Point of Omega Drivers?

[LocutusX]

OK, so what exactly is the point of the Omega drivers?

I decided to switch from ATI official Catalyst 4.5 to the Omega version of the same thing.
I uninstalled the ATI driver & control panel using Windows Add/Remove. Then rebooted into
safe mode and used the Driver Cleaner. Then rebooted back into normal mode and installed Omega 4.5.

All the tabs in Display Properties/Advanced looks the same, except it has the overclocker tab, which seems to be some 3rd party application. One difference is, SmartGart shows Fast Write is forced off, but thats the option I chose during install anyways.

Both 3DMark2001 and 3DMark03 report less than 0.5% difference in performance.

So, uh... am I missing something here?

 

[SickBeast]

Some people say their drivers improve image quality.

I say it's all bunk. Complete, 100% unadaulterated bunk. Bunk.

Why would you use drivers made by a 15 year old kid when you can have ones made by the professionals who actually made the graphics card?

 

[LocutusX]

In the author's support forum, people are going on about settings for various stencil buffer options and "Temporal AA".

Umm... HUH? What are they talking about, I don't see any such settings anywhere in the Omega Drivers "control panel".

 

[SickBeast]

Temporal AA is coming out in the new Cat. 3.6 drivers anyway.

 

[BFG10K]

The Omegas are basically repackaged ATi drivers. A few people find they work when standard ATi drivers don't but usually it pays to stick to ATi whenever possible.

 

[Avalon]

Supposedly the Omega drivers are tweaked for better performance, but the only real reason to use Omega drivers is if you have a softmoddable card. The Omega drivers are pretty much useless otherwise, because I don't think there is any performance difference, again unless you have a softmoddable card.

 

[high]

i have used the omega's since the 3.5's and I love em. For some reason, I find the jaggies are a lot more noticeable with the ati's with no aa as apposed to the omega's.

 

[Killrose]

Omega can change things around that otherwise would not make the drivers WHQL certified if Ati themselves did it. Remember that Omega included the softmod for the 9500np to 9700 as an option when installing his drivers, something Ati would never do.

It's nice to have an optional driver set floating around that "may" offer fixes or IQ enhancements that might not be available with WHQL certified Ati drivers.

And I beleive his quite a bit older than 15.

 

[LocutusX]

My skepticism has a number of reasons:

- the "extra features" of Omega aren't provided by Omega, but rather by 3rd party applications bundled with the Omega driver (overclocking, refresh rate tweaking)
- looking through the Omega control panel (Display Properties | Advanced Options) shows it to be almost 99.999999% identical to the ATI Catalyst control panel - so, umm, WHERE are these "tweaked" options?
- performance of 3DMark benchmarks is within the margin of error for test repetition. have not tested OpenGL yet - when I do, that will decide for me whether to stick with this or throw it away. as well, no improved "performance feeling" in games like Far Cry (I guess I should bench it too, though)


Instead of wasting time with Omega, I'd urge people to try PowerStrip instead. Now THERE's a tweaking program that actually works. Try out the "vibrant colors" feature; it's great and there's no ATI control panel equivalent.

 

[LocutusX]

bump for any more thoughts

 

[Mikeyb01]

Well Omega has been awarded Ati's best modded driver award. And his drivers tweaks are in the Driver not the control panel. I use them and can say they give you a boost in performace. He also is part of the Cat. Beta team I believe. I think his drivers are great! and do not think he deserves anything less.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Mikeyb01
Well Omega has been awarded Ati's best modded driver award. And his drivers tweaks are in the Driver not the control panel. I use them and can say they give you a boost in performace. He also is part of the Cat. Beta team I believe. I think his drivers are great! and do not think he deserves anything less.

why the heck does ati have a best modded driver award????? do they not think that their software engineers can do their job that they must encourge people outside the company to make their drivers?

 

[Auric]

No one is making or modding drivers. It is simple plain text editing of the setup files to change existing options that may or may not be accessable from the Control Panel. All options can, however, be accessed with manual registry editing or tweakers so if you want to try those other options that ATI or MS would not deem fit for the swinish masses then why not do it yourself rather than relying on someone else and their potential mistakes and still not being able to restore to ATI defaults?