Alternative ATI drivers?

[Chrushev]

So it seems that ATI (AMD) stopped support for everything pre 5000 series as of Catalyst 12.6.

I have a 4850, which remains to be good a mid-range gaming card even at 4 years old. However I would like to have the latest possible tweaks for it, espeially now that every ounce of horsepower matters to make it last as long as possible.

I remember back in the day there were Omega drivers, but it appears they arent really active anymore?

Anyhow.. is there an alternative to ATI drivers? I am running Guild Wars 2 on it, and the performance is pretty good (40-50 FPS on mid/high settings.. with 25-30 in the most populated area (Lion's Arch) but if I can bump up the FPS by even 5 or 10 that woudl be great!

Thanks!

 

[Jovec]

So it seems that ATI (AMD) stopped support for everything pre 5000 series as of Catalyst 12.6.

I have a 4850, which remains to be good a mid-range gaming card even at 4 years old. However I would like to have the latest possible tweaks for it, espeially now that every ounce of horsepower matters to make it last as long as possible.

I remember back in the day there were Omega drivers, but it appears they arent really active anymore?

Anyhow.. is there an alternative to ATI drivers? I am running Guild Wars 2 on it, and the performance is pretty good (40-50 FPS on mid/high settings.. with 25-30 in the most populated area (Lion's Arch) but if I can bump up the FPS by even 5 or 10 that woudl be great!

Thanks!

Even the alternate drivers where nothing more than settings tweaks. Nobody is, or has been, modifying the actual driver code besides AMD. There are no "hidden gains" to be found in the 4000 series. If you need more performance, then either turn down settings or upgrade. For an upgrade, target the 7850 as a minimum and go higher as your budget allows. Someone else can recommend suitable NV options should you prefer them.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

None of the 48xx series cards are good enough anyway to play even semi modern games.

 

[Annon2255]

None of the 48xx series cards are good enough anyway to play even semi modern games.

I play plenty of modern games on my 4870... BF3, MW3, BL2, Skyrim etc. May not have 60 FPS, but I have zero problem playing them.

 

[Chrushev]

None of the 48xx series cards are good enough anyway to play even semi modern games.

I dont seem to have a problem with most games running on Medium to High with the 4850. Most games run close to 60 or at 60 on High. There are a few exceptions of course.

 

[Anarchist420]

[...]

Thanks!

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/175-doxs-customised-catalysts-releases/

I don't know if they support your GPU, but the link above is the only place of know that offers alternate drivers for either vendor.

The problem with the nv ones, for me at least, is that they sound like they break as much they make better.

Performance is high enough for me, I want the best IQ forced for every game if they aren't going to offer the option to choose formats or to turn on certain features, or to turn off optimizations that decrease IQ. I don't care how subtle the IQ difference may be to nv, they're a bunch of inefficient statists who actively help the state reduce my choices. In other words, they have a moral obligation to give all of their customers everything nv's customers want.

 

[Makaveli]

I dont seem to have a problem with most games running on Medium to High with the 4850. Most games run close to 60 or at 60 on High. There are a few exceptions of course.

You play most games at medium to high on a 4850 and getting close to 60 at what resolution?

And also what cpu is pushing this gpu?

 

[jacktesterson]

None of the 48xx series cards are good enough anyway to play even semi modern games.

A 4850 is about the same as a 5750.

Its more than capable of medium setting gaming for tons of modern games. Not all, but lots. Black Ops runs very well at 1080p on a 4850 for example. (From experience)

My buddy who only plays MLB2K12 for the last 6 months can play 1080p Maxed Out on a 4850.

I had one paired with a G530 for a while and it was more than capable of medium setting gaming in a lot of games. Surprising really.



Everyone makes these general, misguided assumptions because they must have maxed out everything in every game they play at 60 FPS when its really not necessary for the majority of users out there. Isn't the 5770 still one of the top cards used on Steam?

 

[tweakboy]

I remember when I had my awesome X800 XT PE .. lol I would use OMEGA ati drivers.. very solid especially now,, for older gen ATI cards. Don't know what hes up to now. gl

 

[Chrushev]

You play most games at medium to high on a 4850 and getting close to 60 at what resolution?

And also what cpu is pushing this gpu?

1680x1050 or 1920x1080 (depending if Im using the TV or the monitor)

Its on an i5 3570k (stock) box.

As mentioned above Call of Duties, Skyrim, Diablo 3, Star Craft 2, etc all run at 60 basically maxed out (i tend to put anti aliasing at 2x or 4x instead of of full blown).

