ATI Drivers the most stable in 3D acceleration history?

[ChrisRay]

Yes the topic shows a slight pun to what Catalyst Maker referred to here.


http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33697927&perpage=20&pagenumber=2



Now this thread is not meant to be a Flame War, But a chance to discuss the "Catalyst Drivers" in detail.

Determining where they could be improved ect.


I decided to create a thread here because I feel discussion in this forum is generally toned in a less aggressive since than a previous thread.


Anyhow.


Currently What Problems? Issues do you have with ATI drivers, What do you feel would improve them?


My Current Pros of the ATI Drivers,


Negatives

+ I like the ATI Control Panel. It's Easy to use. It comes with Specific features like on the fly Vertical sync Disabling (without enabling Coolbits for example)

+ For the Most ATI drivers have proven relatively stable.

+ Need for Speed: Hot Persuit 1. Actually works in Windows 2000 under Direct3d mode for me. Does not work on my Nvidia card.

+ top Notch Direct3d performance.

Negatives

- I'm not exactly impressed with some if its OpenGL performance. Which I will get to in a moment. Which preludes the following scenerio which is my OpenGL title at the moment.

- Neverwinter Nights Performance is really sub par. I really could literally get frame rates about 50% Faster on my Geforce 4 card on the same settings.


- Lack of Super Sampling Anti Aliasing., This is a big issue for me. As I feel its important to have comparable feature sets on Drivers. Super Sampling would be a compatibility mode for me. and would work on Titles like Final Fantasy 7 and 8.

-- Lack of digital Vibrance or Saturation control. Yes this has been discussed to death. But this issue I feel is important to me. And I would love to see a Saturation slider added.


Your current thoughts on the ATI driver software? Positives? Negatives? This is not neccasarily a feedback thread, I am curious how satisfied the users are currently. And what do you like about ATI drivers, And What you dislike about them.

ChrisRay

[StealthHawk]

I really want to see application profiles.

Discussion (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15248)

SSAA would be nice I guess, but I'd rather see more bugs ironed out of the Catalysts.

[saturnotaku]

CR, you've pretty much nailed my overall beliefs about ATI's drivers in both the positive and negative aspects. I love their control panel, the drivers ever since Cat 3.2 haven't had any showstopping bugs for me and D3D performance is outstanding, far superior to NVIDIA.

And the negatives I agree with (except the NWN thing because I've never played it). NVIDIA still has the slight upper hand in the OpenGL department and I would like to see a saturation control in drivers (if for no other reason than to give users the option).

ATI definitely has come a long way with its drivers. All the negatives I have are relatively minor when you compare them to how the drivers are able to take advantage of the hardware's potential.

[GlowStick]

id like elite force II to work again.

[-=DVS=-]

Originally posted by GlowStick
id like elite force II to work again.

? it works perfectly for me finished all game found only 17 starships bah i want 70 :p

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by -=DVS=-
? it works perfectly for me finished all game found only 17 starships bah i want 70 :p

3.6's killed it, i did 2 windows reinstalls with the 3.6's, broken, and other people are saying the same thing.

when i revert back to 3.5 they work, but half-life with steam dosent work with 3.5's.

[rokzy]

Originally posted by GlowStick
when i revert back to 3.5 they work, but half-life with steam dosent work with 3.5's.

bs.



I like that cats now offer "high speed internet" package.

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by rokzy
bs.



I like that cats now offer "high speed internet" package.

No, the game sure dose not work with 3.6. As many users reported. Amazinly, alot of games still dont work!

[Hellbinder]

No, the game sure dose not work with 3.6. As many users reported. Amazinly, alot of games still dont work

That is just complete BS.

First of all Half-Life is fine for virtually everyone. There is nothing at all wrong with it. Neither is there *alot fo games that still dont work*. It irritates me to no end when people exagerate for God knows what reason. I play DoD several times a week and its just fine, even at max res with 6x FSAA.

For instance.. being that there is *no* real user wide issue with HL what on earth could possibly be causeing your issue? or the small handfull of others who report such things?

There is a big difference between some people reporting various issues they are having.. and REal serious Driver problems that affect everyone.

Catalyst Drivers *ARE* the most stable in the industry based on Microsoft Reporting, and partner information. That does not mean they are completely bug/ problem free.

[ClyssaN]

The cat3.6 are the best drivers for half-life, at least for me, the esc delay was the only bug left in cat3.5 and cat3.6 fixed that.

[ChrisRay]

Originally posted by ClyssaN
The cat3.6 are the best drivers for half-life, at least for me, the esc delay was the only bug left in cat3.5 and cat3.6 fixed that.

The Only bug? Thats pretty.. ummm. large statement you made there. From what I have seen on the rage3d driver forums. There are plenty of statements to contradict that. There are plenty of bugs in Catalyst drivers atm.

