Catalyst 10.6 released

[yacoub]

Wasn't there a thread about ati drivers sucking ass not too long ago, and most people who agreed got flamed for being nvidia fanboys?

Been using forceware 257 beta, which is a major overhaul over the previous drivers with plenty of room for bugs, on a novel architecture like Fermi again with plenty of room for bugs, and with SLI to top it off. Somehow I have less problems then people with 8 month old hardware that should be fine tuned by now.

Yup, I never had problems with NVidia cards (7900 and 8800) or drivers. Then I got this 5770 and the Catalyst drivers are nothing but crap. Now my second display sometimes loses connection and then comes back a few seconds later. Video playback gets choppy after a few minutes. All sorts of nonsense. Mostly stupid little inconveniences and quirks that shouldn't be a problem (and never were when I ran an NVidia build). I can't wait to go back to NVidia, as I have a reasonable expectation their stuff will work without issues, unlike ATI which is just as poor at making drivers as when I last used them (X800 and and 9800Pro days). Sure, they tend to have better vibrancy/saturation with colors just like back in the day, but I'd give up that slight visual edge for consistent stability any day.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Yup, I never had problems with NVidia cards (7900 and 8800) or drivers. Then I got this 5770 and the Catalyst drivers are nothing but crap. Now my second display sometimes loses connection and then comes back a few seconds later. Video playback gets choppy after a few minutes. All sorts of nonsense. Mostly stupid little inconveniences and quirks that shouldn't be a problem (and never were when I ran an NVidia build). I can't wait to go back to NVidia, as I have a reasonable expectation their stuff will work without issues, unlike ATI which is just as poor at making drivers as when I last used them (X800 and and 9800Pro days). Sure, they tend to have better vibrancy/saturation with colors just like back in the day, but I'd give up that slight visual edge for consistent stability any day.

You know that will you find loads of people that will tell you that they don't have any problems with ATi drivers whatsoever, so I never understood these "I have problems X company drivers suck".

I, for example, didn't have driver problems with either brand so far.

 

[Will Robinson]

I've had ATi cards going back for years and the only driver problem I've ever had was with the set that made that little white square appear in the top left corner of my monitor.
It was fixed in the next month's release.

 

[phait]

I was an nVidia fanboy for a longtime. Mostly because once I pick something I tend to stick with it. Around the time ATi's drivers were getting a bad rep, I surely swore them off.

However, 4 years later reading about how I could save some money and get a decent card with ATi, and how drivers had improved... I decided to with my new build - and I've been very happy with my card so far.

 

[at80eighty]

Since I'm always skeptical, why am I of the understanding that this thread doesn't apply to you. Which leads me to question why are you bothering reading threads in detail such that you linked to and this thread, and why you're posting such an obvious thread crap type of post, anticipating that someone's going to call you out on it & you're ready with a response? It looks far more like trolling, else a marketing strategy to me. So which is it? And, being very aware that there are apparently tons of shills, apparently for both companies, I'm skeptical that so many people signed up on that forum just to make one post which was essentially "me too." People with problems look for solutions, not join forums just to post "me too." This, also being a tech forum, seems to be mostly void of that phenomenon. Another interesting thing that I noticed is that Apple fans don't flock to the windows software forum, reporting problems. And, the windows people don't run to the Apple forum, reporting Apple problems. In both cases, we consider it to be trolling. Just what motivates you to do this? Trolling? Or Marketing? Consider yourself warned publicly that if this continues, I'm going to consider you a shill, else a troll - both bannable offenses.
-Admin DrPizza

finally one of the higher ups gets it. got so tired of this nonsense being inexplicably permitted for so long. thank you.

 

[Will Robinson]

+1
It seems Happy may have earned a holiday.
I don't know if I can handle a whole week without a "trash ATi" post tho...

 

[KeithP]

I just installed these drivers running Win 7x64 with a 512MB Sapphire 4870. Youtube videos are now totally f'd up. Lots of corruption/blocking. I tried Chrome and Firefox. I even tried the Youtube HTML5 beta with Chrome, still no luck. Videos messed up.

Anyone else seeing this problem?

-KeithP

UPDATE: The problem has vanished. Not sure what happened. Maybe is was a weird Youtube issue although that would seem odd because it didn't happen on my MacBook.

-Keith

 

[Janooo]

Since I'm always skeptical, why am I of the understanding that this thread doesn't apply to you. Which leads me to question why are you bothering reading threads in detail such that you linked to and this thread, and why you're posting such an obvious thread crap type of post, anticipating that someone's going to call you out on it & you're ready with a response? It looks far more like trolling, else a marketing strategy to me. So which is it? And, being very aware that there are apparently tons of shills, apparently for both companies, I'm skeptical that so many people signed up on that forum just to make one post which was essentially "me too." People with problems look for solutions, not join forums just to post "me too." This, also being a tech forum, seems to be mostly void of that phenomenon. Another interesting thing that I noticed is that Apple fans don't flock to the windows software forum, reporting problems. And, the windows people don't run to the Apple forum, reporting Apple problems. In both cases, we consider it to be trolling. Just what motivates you to do this? Trolling? Or Marketing? Consider yourself warned publicly that if this continues, I'm going to consider you a shill, else a troll - both bannable offenses.
-Admin DrPizza

It just might be that "happy" sold his account to Rollo.

