Should I download 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8?? Ati drivers

[thestain]

Does anyone know what Ati is refering to when it hypes its new drivers and the reviewers of them hype them too?

I was thinking all percentage gains refer to original release and are not comparing things to current drivers.

I don't see the improvements from one version to another, in fact, sometimes it seems peformance takes a hit in order to fix or improve something else.

I have an Asus A8N32 Motherboard (nVidia chipset) and I want to use the best Ati driver for my HIS ATI x1900XTX Video card..

Which Driver would be best for my set up?

Thanks!!

 

[rbV5]

Usually it is basically spelled out in the release notes for the driver, the gains are likely the "best-case" for a specific scenario.....here's an excerpt from Cat 6.8 for example:

3DMark06 performance improves as much as 22% on single ATI Radeon® X1000 series cards with 256MB of graphics memory at 1280x1024 and higher when anti-aliasing is enabled. The largest gains are found on the ATI Radeon® X1800 series and ATI Radeon® X1900 series of products

It is based on previous performance, not on the original Catalyst driver set delivered.

Usually the latest driver is the best bet unless you are experiencing issues.

Edit: Additionally, the above example was preceded with this text;

Optimizations made to ATI's graphics memory manager have led to significant gains in DirectX applications that make heavy use of graphics memory on 256MB ATI graphics cards:

So you see the underlying reason for the performance gain as well. The release notes should be your first download for any driver set, it contains important information specific to the driver release and all too often ignored.

 

[TheRyuu]

ATI drivers are not like Nvidia's drivers. ATI like to release a monthly driver. Nvidia seems to spit out drivers left and right and us (the user) are left to sort through all the junk for one good driver.

Normally with ATI the latest is the best. In this case 6.8. However some users are falling back to the 6.6 Chuck version because of problems with 6.7. Not sure about 6.8 though.

With Nvidia all drivers are not created equal (like ATI, or I seem to think so). You can choose between the 91.31, 91.33, 91.36, 91.37, 91.45, and 91.47 Or you can even fall back to a good 80's series driver like the 84.37 or the tried and true 84.21 (dug ).
Now you might think the 91.47's are the best because of the higher version number. Well you'd probably be wrong. The best driver out of all of them is the 91.45. Before that it was the 91.37. And BTW, the 91.36 came out AFTER the 91.37!?

 

[Zenoth]

Cat 6.8 crashes my Oblivion.

Every single other games out there are fine with Cat 6.8.

With 6.7, my Oblivion is fine. Very same settings in-game and very same Mods running (even Vanilla, as tested). That's with, or without the Chuck Patch. And Cat 6.8 is the very first Catalyst driver to give me a "real" problem in a game. And I never, ever had any issues before with a driver or any ATi products/softwares.

Sometimes the "latest" ain't necessarely what's best for you. You really have to test it and see for yourself I guess.

 

[OBCT]

Cat 6.8 crashed Oblivion for me when I had AA on (2x or 4x). But I like to leave it off and keep my HDR. The 6.8 Chuck patch didn't seem to work right for me.

 

[thestain]

I read some reviews of the various drivers and still don't see anyting approaching ten percent, let alone 22 percent improvement from one driver release to the other.

Per reviews sometimes performance takes a hit, sometimes it improves a few percentange points from driver to driver.

Good to know there might be issues with 6.7 and 6.8, don't want problems.. so.. 6.6 would be the most recent without any issues?

What NVidia driver release plays nicest with multiple hard drives and an Ati Video card?

Thanks again!!

 

[Capt Caveman]

I have the same mobo and video card. I'm using the 6.8s w/out any problems.

 

[KeepItRed]

Tell me about it. The drivers for Windows X64...ever since Catalyst 6.0, there's nothing but ONE bug fix...no improvements, no nothing new.

 

[Golgatha]

I'm still using the 6.5 Chuck patch drivers. I suppose I'm just waiting for the Chuck patch to get integrated into the main drivers before I decide to upgrade. That and Prey runs fine on the 6.5s .

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: wizboy11
ATI drivers are not like Nvidia's drivers. ATI like to release a monthly driver. Nvidia seems to spit out drivers left and right and us (the user) are left to sort through all the junk for one good driver.

Normally with ATI the latest is the best. In this case 6.8. However some users are falling back to the 6.6 Chuck version because of problems with 6.7. Not sure about 6.8 though.

With Nvidia all drivers are not created equal (like ATI, or I seem to think so). You can choose between the 91.31, 91.33, 91.36, 91.37, 91.45, and 91.47 Or you can even fall back to a good 80's series driver like the 84.37 or the tried and true 84.21 (dug ).
Now you might think the 91.47's are the best because of the higher version number. Well you'd probably be wrong. The best driver out of all of them is the 91.45. Before that it was the 91.37. And BTW, the 91.36 came out AFTER the 91.37!?

You can simply stick to the official drivers on Nvidia's site and not get all these beta or other sources drivers.

84.21 to 91.31 Udnno what official revision they are at now..