 

[Makaveli]

Ah yes with Ivy pushing the gpu and none of those titles being DX11 ones they should run great.

I still have a 4890 in my HTPC just don't play any games on it.

I haven't seen custom drivers for years now, can you still not just install the newest drivers they should still work. However as others have pointed Ati/AMD is no longer doing optimizations for 4000 series so you are basically stuck unless you upgrade.

 

[Chrushev]

Ah yes with Ivy pushing the gpu and none of those titles being DX11 ones they should run great.

I still have a 4890 in my HTPC just don't play any games on it.

I haven't seen custom drivers for years now, can you still not just install the newest drivers they should still work. However as other have point Ati/AMD is no longer doing optimizations for 4000 series so you are basically stuck unless you upgrade.

yeah, generally im completely fine with DX9... in fact 4000 series supports 10.1 as maximum... no DX11. 5000 series are the first to support DX11.

The only time Ill even consider DX11 even on a top end card is if the performance is identical or better than DX9. So if the alternatives are DX9 60FPS and DX11 40 FPS... ill choose DX9.

Ill only make 1 exception... when the game in question has either extremely different look with DX11 or if the reason to play it is its presentation in DX11... something like Crysis or STALKER would fall under that.

 

[Zorander]

Have you tried OC-ing your 4850? I know they generally run hot but you could still squeeze a bit more out of your card this way nonetheless. I don't think you can get much more out of a driver upgrade as the driver dev team would have had enough time to optimise the architecture in its 4 years of life.

p.s. I played Skyrim on a friend's 4850 and I remember having to run things in Medium setting. Anything higher was noticably laggy and certain areas would cause the game to crash out (from lack of VRam, I guess).

 

[SlowSpyder]

I remember when I had my awesome X800 XT PE .. lol I would use OMEGA ati drivers.. very solid especially now,, for older gen ATI cards. Don't know what hes up to now. gl

I do IT support, I remember a workstation with a Radeon card in it having some kind of kooky problem that was found to be a bug in the ATI (at the time) drivers. I installed the alternate Omega drivers and the problem cleared up. Man, that takes me back, that had to be 8-9 years ago now.

 

[tweakboy]

There is already a thread about this.

Where is Omega ?

 

[bononos]

None of the 48xx series cards are good enough anyway to play even semi modern games.

You've made many dismissive posts about older cards in the past and you're wrong again. Older games like Mass Effect 2 and L4D 2 run well on the 4850.

 

[Makaveli]

You've made many dismissive posts about older cards in the past and you're wrong again. Older games like Mass Effect 2 and L4D 2 run well on the 4850.

I can confirm that I played L4D2 on my 4890 and it ran well and that was on a socket 939 opteron. The OP is using Ivy to power his!

 

[balane]

There is already a thread about this.

Where is Omega ?

The other thread was started over two hours after this one so that one is the dupe.

 

[Bateluer]

AMD dropped support for the 4000 series in the newer Catalyst to focus on current generation products. Which means, they aren't tweaking anything or fixing anything in those cards. Sadly, 12.6 is the most current, most polished driver set you're going to get.

You can give them flak for it, but bottom line is that the 4xxx cards are 4 years old now and at some point, a company needs to drop legacy support.

Fortunately, newer cards offer more performance with less power usage. A 7950, for example, will average about 6x the performance than that 4850.

 

[Chrushev]

AMD dropped support for the 4000 series in the newer Catalyst to focus on current generation products. Which means, they aren't tweaking anything or fixing anything in those cards. Sadly, 12.6 is the most current, most polished driver set you're going to get.

You can give them flak for it, but bottom line is that the 4xxx cards are 4 years old now and at some point, a company needs to drop legacy support.

Fortunately, newer cards offer more performance with less power usage. A 7950, for example, will average about 6x the performance than that 4850.

Yeah its understandable... I wish they would go open source or something at that point.... im sure millions of end users can still come up with tweaks and optimizations to further improve it.

Getting a newer card isnt really an option for me, this is a secondary setup (not my main one), and the 4850 satisfies its needs.. i just want to get the most out of it if I can you know?

I dont want to run things at 40FPS if there is a way to run them at 60FPS

So, guess Im stuck with 12.6 and current performance then unless I OC.

Any recommendations on OCing it? As mentioned before, it already runs hot... so perhaps OCing isnt recommended?

 

[Phanuel]

If your existing drivers already work, what do you want them to do for your 4 year old card? She's tapped out and isn't even being sold anymore. Either upgrade to a current generation card or just accept what you already have.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Games like mw3, me2 or l4d2 don't count as modern games. At least not in terms of graphics. Might as well have said sims or FIFA.

