Cat AI is a steaming pile

[Xarick]

Sorry, but it is.

Years ago I had a 9800pro, finally dumped it because of poor drivers and never looked back. Gave ati another shot with this 5850 which everyone said was wonderful. After 6 months I can safely say their drivers are better, but still problematic. They still can't do shadows properly and probably never will (Many games still have flickering shadows or weirdo shadow lines).

However I can live with most of this, but AI is the worst piece of crap ever. I tried playing borderlands when I first got this card and would crash, turn off cat ai and it works. I realize that is fixed now, but I went to play psychonauts and the game would play fine for a while then slow to 5fps. WTF, I tried all kinds of things and finally turned of CAT AI. Runs fine now. CAT AI causes more issues, introduces more bugs and obviously cannot be implemented correctly.

It is time for ATI to drop CAT AI and start hard writing their fixes into the drivers like NV does. Stop the stupid optimization calcs that cat ai is suppose to do that it constantly fails at and hard build in opts. Cat AI is mess, yes it gives you a few frames here or there in some games, but the overall trade offs are not worth it.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Sorry, but it is.

Years ago I had a 9800pro, finally dumped it because of poor drivers and never looked back. Gave ati another shot with this 5850 which everyone said was wonderful. After 6 months I can safely say their drivers are better, but still problematic. They still can't do shadows properly and probably never will (Many games still have flickering shadows or weirdo shadow lines).

However I can live with most of this, but AI is the worst piece of crap ever. I tried playing borderlands when I first got this card and would crash, turn off cat ai and it works. I realize that is fixed now, but I went to play psychonauts and the game would play fine for a while then slow to 5fps. WTF, I tried all kinds of things and finally turned of CAT AI. Runs fine now. CAT AI causes more issues, introduces more bugs and obviously cannot be implemented correctly.

It is time for ATI to drop CAT AI and start hard writing their fixes into the drivers like NV does. Stop the stupid optimization calcs that cat ai is suppose to do that it constantly fails at and hard build in opts. Cat AI is mess, yes it gives you a few frames here or there in some games, but the overall trade offs are not worth it.

I don't particular care of Catalyst Control Center, but I also do not think it is horrible. In *some* ways, it is better than nVidia's but in others worse.

As for the shadow problem - My 5770 never had that problem... What game are you using? What settings and resolution? Where are these shadows that do not work? Screen shots? Please?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Yeah, never really had a problem with CCC, and having gone over to NV, I kinda miss the built in OCing\fan control features. But really it sounds like you were having card specific problems, not Control Center as a whole problems.

 

[Schadenfroh]

I never install the CCC on my laptop, just the driver. Very bloated, IMO.

 

[Genx87]

My 4850 worked flawlessly after I uninstalled CCC. With it, the driver would crash very often.

 

[Dribble]

That's the problem with ultra optimising everything - it makes it all very fragile. For example one way they do optimisation is by replacing shaders in the game with special ati high speed ones. That's fine in one sense but it means every time a game is patched ati really needs to go through and check all their shader replacements. That obviously isn't practical due to the massive numbers of patches happening so stuff breaks.

 

[taltamir]

That's the problem with ultra optimising everything - it makes it all very fragile. For example one way they do optimisation is by replacing shaders in the game with special ati high speed ones. That's fine in one sense but it means every time a game is patched ati really needs to go through and check all their shader replacements. That obviously isn't practical due to the massive numbers of patches happening so stuff breaks.

all they would need to do is include a hash check to ensure it only runs the custom shaders for preapproved executables, using the game's built in ones otherwise...
also, that is a rather ridiculous "improvement" to implement, there are so many things for them to work on and they waste time on game AND version specific and bug causing crud like that?

@OP: you can turn it off, so just do. Yes with AMD I actually prefer to run just the driver without the entire bloatware CCC... since AMD gives you that options then all is well.

 

[Dribble]

all they would need to do is include a hash check to ensure it only runs the custom shaders for preapproved executables, using the game's built in ones otherwise...
also, that is a rather ridiculous "improvement" to implement, there are so many things for them to work on and they waste time on game AND version specific and bug causing crud like that?

@OP: you can turn it off, so just do. Yes with AMD I actually prefer to run just the driver without the entire bloatware CCC... since AMD gives you that options then all is well.

I agree, they probably do have checks but they obviously don't always work.

Personally I liked the olden days when there were no *performance optimisations* by either ati or nvidia and they just developed a general driver. That was a bit slower but significantly more stable. However with websites obsession over every fps the priority now days is to make the few games most websites test run as fast as possible, and if everything else suffers so be it.

 

[taltamir]

Personally I liked the olden days when there were no *performance optimisations* by either ati or nvidia and they just developed a general driver. That was a bit slower but significantly more stable. However with websites obsession over every fps the priority now days is to make the few games most websites test run as fast as possible, and if everything else suffers so be it.

I completely agree... old games not running has become the norm in both camps because the drivers are too busy with those specialized per game performance improvements and break general behavior/compatibility.

 

[Barfo]

Why whine about something you can turn off in 3 seconds?

