FYI ATi driver 5.12 now available

[Wolfram]

Just letting all the ATi card owners that the latest incarnation of their drivers out.

Also from these links find their driver uninstaller - I cannot repeat how critical it is to UN-install drivers or "clean" the files first.

ATi reference cleaner link =

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1275

ATi 5.12 link =

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1273


Please read and follow their instructions

:lurk:

[Soviet_Warlord]

Cool! But I do have a question about uninstalling video card drivers: whenever I uninstall the old ones, I end up restarting the computer to find my resolution at 800x 600. I always have it set on 1280x1024. It always switches back to 800x 600, which is annoying cause it ruins the order of my desktop icons. Is there a way to not have it revert once video drivers are removed? thanks.

[Gizzmoe]

Is there a way to not have it revert once video drivers are removed? thanks.

No. But you can use "Icon Keeper" to save and restore the icon positions:
http://www.enterra-soft.com/products/iconkeeper/index.shtml

[U-49]

These latest drivers come with ATI's bloatware CCC. A whopping 64.35MB when installed. ATI has officially dropped the nice and small Control Panel with this release too. Oh, and don't forget, you'll need to install Microsoft's .NET (35.15MB) if you want to use the Control Centre.

ATI are going from "don't buy our products" to "pretty please don't buy our products!"

I currently have an XT1800XT which replaced an XT850XT and have been a fond supporter of ATI. With driver releases like this however, I see an NVIDEA 7800GTX 512MB in my very near future.

[Gizzmoe]

These latest drivers come with ATI's bloatware CCC.

ATI offers a 11.7MB "Display Driver only" download. Then install the tiny "ATI Tray Tools", you don´t need CCC and .NET then.

[Godalmighty83]

as all my games currently work without fault i wont touch these upgrades, everytime i upgrade anything on my pc something goes wrong.

[Marhkimov]

as all my games currently work without fault i wont touch these upgrades, everytime i upgrade anything on my pc something goes wrong.

amen to that...

[Paajtor]

Thx for the headsup, Wolfram. :D

I'm still using the Cat5.9's (they work great for Il2/FB)...I wanna skip the 5.10's, and maybe the 5.11's too.,

Btw, I never have issues with updating drivers...always using just the CP, together with ATITool, which I use for setting PCI-latency.

But you have to do it the right way, which is uninstalling drivers 1st, and then your ATI-ControlPanel....both from your XP-ControlPanel/Add-Remove Programs.

Then you reboot, and go into safe mode, to start up DriverCleanerPro (http://www.drivercleaner.net/).
Make sure to read the readme first, and nothing can go wrong.
DCP will remove EVERY trace of old drivers from your system.

Reboot again, and install the new drivers+CP.

[Gizzmoe]

The 5.12 Omega Driver is out!

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

[Soviet_Warlord]

The 5.12 Omega Driver is out!

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

I'm new to ATI- what is the advantage of omega drivers?

[Gizzmoe]

I'm new to ATI- what is the advantage of omega drivers?

It´s an optimized version of the standard ATI driver, more FPS, same picture quality. It also comes without the bloated Catalyst Control Center, it uses "ATI Tray Tools" instead, a much smaller and more capable configuration tool.

[Gammel]

Hello,

does anybody knows how to change 3d gamma with the ati tray tools?

Thanks and greetings!

[Wolfram]

:hmm: Never got the reply messages so sorry I miss all this traffic - I must have been submerged lol

To reply to some this was merely an FYI for I agree ATi CCC drivers make me :88) too :up:

Omega based on 5.12 is a beta driver (not WHQL) so use at own risk. Yet for a blanket shot it covers all so far of my games with high quality and performance.

The biggest problem with changing drivers and most common is not cleaning up the old files of the last driver - I am not defending the reference driver that I agree is overloaded (CCC) and beta drivers (Omega's etc) are just that experimental.

However to avoid 9 out of 10 (a number the IT guy here at work throws out not me) driver installs (any driver installs) have to be done methodically and carefully - rush and you might as well surface against a task force in daylight ;)

Another tip to add is consider real time virus scans I disable mine (means I am off the Internet also) during the cleaning & install...but cleaning with Driver Cleaner seems to be most complete and again let me echo - README files and instructions are included for a reason :know:

Finally when doing the clean ups you will (should) get a message on reboot New Hardware found and the resolution will be something like 800x600 or less maybe even 16 bit colors - this is a good thing not a :damn:

It means you have reverted to a basic VGA card. All cards are basic VGA cards.