[Sazar]

Originally posted by GlowStick
3.6's killed it, i did 2 windows reinstalls with the 3.6's, broken, and other people are saying the same thing.

when i revert back to 3.5 they work, but half-life with steam dosent work with 3.5's.

well I know a few people who have some issues with cs 1.6 beta... cs 1.5 seems to work fine.. albeit with the occasional pause going from menu to menu...

elite force II works fine here both on 3.5 and 3.6... strange that it fails to work for you...

does it just fail to load or are there graphical anomalies ?

[Sazar]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
The Only bug? Thats pretty.. ummm. large statement you made there. From what I have seen on the rage3d driver forums. There are plenty of statements to contradict that. There are plenty of bugs in Catalyst drivers atm.

many bugs are configuration specific... happens all around for all software...

admittedly there is a larger bug list than half life alone :)

but certainly many issues people raise are non-issues really and can easily be solved with minor rig setup tweaking :D

i.e. not every bug is ati's fault...

[ChrisRay]

Originally posted by Sazar
many bugs are configuration specific... happens all around for all software...

admittedly there is a larger bug list than half life alone :)

but certainly many issues people raise are non-issues really and can easily be solved with minor rig setup tweaking :D

i.e. not every bug is ati's fault...

That is of course true. But it's definately not a fair statement to say that every bug is only related to user configurations either.

There are definately alot of quirks still remaining in catalyst drivers. I find this paticularly with some older titles. This happened with Nvidia cards and the Voodoo era was well. But I think its a somewhat different scenerio because of the glide api.

DX titles should work pretty coherently well with DX aplications. In most cases, Texture corruption ect, are Generally Specific to a graphic vendor.

[Sazar]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
That is of course true. But it's definately not a fair statement to say that every bug is only related to user configurations either.

There are definately alot of quirks still remaining in catalyst drivers. I find this paticularly with some older titles. This happened with Nvidia cards and the Voodoo era was well. But I think its a somewhat different scenerio because of the glide api.

DX titles should work pretty coherently well with DX aplications. In most cases, Texture corruption ect, are Generally Specific to a graphic vendor.

well I dont mean to generalise the problem as being trivial... :)

I was countering your generalisation that there are MANY MANY problems still with the card with MANY MANY users... :)

IMO there are many problems that are easily fixable and perhaps more dependent on the user than anything else... :)

[ChrisRay]

Originally posted by Sazar
well I dont mean to generalise the problem as being trivial... :)

I was countering your generalisation that there are MANY MANY problems still with the card with MANY MANY users... :)

IMO there are many problems that are easily fixable and perhaps more dependent on the user than anything else... :)


Actually I wasn't generalizing. I was simply making a broad statement as robust and ridiculous as the prior statement "ATi had fixed all problems with Cat 3.6 ;)"

[GlowStick]

Elite Force II dose not work with 3.6's

At first i thought they did, because ive been haveing RAID problems ive reinstalled winders alot.

I was playing Elite Force II with the 3.5's, then the 3.6's came out, so i installed those on top of the 3.5's.

Then the raid failed, so i reinstalled winders, and just went for the 3.6 cats (oviously). install ef2 no go.

Then raid failed again, installed 3.6 again, again ef2 no go.

the symptons are when the q3 engine initilizes its just a grey screen. (when the intro videos play)

Quake 3 works fine, i belive it must be something that the developers must of modded to the proven quake 3 engine.

In half life with steam beta the text was not visible if i had AA on. 3.6's fixed that problem.

[Riptide]

I've been using my 9700 pro for about six months now. My first ATI card. Before that it was nvidia, and before that 3dfx.

All in all, I've been very impressed. I have had almost -0- problems in any of the games that I play. However, I probably don't "get around" as much as some do. I typically only play about 4-5 games a year. I usually replay them through several times though.

Only complaint I have is that my 1.1 revision card won't do 8x AGP. It's a minor complaint and I haven't bothered to take it up with ATI. I hear I could have the card exchanged. Not worth the hassle, if you ask me..

[reever2]

You put negatives twice.

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Riptide
I've been using my 9700 pro for about six months now. My first ATI card. Before that it was nvidia, and before that 3dfx.

All in all, I've been very impressed. I have had almost -0- problems in any of the games that I play. However, I probably don't "get around" as much as some do. I typically only play about 4-5 games a year. I usually replay them through several times though.