 

[VirtualLarry]

It is time for ATI to drop CAT AI and start hard writing their fixes into the drivers like NV does. Stop the stupid optimization calcs that cat ai is suppose to do that it constantly fails at and hard build in opts. Cat AI is mess, yes it gives you a few frames here or there in some games, but the overall trade offs are not worth it.

All Cat AI does is optimizations. I don't think that you understand. At least with the current situation, you can just turn them off. If they started "hard writing" those very same optimizations directly into the driver, then you wouldn't be able to turn them off.

Perhaps you should petition them to set the default level of Cat AI optimizations to "none".

 

[Xarick]

My understanding from BFG is that it also fixes things. Also I am not talking about CCC. I have no issues with it and don't see how it is any worse than Nvidias control center with the exception of .net which is a whole other steaming pile. I am specifically talking about AI.

So I was under the impression that turning it off actually breaks things in some games. It also kills x-fire for those that use that.

 

[Rezident]

Never had a problem with Cat CC on 4890 or on my old 9800XT - and I had that for years. And what do you mean "can't do shadows properly and probably never will". The shadows seem to look fine for most other people including professional reviewers, the game devlopers themselves etc. Flickering shadows and weird lines? It sounds like there's something wrong with your setup, it is possible that it could be something other than the graphics drivers that work fine elsewhere.

 

[Xarick]

Having been on both camps trust me.. Nvidia does shadows better.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Having been on both camps trust me.. Nvidia does shadows better.

I went from a 8800GS to a HD4850 and didn't notice anything wrong with the shadows. Are you sure you don't have some other problem that's causing the messed up shadows?

 

[Xarick]

Shadows aren't messed up per se', but for example ATI CAN"T do shadows at all on gothic 3 without a community hack. also in many games shadows flicker in the distance something you wouldn't normally notice and you wouldn't see on my old 8800gts 320. I remember going to nvidia and it took me forever to realize I could start using full shadows again.

 

[GaiaHunter]

My 4850 worked flawlessly after I uninstalled CCC. With it, the driver would crash very often.

My 4850 is working flawlessly with CCC installed. Never crashed and all the driver installation have been download->install.

 

[Nirreln]

Shadows aren't messed up per se', but for example ATI CAN"T do shadows at all on gothic 3 without a community hack.

Gothic 3 can't do anything without a community fix, that game sucks period.

 

[taltamir]

Gothic 3 can't do anything without a community fix, that game sucks period.

agreed. A lot of games are released half finished and this is one of them.

 

[evident]

The last ATI Card i've used was the 9800Pro. I too had tons of problems w/ CCC and ATI drivers at the time. I haven't used an ATI card since then, not for fanboy reasons but the deals I found at the time of upgrading always led me toward NV cards.

 

[railven]

Weird, I remember people writing about Borderlands here and I played through it with the GF Local Lan Co-OP + the expansions (thank you Steam, all of this for under $40) and the only issue I had was god awful tearing.

Fired up D3D Override and problem solved. I believe I'd always have Cat set to standard too.

System was i7 930, HD 5870 Eye6, and junk.

I've yet to have any issues playing games (knock on wood) since my Rage Pro days.

 

[Swampthing]

I had a ATI card a long time ago, 9700? I can't remember. Had nothing but problems. Bought the 5870 last year and have still been having issues. I finally got fed up and installed my new gtx580 today. Stupid upgrade i know, but i'm just completely fed up with ATi and their crappy drivers. That and honestly i'm kinda jazzed about 3d vision. I just got the asus vg236 and the 580 arrived today so now i just need the dead sexy glasses.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I had a ATI card a long time ago, 9700? I can't remember. Had nothing but problems. Bought the 5870 last year and have still been having issues. I finally got fed up and installed my new gtx580 today. Stupid upgrade i know, but i'm just completely fed up with ATi and their crappy drivers. That and honestly i'm kinda jazzed about 3d vision. I just got the asus vg236 and the 580 arrived today so now i just need the dead sexy glasses.

What issues did you have?

I haven't had any issues with my 5870. My only complaint has been that Nvidia more closely works with vendors to get out hacked drivers - so on occasion they may has a feature that ati does not.

 

[bryanW1995]

all they would need to do is include a hash check to ensure it only runs the custom shaders for preapproved executables, using the game's built in ones otherwise...
also, that is a rather ridiculous "improvement" to implement, there are so many things for them to work on and they waste time on game AND version specific and bug causing crud like that?

@OP: you can turn it off, so just do. Yes with AMD I actually prefer to run just the driver without the entire bloatware CCC... since AMD gives you that options then all is well.

yeah, but nvidia's game specific profiles are awesome. I'd read about them but since I went x1950xt->3870->4850 I didn't "get" them at all with my gtx 260. I didn't start using them until getting my gtx 460, but now I think that they're a huge benefit. so nvidia's control panel is a +, CCC is a -. AMD really needs to rework CCC imho.

 

[Avalon]

Never had a single issue with either ATI drivers or CAT AI being enabled, and I've been using various ATI cards since the Radeon 9500. Sounds like you're having system specific issues, which is unfortunate as those are the hardest to replicate/find.