FYI ATi driver 5.12 now available
 

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:

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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.
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.

The 5.12 Omega Driver is out!

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

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.

Hello,

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

Thanks and greetings!

: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:

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:

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.