've tried messing with the User Accounts thing before. I ended up with a computer that wouldn't recognize me as the administrator and I spent hours online with tech support. I went in there just now and it only gives two options - switch off the welcome screen and log in with a user name (that's what got me into trouble before) or use the current welcome screen. I'll go with the devil I know.

[Gizzmoe]

Yeah, "switch off the welcome screen". This gives you the normal login box (username/password) instead of the "fancy" welcome screen.

[Beery]

Yeah, "switch off the welcome screen". This gives you the normal login box (username/password) instead of the "fancy" welcome screen.

I don't want to login every time I use the computer. I disabled that. I don't want it back again.

You also have to go to a dropdown list when you log off, which is more annoying than having to do the 'Stand by / Turn off / Restart' thing. I mean when I tell the computer to switch off, why does it force me to confirm the decision? I've never understood why I have to do that. Why can't it just have ''Stand by / Turn off / Restart' in the program list and just switch the darned thing off when I tell it to?

It's like some games:

'Exit' - click on it, you get:

'Exit the game and return to windows?' - click on it, you get:

'Are you sure?' - click on 'yes' and you get:

'Exiting the game'

Darn it! I wanted to exit and return to windows on the first click. Why should I have to confirm twice, and why do I need a message to tell me that I've done it? Just switch the bloody game off! I'm not a moron, I can be pretty sure that when I click 'exit' I actually want to exit.

[Gizzmoe]

Why can't it just have ''Stand by / Turn off / Restart' in the program list and just switch the darned thing off when I tell it to?

That´s no problem.

Create a few shortcuts and use

shutdown -r -t 00
reboots the PC

shutdown -s -t 00
shuts it down

shutdown -l -t 00
a normal logoff

And it doesn´t ask any stupid questions... :)

There is no command line option for Standby.

[klh]

Beery and others,

I've found this website extremely useful for optimizing my ATI drivers...

http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html

Cheers!

[Beery]

Why can't it just have ''Stand by / Turn off / Restart' in the program list and just switch the darned thing off when I tell it to?

That´s no problem.

Create a few shortcuts and use...

And it doesn´t ask any stupid questions... :)

There is no command line option for Standby.

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated!

[Gizzmoe]

You´re welcome!

[Syxx_Killer]

Hi Syxx_Killer, I notice that your favorite commander is the same as mine, Wohlfarth was certainly quite a character

Yeah, he certainly had an interesting career. Ironic and sad. Don't know if you saw this site but it is worth reading:

http://www.bismarck-class.dk/bismarck/miscellaneous/special_bond/specialbond.html

[vils]

sorry for delayed note.

Ofcourse if the system is perfectly stable dont do anything. Personally i havent had a ultimate perfectly stable system since windows entered the market in the 80's..