My definition of modern games include, the most recent version from these series:
Nfs
Dirt showdown
Bf
Crysis
Metro
Stalker
Rockstar games like gta or max Payne or sleeping dogs and stuff
A less than 2 years old unreal engine based game
Skyrim is semi modern,
Etc

IMO anything less than 5830/5850 or GTX 460 isn't worth keeping for serious gamers on a budget. And I would personally not recommend anything lower than 6950 or GTX 570 if you have a chance for these.

And if 4800 users are so happy then I see nothing wrong with older drivers. Companies can't support ancient cards forever.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

I don't know why people are knocking the 4850; it is reasonably close to the 7750 in performance. Sure it sucks a lot of power compared to the 7750 but at least it can hang with modern hardware.

I wouldn't recommend buying one now, the lack of driver support and DX 11 being a major factor in that decision.

 

[GotNoRice]

OP, unfortunately 12.6 drivers really are still your best bet. I run these with my 2x 4870x2 QuadCF setup with mostly good results.

On a positive note, you are able to install the latest CAPs on top of the legacy driver.
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

That should potentially bring you at least some of the fixes that might otherwise only come with new drivers.

None of the 48xx series cards are good enough anyway to play even semi modern games.

LOL! My 2x 4870x2 scores over 34K GPU score in vantage. Your 7970 in comparison scores what, 30K?

Remind me which modern game my cards are too slow to play...

yeah, generally im completely fine with DX9... in fact 4000 series supports 10.1 as maximum... no DX11. 5000 series are the first to support DX11.

I think it's important to clarify here that 4xxx series AMD cards have no issues playing DirectX11 games. Compatibility with DX10 and DX10.1 hardware was built into DX11 by design. A 4xxx series card running a DX11 game would run using the DX10.1 downlevel compatibility path. The only noteworthy feature that you would miss in this situation is Tesselation.

You can give them flak for it, but bottom line is that the 4xxx cards are 4 years old now and at some point, a company needs to drop legacy support.

Nvidia supports cards as far back as the 6800 Ultra, which was released in 2004 (AMD already abandoned their DX9 cards years ago). Nvidia's latest drivers continue to bring performance improvements and in many cases new features even to older cards, with DX10 cards like an 8800GT getting benefits such as adaptive Vsync, etc.

4xxx series cards are VLIW5, an architecture that was still in use as recently as the 6870. I have a hard time believing there isn't more performance to be had from these old cards. It sounds more like lip-service on the part of AMD to cover up being a lazy company. Again, their competitor still supports cards that are twice as old.

They are of course, free to do whatever they want, but this is a free market, and it's the reason my computer now has 2x 680 instead of 2x 7970. I'm happy knowing that my cards will still be supported years from now. 7970 owners? Good luck with that!

 

[Makaveli]

OP, unfortunately 12.6 drivers really are still your best bet. I run these with my 2x 4870x2 QuadCF setup with mostly good results.

On a positive note, you are able to install the latest CAPs on top of the legacy driver.
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

That should potentially bring you at least some of the fixes that might otherwise only come with new drivers.



LOL! My 2x 4870x2 scores over 34K GPU score in vantage. Your 7970 in comparison scores what, 30K?

Remind me which modern game my cards are too slow to play...



I think it's important to clarify here that 4xxx series AMD cards have no issues playing DirectX11 games. Compatibility with DX10 and DX10.1 hardware was built into DX11 by design. A 4xxx series card running a DX11 game would run using the DX10.1 downlevel compatibility path. The only noteworthy feature that you would miss in this situation is Tesselation.



Nvidia supports cards as far back as the 6800 Ultra, which was released in 2004 (AMD already abandoned their DX9 cards years ago). Nvidia's latest drivers continue to bring performance improvements and in many cases new features even to older cards, with DX10 cards like an 8800GT getting benefits such as adaptive Vsync, etc.

4xxx series cards are VLIW5, an architecture that was still in use as recently as the 6870. I have a hard time believing there isn't more performance to be had from these old cards. It sounds more like lip-service on the part of AMD to cover up being a lazy company. Again, their competitor still supports cards that are twice as old.

They are of course, free to do whatever they want, but this is a free market, and it's the reason my computer now has 2x 680 instead of 2x 7970. I'm happy knowing that my cards will still be supported years from now. 7970 owners? Good luck with that!

SO nvidia still does performance tweaking in drivers for say the 8800 series of gpu's?

And notice I said performance tweaking for games not just drivers that support them.

So are they actively fixing bugs and provide performance improvements ?