ATI Catalyst 7.2 = buggy release
 

Do not load Catalyst 7.2 - stay with Catalyst 7.1.

I think 7.2 has got to be the buggiest version released in years. My machine had issues as well as a couple friends. We all downgraded to 7.1.

The main difference is that CLI.EXE has been replaced with CCC.EXE - a Vista compatible control panel. Seems they screwed up on the XP compatibility part however.

I've personally had crashes of the CCC.EXE app over and over and over. Reloading 7.1 solved the issue. I'll wait for 7.3 thank you where the bugs are ironed out.

-S

PS. A friend of mine reported the control panel app as using 400 MB of memory on his system. Maybe this thing has a major memory leak?

I´ve never cared about the standard ATI control panel, so I´ll try the driver anyhow. I usually download the "Display Driver only" version and use the ATI Tray Tools instead, or I use the Omegadriver or NGOHQ driver.

ATI Tray Tools:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=733

Omegadriver:
http://www.omegadrivers.net/

NGOHQ driver:
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=F...t&dwn_cat_id=9

Are these 3rd party drivers like Omega worth it?

If it could get me a bit of extra performance I am all for it. It is just reliabilty that concerns me.

Try them, for me they work great. If they don´t work correctly on your system for whatever reason you can always go back to the standard drivers.

THe Omegas were better when they allowed for Macrovision removal. I had some old tapes that I wanted to preserve on DVD a while back so this driver was useful. Now they don't have a whole lot to offer anymore since that doesn't work these days - unless they re-enabled that capability. They have some more tweaks than the standard drivers is the only real difference now. As far as speed, it is not going to get you anything over the standard drivers unless you are into overclocking. My XTX is designed to be overclocked, so the standard ATI drivers do that already.

Gizzmoe could probably give you a better rundown if you need more info since it has probably been a couple years since I last tried them.

-S

I looked and the Omegas are still 7.1. 7.1 CLE works perfectly fine so I'll just hang out there for a while. I use the plug in to media center anyway from the MCE version of the drivers.

I think ATI/AMD probably love me - I run a Visiontek Theatre 550 MCE card for video capture, a Visiontek x1900 XTX video card (The two together make an excellent combo for video capture and playback. I even run an ASUS R580 chipset based MB, and an X2 CPU. AMD should be giving me kickbacks with all the money I spent with them over the years!

-S

i'm using the 7.2 drivers and haven't had a single problem. they actually cured problems I had from 7.1 .. ahh well .. nothing perfect.

Check your memory usage. You may be surprised. ANother thing, most of my errors happened during video playback. I wonder if the deinterlacer is the issue?

-S