Radeon Drivers?

[gizbug]

The biggest complaint i hear with ATI is their drivers, and how crappy they are. I have a GF3 ti200, looking at getting a 9700 or a ti4200 this weekend, and I am concerned with the driver issue. Any input on the ATI drivers? ATI good for the majority of games out there (I am a flight simmer)

 

[BoomAM]

I had a GF3Ti200 as well, upgraded to 9700PRO at the beggining of january.
Ive had no driver troubles whatsoever.
People who still think that ATI drivers are crap/buggy, arent up to date on the latest stuff. Crap ATI drivers are a thing of the past.

Just make sure that you re-format, OK?
I tryed removing the GF3Ti200/drivers, and putting in the 9700PRO, and i only got 8000 3D Marks, and loads of crashes.
Re-Formatted, and now i get 10,000, and no crashes or problems.

The difference between a GF3/GF4 and a 9700 card is very big. I`d go the extra step and get the 9700 card instead of a Ti4200.

 

[rbV5]

The biggest issue is still...and has been, the install/uninstall routine. The drivers themselves are very good.

 

[BoomAM]

If you un/install right, you wont have any problems. I dont. And ive gone from 2.4 to 3.0 to 3.0a to 3.1
All i do is:
1) Uninstall the Drivers from Add/Remove Programs. Dont Restart Though.
2) Uninstall the Control Panel from Add/Remove Programs. Dont Restart.
3) Remove any ATI entries from device manager.
4) Disable any ATI Startup things via msconfig.
5) Restart.
6) Install New Drivers. Dont Restart
7) Install New Control Panel.
8) Restart.
9) Re-Enable any ATI Startup things via msconfig.
DONE.

FYI, To access msconfig, got to the start menu, select run. Type msconfig, Press enter.

 

[rbV5]

If you un/install right, you wont have any problems

The problem is, methods like yours only work most of the time for most of the users. Unfortunately it will also leave stray registry entries, and will cause XP to automatically install the drivers for you as soon as you reboot into windows. It makes no mention of WDM drivers at all which are required for proper functionality of AIW and VIVO cards and must be installed in a specific way. Also unified components are now required (includes windows media components) for the upcoming MMC 8.1(and present MMC 8.0) to work properly. Its not as easy as you suggest, especially with new users or folks that are used to other brands.

I don't have problems no, thanks to 3+ years of exclusively using Radeon cards, I am an expert.....but it is not straitforward or simple, especially if you have issues. A proper uninstall utility, and a smart installation application would go a long way toward making ATI driver issues diasappear IMHO.

The bottom line is however, the Catalyst drivers themselves are very good.

 

[BFG10K]

ATi's drivers work well for the most part but they do have a few outstanding issues. As a former nVidia user myself I can say that the drivers are not quite as good as nVidia's but very close.

Still, that hasn't stopped the 9700 Pro from being the best card I've ever owned.

 

[BoberFett]

Time to dredge this back up. I'm getting a bit pissed here.

Upgrading a Gladiac GF2 GTS to a PowerColor 9100. Which by the way kinda sucks. Default speeds are 250/183. Have it running currently at 275/210. Gets around 5000 in 3dMark2001SE. Nothing mind blowing, but better than the GF2. And the 2D kicks the GF2s butt.

Anyway...

I was having a helluva time installing the ATI drivers. I keep getting problems installing IKERNEL (an InstallShield file, IIRC) or crashing on INFSETUP. You mentioned install problems. Are these sorts of things common? I finally got it running with the drivers that shipped with the card, but it was a beast to get installed, and at least one portion of the setup crashed. There are five portions of the driver setup I believe. Everything seems to be working, but it still worries me that part of the installation failed.

 

[Antoneo]

Does anyone else get the "Should not see me" box? I saw this after clicking Restart after installing the Catalyst 3.1 drivers. I guess I should have waited until I installed the control panel before anything. It seems to be killing processes but that unnerves me somewhat since this is also my first ATI card.

 

[kylebisme]

ya, Antoneo, i think it is becuase we have fast drives. but anyway, that is the biggiest issue i have with ati drivers, and that is hardly an issue at all.

 

[HappyNic]

You should always clean out your old drivers before installing in new ones, doing so will give you better stabily and less chances of your system crashing, also a notice gain in speed.

For those that want to easily do a clean driver install of their ATI drivers or nvidia driver in their system you can download "driver cleaner"
It's a small ,simple program that do just that.

you can get it herehttp://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/ Since you're there, check out their forum , where you should be able to find lots of info on what ,how, not, do, etc on video drivers/cards.http://www.driverheaven.net

Warning, if you're using Driver cleaner don't place the New drivers that you're going to use in your ATI folder cause it's gonna get delete with the rest of the old ATI stuff. After find out that my whole ATI folder is gone, and my new drivers are no where to be found in my system, I went online to ATI's website to redownload it, but for some reason their driver page wass DOWN at the time,.. Talk about unlucky Anways, just make sure yout new drivers or any important files is somewhere else.

 

[BoberFett]

After much !@#$ing wrestling, I got things installed. It required many installs and driver cleanings. On both my and my girlfriends machine, I ended up installing DX9, then installing the drivers. Then I installed the drivers a second time by going to the Adapter tab in the Advanced display properties and choosing the same driver that was unpacked into the \ATI directory. For some reason, I had to install the same drivers a second time. Then the control panel, and I was up and running.

If ATI doesn't fix that !@#$ I'm going back to Nvidia for my next card.

 

[gcogger]

The InfSetup crashes are very common for Win98 users. Other driver issues are stuttering in games, and a limit (60 or 75Hz) to the refresh rate in Windows - again, both are reasonably common. Take a look at the forums at http://www.rage3d.com for many messages about these problems. This is happening with the very latest ATI drivers, and I have to say that this is the most difficult card to get working that I've ever had.

So yes - ATI drivers are still not very good, IMHO.

 

[BoberFett]

I spent about 4 or 5 hours last night getting two computers up and running with 9100s.

I don't know if I'd say their drivers are bad. Their driver installation certainly is. Like you said, this is the worst hardware install I've ever done.

I'm generally pleased with the performance and image quality though.

 

[CChaos]

I replaced my motherboard at the same time as my video card (nVidia-->ATI) so I just reformatted and went straight to the Cat 3.1's. I haven't had any problems. You may want to consider a Regcleaner and/or Detonator Destroyer if you are going from nVidia to ATI and want to avoid problems.

 

[BoberFett]

I used DriverCleaner (http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/) and it still had problems. But from what I've heard both here and at the Rage3D forums, the Catalyst installation for 9x is absolute shite.