 

[PepperBreath]

ugh, I think I am done talking, don't want to get involved in another vacation-fest At least it's good to see you are in good spirit.

I guess I misspoke about the flash (though still doesn't change the fact I don't like it), the youtube driver crash thing is more likely about hardware acceleration in general. Now that I think about it, I remember reading some forum post that claimed it had to do with powerplay and overclocking. Only happens when you overclock, even by 1mhz, which has been confirmed on my machine.

No probs with the 4850 on the secondary machine, should be something 58xx specific.

EDIT: then again, EVR works just fine. Maybe TMT3 is flash-based? dunno.

When I first installed 10.6, I was downright giddy because DXVA started working and flash was accelerated. DXVA in particular hadn't worked for my 4870 in quite some time. Not a huge deal as I have a CPU quite capable of decoding 1080p video without a hitch but one of those things that'd be nice to have.

Then....a few nights ago I tried to watch a flash video and I only got sound and a green screen. The exact symptom I got for months prior that indicated that DXVA wasn't working. I double checked and played a WMV I knew could be accelerated and it didn't work either. DOH!

Wish I knew if it was hardware or software. It's been really hard to test and fix since everything else seems to work fine.

 

[mxnerd]

I installed 10.6 yesterday on my MSI laptop with mobility HD 2600. The 10.6 catalyst completely screwed up the system.

After installation, I put machine in sleep mode. When I try to wake it up, it blue screened.

Reboot the system, can't get into normal mode at all! The screen is completes black and I can't see anything!

Did save mode/normal mode switching several times and no help.

Had to restore installation point 2 days ago to get the system back.

I hardly have any problem with nVidia drivers, but ATI is completely the opposite, always screws up the system from time to time.

Had to stick with 10.5

 

[Cogman]

The biggest issue for me is powerplay (dell laptop with some 5xxx card in it). Disabling it makes the system really quite stable, enabling it gives my mouse viagra and causes system instability... And yes, my bios is updated.

 

[3DVagabond]

Seems to me there's a couple of choices with ATI drivers.

1, They could take longer in between releases to squash more bugs. Releasing new drivers every month limits the amount of time there is for testing.

Even if you go with option 1 there's going to be some people who have problems. You can't possibly test for every configuration and for every loose screw in front of the keyboard.

2, They can continue to release new drivers monthly that work for 99% of their customers. Release the occasional hotfix drivers for real showstoppers that need to be addressed ASAP.

This works for 99% of people just fine. They install the new drivers, reboot, and away they go happy as a lark with their new and "improved" drivers. (Maybe there was something that was improved on their system in the new release? Likely not. They feel better having the latest release. Almost like new hardware.)
Of the other 1%... 99% of those can keep using the previous drivers, not only with no issues, but a lot of them would have gotten no performance increase anyway from the new drivers.

I can't believe all of the drama from people with no real issues that need to be addressed.

 

[Cogman]

I can't believe all of the drama from people with no real issues that need to be addressed.

Perhaps you didn't see my post. System instability is a big issue for me. Yes, there is a work around that involves disabling a feature; However, powerplay is one of the features I would actually like to use for a laptop.

 

[3DVagabond]

Perhaps you didn't see my post. System instability is a big issue for me. Yes, there is a work around that involves disabling a feature; However, powerplay is one of the features I would actually like to use for a laptop.

Sorry. I'm not saying that there aren't any issues. I can understand needing to use powerplay with your laptop. You didn't say if no drivers work for you or if it's just a 10.6 issue. If none work, it's a real problem. What did ATI say when you reported it?

 

[TheUnk]

10.6 is real picky for me. First couple times it gave me blue screens on startup and I had to go into safe mode and uninstall the drivers. Not sure why it worked the third time...

 

[Cogman]

Sorry. I'm not saying that there aren't any issues. I can understand needing to use powerplay with your laptop. You didn't say if no drivers work for you or if it's just a 10.6 issue. If none work, it's a real problem. What did ATI say when you reported it?

I haven't reported it. It is a common issue and a popular brand of laptop ( dell studio 1558 http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-inspiron-dell-studio/468806-dell-studio-15-1558-thread-84.html ). Just did a bit of googling to find the source of the problem and disabled it.

Perhaps I should report it, I'm just a bit lazy.

I wasn't trying to say the drivers are unusable, just unpolished. The issue has been around as long as the 5xxx series has been.