If you see the New Hardware Install request "cancel" it until its stops...Then manually open that driver executable. After it completes do not allow a restart. Even with it (executable) Just close the executable and reactivate the AV and then - restart using the normal Windows shut down after the reboot reset resolution and colors as needed....

g/l to All

:lurk:

[Wolfram]

Second note here before you clean have that new driver downloaded on to your desktop and I advise having it in a separate folder uncompressed but not activated...have it ready before you start deleting and cleaning...

:cool:

[Paajtor]

Yes, pretty much what I do. :D

Except, as ATI's usually come as an *.exe (drivers + ControlPanel), I make sure I've made a new folder (named as the new driver-to-be-installed) prior to starting to remove the old driver.

After uninstalling old drivers and rebooting, I double-click the new *.exe, and point it to unpack into the new folder I've made before.
After that, it usually auto-executes, and installs both drivers and CP.

Then reboot, and reset your desired desktop-resolution&refresh-rate.
Reboot again, and finally set your D3D/OpenGL-settings.

[Wolfram]

Just upgraded to Omega 2.6.87 (based on 5.12 ATi)

No bloatware these are basic ATi reference beta about 22megs :)

d-loaded driver package to new folder unzipped them to same.

Control Panel -> add/remove programs -> removed old Omega

Reboot/restart (note got 800x600 resolution, 32bit color on return)

Ignore/Cancel New Hardware and all requests for disks

Disable Norton AV

Go to Driver Cleaner (I have this pre-installed as a separate program)

Set DC to ATi

Cleaned twice (sorry I am obsessive complusive)

Go to executable (Omega 2.6.87 that I had decompressed)

Run (note added Multi Res but did not add to Start nor shortcuts)

Ran driver setup when requested

Ignore warnings of not WHQL (happened twice for me)

When asked to reboot/restart hit No

Enabled AV

Reboot via standard Windows XP method not via request

Reset resolution

Ran defrag (Diskeeper for me)

Ran 1st benchmark (old AquaMark) gained ~900 points or about 9 fps

Will advise other Kaleun of results with SH3 when I play again, confident of success.... :know:

This is the short hand version of what I do for drivers - if you read my initial post I have a link for removal tool of ATi reference drivers, have not needed such but maybe useful to others.

So far Omega operational.

g/l

:lurk:

[Sulikate]

I just installed the new driver, works fine with AOEIII, NFSMW, SHIII, so it is good to me :yep:

[Wolfram]

Played SH3 with Omega 2.6.87 (5.12 based) and these are without the CCC aka bloatware additions.

Nice :sunny: very nice IQ for me (IQ btw is image quality)

Also note I install these and rarely make any other adjusts - I use straight out of "box" & for my system it was the right thing.

Again not everyone has the same system and understandbly they may not want to risk changes to their system but if you are confident with your skills it is well worth the trial.

But as always the caveat here - use at your own risk.

g/l All!

:lurk:

[thecaptain]

I must be doing something wrong then. I recently installed the latest Omega drivers after hearing so many people rave about them. The image quality and frame rate did improve for SH3 - for a while. After about 30 minutes the frame rate began to crash into single digits and and then all kinds of graphics anomalies began to appear on screen. I'd like to use these new drivers because everything looks and plays better initially. I've since reverted back to my old Catalyst drivers that originally came with my 9600 XT card, which are at least stable. I guess if it ain't really broke.......

The Captain

[Redwine]

I must be doing something wrong then. I recently installed the latest Omega drivers after hearing so many people rave about them. The image quality and frame rate did improve for SH3 - for a while. After about 30 minutes the frame rate began to crash into single digits and and then all kinds of graphics anomalies began to appear on screen. I'd like to use these new drivers because everything looks and plays better initially. I've since reverted back to my old Catalyst drivers that originally came with my 9600 XT card, which are at least stable. I guess if it ain't really broke.......

The Captain

Wich one was you using ? and into wich operative system ?

[thecaptain]

I believe it was the Omega drivers based on the latest Catalyst 5.12. I'm running on Windows XP system, P4 2.6 with one gig of RAM. The only thing I can think of is that I didn't do a proper cleaning out of the old drivers. I do remember now that I'd left the ATI launchpad in place, so I could use the ATI DVD launcher. Could that have caused the problem? I did get rid of the ATI driver itself as well as the control panel, though.

The Captain

[perdu]

i guess i prefer the olds 5.11
i'm using a multi monitor environement in windows and with the old drivers, i ould keept SH3 displayed even if i was working on a windows on the second screen ...