Only complaint I have is that my 1.1 revision card won't do 8x AGP. It's a minor complaint and I haven't bothered to take it up with ATI. I hear I could have the card exchanged. Not worth the hassle, if you ask me..

it should work fine with agp 8x boards... the card AFAIK is fully dx9 compatible...

there are motherboards out there that came out a little around the time of the r300 debut that had faulty agp 8x implementation... there should be a bios you can flash to fix the issue in most cases... else rma'ing the r300 for an updated version should also fix the issue... kudos to ati for actually not waiting around for the mobo makers to fix the issue and implementing a workaround in their cards themselves :)

[ClyssaN]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
The Only bug? Thats pretty.. ummm. large statement you made there. From what I have seen on the rage3d driver forums. There are plenty of statements to contradict that. There are plenty of bugs in Catalyst drivers atm.

hmm like i said, that is my case with half-life, i'm not saying that now everything is ok with halflife for other users, i was only talking about me. I was truly upset for months with the esc bugs.

[Kombatant]

Guys guys.. I believe we have a small misunderstanding here. Terry was quite clear. He was talking about the Catalyst drivers as being the most stable. Stable doesn't mean that the drivers don't have bugs with certain games, or issues with others. Stable means just that. Stable. I haven't seen a blue screen in ages. No, really! :) I haven't seen a total freeze of windows caused by a graphics card function in ages. That's what stable means. I could be wrong of course, but I don't think so.

You are free to correct me/flame me/whatever of course if i am wrong :p

[ChrisRay]

Originally posted by Kombatant
Guys guys.. I believe we have a small misunderstanding here. Terry was quite clear. He was talking about the Catalyst drivers as being the most stable. Stable doesn't mean that the drivers don't have bugs with certain games, or issues with others. Stable means just that. Stable. I haven't seen a blue screen in ages. No, really! :) I haven't seen a total freeze of windows caused by a graphics card function in ages. That's what stable means. I could be wrong of course, but I don't think so.

You are free to correct me/flame me/whatever of course if i am wrong :p


Actually I said the topic was with pun intended, And it was continuation of the discussion on what could be improved on the drivers themselves. and there flaws ect :P But I needed a good topic to catch peoples attention. :cool:

I can honestly say, I have never experienced a blue screen, Windows freeze on any of my graphics cards since Windows 2000. I cant imagine a graphics card freezing my system. Expecially in a windows enviroment.

Perhaps in heavy gaming with Overclocked.. But has that really happened to you? :confused: Seems really.. strange to me. But I hope you're not saying that Nvidia drivers cause Blue screens of death and lock ups in windows are you?

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by GlowStick
Elite Force II dose not work with 3.6's

At first i thought they did, because ive been haveing RAID problems ive reinstalled winders alot.

I was playing Elite Force II with the 3.5's, then the 3.6's came out, so i installed those on top of the 3.5's.

Then the raid failed, so i reinstalled winders, and just went for the 3.6 cats (oviously). install ef2 no go.

Then raid failed again, installed 3.6 again, again ef2 no go.

the symptons are when the q3 engine initilizes its just a grey screen. (when the intro videos play)

Quake 3 works fine, i belive it must be something that the developers must of modded to the proven quake 3 engine.

In half life with steam beta the text was not visible if i had AA on. 3.6's fixed that problem.
Have you tried Omegadrive's 3.6 yet? I didn't try EF2 with the regular ones, but it works just peachy with Omegadrives under 9x for me.

[Kombatant]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
Actually I said the topic was with pun intended, And it was continuation of the discussion on what could be improved on the drivers themselves. and there flaws ect :P But I needed a good topic to catch peoples attention. :cool:

I can honestly say, I have never experienced a blue screen, Windows freeze on any of my graphics cards since Windows 2000. I cant imagine a graphics card freezing my system. Expecially in a windows enviroment.

Perhaps in heavy gaming with Overclocked.. But has that really happened to you? :confused: Seems really.. strange to me. But I hope you're not saying that Nvidia drivers cause Blue screens of death and lock ups in windows are you?

My system is running overclocked 24/7 to its limits as it is, and I still don't get them blue screens. So either I am a lucky sob or the drivers are indeed super stable :)

Now, I got my 9700Pro last November. Before that I had a GF2Pro, a Geforce256 SDR, a TNT2U and a TNT. So you could say that I am quite familiar with the Detonators :p Anyway, apart from the infinite loop bug which seemed to plague certain old versions of the Detonators, I can't honestly say that my system was more unstable because of my nVidia card. You also have the confusing error reporting capabilities of XP (where the graphics driver will be blamed in a crash even in cases that the AGP bus of your motherboard will have failed) so this draws a pretty interesting picture.

But overall the Catalysts feel more trouble-free. There were times I had to download one zillion different versions of the Detonators because one thing was broken, and when i downloaded the new version i got the broken thing fixed, only to find something else broken :p And when you're on a 56k connection, that's not an enjoyable thing to do... My bro still has a GF4-4600 in his PC; it's still quite fast and gets the job done. The only thing i have to do is convince him of that so that he won't come over to my PC and play his games with AA and AF all the time :p