ATI Catalyst 5.9 driver addresses SH3 problem

[Bill Nichols]

From the ATI Catalyst 5.9 release notes:

Silent Hunter 3: Enabling all video options within the game and setting the particle density to 100, along with setting Anti-Aliasing to 6X and Anisotropic Filtering to 16x, no longer results in display corruption on the left portion of the display

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst...ase_notes.html

[Gammel]

I´m very happy to see they are offering still a version without that "catalyst control center". My info was that 5.8 would be the last one witout ccc.
Also great they fixed some Sh3 related stuff, but personal i had none of that discribed issues. X800XL here.
Thanks Mr. Nicols for posting the info, will try out the new driver soon.

[SmokinTep]

I have a 9800 pro, but have not seen what they are talking about. Glad to see they are on top of video issues.

[ReM]

Thanks Bill,

As I own an ATI card I will definately check this one out!

Nice DW site by the way! If DW ever reaches the shelves as announced I will surely buy it.

[Godalmighty83]

dont have any troubles with my 9600 xt 256, although i dont think my Anisotropic Filtering is set as high as 16x

[U-1974]

Thanks for the heads up, have had alot of stutters in SH3 with 16xAF on in the game mainly looking left, maybe this can cure it :hmm:

[AlanSmithee]

Hmm. Radeon mobility cards don't seem to be in the release notes. Plus, every time I've tried to use Catalyst drivers direct from ATI I get the blue screen of death. Looks like I'll be sticking with my Omega drivers for now.

[Reece]

The driver I am currently using is 5.6 as the later ccc's requires .net to run, when I installed this, and a later driver - 5.8 the computer took a dive in performance by probably about 25% and random CTD's so I went back to 5.6 but still no change, so I uninstalled .net, from add/remove list and all ok. Also if I update the driver only, leaving the old 5.6 ccc all runs ok. So I wonder why installing .net causes the sharp decline in performance? Did a search for *.net but came up with only gnutella.net, pdoxusrs.net & ObjectDesktop.net, the latter may be the problem but don't want to delete it, in fact I don't want to reinstall .net to test!
I mention this as others running .net may find an increase in performance by removing it, bearing in mind that there ccc will no longer work, but then most of you probably don't use it!
Cheers.

[OneTinSoldier]

I'm sorry but I don't know how to help you out Reece with 100% certainty. I do not know why you are having troubles with post 5.6 versions. I can only make the following 'personal' observations.

1) All CCC releases have required .Net. (unless I missed something?)

2) I have not tried 5.9's and so I can only say that... I have been using official ATI driver releases for a considerable time, ever since the Radeon 9700 Pro came out(now using an X800 XT PE). The 5.8's are the best version I have ever had installed. The best performance, the best Image Quality(IQ), the best fixes(fixed a bug for X800 XT users who own/play Battlefield 2 ), ect. I have had my current installation of Windows XP going for 11 months, through installing most of the Catalyst driver versions that have come out to upgrading from my old Radeon 9700 Pro to my current Radeon X800 XT PE. I have no issues with my video card or driver.

3) .Net is only takes up resources when it's used, ie. when you run CCC, with one exception, it installs a new MS Windows Service(Windows User Mode Driver Framework) which all by itself has not affected my gaming performance. I believe thise Service could even be set to 'Manual' or perhaps even 'Disabled' but I still have it on 'Automatic'.

4) I'll explain the method I use to uninstall my ATI Video Driver. Ever since Catalyst 3.9's there has been a utility included that you can run that will remove all vestiges of the drivers, including registry entries(except for 2 that I found). What I do is first go to 'Control Panel' --> 'Add/Remove Programs' remove the 'ATI Control Panel -or- Catalyst Control Center' and then the 'ATI Driver'. Then I reboot into Safe Mode by tapping 'F8' on my keyboard while it's rebooting(perhaps not necessary but it's what I do). Then I run the program that removes all vestiges of the ATI drivers found here...

C:\ATI\SUPPORT\5-8_xp-2k_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_25203\AtiCimUn.exe

Then I reboot, and then I install the newest Catalyst drivers and CCC.


You might want to try that method to uninstall and reinstall your drivers. I don't know if that will help you with your problem but you can try it out if you want to.

Regards,

OneTinSoldier

System Specs:

Intel 3.4C(C = Northwood Core) on Asus P4C800-E Deluxe(Intel 875P + ICH5R Chipset), Zalman 7000a-Cu HS/Fan, Enermax RG651P-VE 550W PSU, 2 GB Mushkin eXtreme Performance(2-2-2) Dual Channel PC3200 RAM, NEC MultiSync FE2111SB 21" CRT Monitor, Sapphire Radeon X800 XT PE Videocard with v5.8 Catalyst Drivers, DirectX 9.0c, Creative Audigy2 Platinum Soundcard with Creative OpenAL Beta Driver, 250 GB w/8 MB Cache Western Digital 7200 RPM Parallel ATA HDD, WinXP Pro SP2, Comcast Cable Internet Connection, Nortons Anti-Virus and Personal Firewall 2005

[OneTinSoldier]

Originally Posted by OneTinSoldier

1) All CCC releases have required .Net. (unless I missed something?)

The reason I say that is because... the ATI CCC is based on the .Net programming language/libraries, and it does not matter how old your CCC is, CCC has been based on .Net since day 1.

Unless I missed something? Can anyone elese give any input on that in case I am mistaken? I am pretty darn certain that I am not mistaken though.

Regards,

OTS

[Reece]

Well I use the same method except that I use driver cleaner after using ATI's uninstall, but the version 5.6 ccc is an exe file and older versions as well, it's only been from 5.7 on that uses .net extension. Cripes, maybe we are both wrong!

[svenks]

, it's only been from 5.7 on that uses .net extension. Cripes, maybe we are both wrong!

You still don't need .NOT (did that on purpose!) to run ATI's drivers. Just don't download from the front page, but go via the "Drivers and Software" tab. That will give you the possibility to download the Control PANEL version. Sooner or later, though, ATI will cut support for that.

I took the plunge with CAT 5.8. I had stayed away from the CCC because of .NOT, which I think is a big, bloated mistake! But more and more software uses it, including something I wanted to try out, and so I 'infected' my Game PC with it

Result: Well, just try to run CCC while watching Task Manager - it does use quite a bit of memory - but if it all gets released, it shouldn't be a problem. However, I do believe that once .NOT framework is loaded, at least part of of it stays loaded, and maybe even a few threads continue to run. How do I know? In thruth, I don't! But it makes sense from MS's point of view, since the next program you want to run of course also is written for .NOT....

I have experienced some instability with CAT 5.8 in Half-Life 2, probably caused by the drivers themselves. I D/L CAT 5.9 yesterday (yes, the CCC version), and stability HAS improved for HL2. I haven't tried SH3 yet, but hopefully the evening...

BRGDS
Sven

[benetofski]

Guys,

Do yourselves a huge favour and check out the 'OMEGA' ATI Drivers!

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=883

(run either your favourite benchmark or DXDIAG to see the difference =



enjoy!

[Gizzmoe]

Originally Posted by benetofski

Do yourselves a huge favour and check out the 'OMEGA' ATI Drivers!

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=883

That´s a very old version.

Get the latest driver here (based on Catalyst 5.9):
http://www.omegadrivers.net/

[Reece]

Thanks Guys, I'll give them a go!