Driver issues with Radeon VE and Win2K Solved!

[tracert]

I bought a OEM Radeon VE because it was cheap and benchmarks are fine for me to play Age of Empires. The card went with the following system.

Enlight 7237 Case w/ 340Watt PS
ECS K7S5A
Duron 800Mhz
Samsung 512 DDR
Maxtor 40Gig 7200RPM
Plextor CDRW
Win2K SP2

I have to use the reference drivers from ATI because they wont allow you to use the Retail ones with an OEM card. The problem is they don't seem to ever upgrade these drivers and I have to completely disable HW acceleration in order to play AOEII. Very - not cool. I have gone so far as to email ATI with no response (it is now 3 month later), not that I actually expected any.

Long story short, I have Hardware Acceleration off and the Radeon VE acts no better or worse then my 8meg SIS card did. I am thinking of selling it and either buying a retail or maybe a MX card. At least drivers might work with Win2K. Is there any way I could flash this card to a retail VE? Any ideas would be helpful. Keep in mind that these ideas can't cost more then $40.00 with Shipping included in that cost.

Thanks.

 

[RSMemphis]

Have you tried these?

As far as I remember, all the Radeon drivers will work on retail AND OEM Radeons, including the VE...

I used to have problems with the VE under 98 more than 2k, but every since that driver release, no more problems.

Replaced it with a Ti-200 anyway.

 

[tracert]

RsMemphis

Thanks for the help, I have the card made by Joytech, and when I try to use a driver from another Manufacturer or try to use the Retail versions, I get an error message. The only driver I can use seem to be the "Reference" Drivers. Does anyone here know of a possible way I can get a bios update or get a copy of the actual driver files so I can do a *.inf install? Let me know.

Thanks for your input,
Tracert

 

[Willoughbyva]

Have you tried the Omega corner drivers? He claimes they work on all cards based on the Radeon type chipset.

https://http://www.omegacorner.com/ati.htm

Will

 

[tracert]

Well, I may have been an idiot but for some reason the new 6018 Beta Drivers worked great. I now have HWA on and not a single problem in any application I tried. I am much happier.

This was all I wanted. A decent 2D card that worked better then my SIS card and now with the Driver issue gone this card is perfect for me. Next on my list is to start ripping DVD's to VCD's and see how well the TV out works. From what I hear, it is pretty good with this card.

Thank you guys for your help.