Which Catalyst drivers are best for my 9600XT?

[ShawnD1]

Here is my system:
Athlon 3200+
Radeon 9600XT
1GB PC2700 RAM @ 200MHz
Asus A7N8X-X (nForce 2)
Windows XP Home

Here's my story:
2 days ago I formatted my hard drive. I installed the appropriate motherboard drivers and video drivers (cat 4.6). With these Catalyst 4.6 drivers, my performance SUCKS. In Neverwinter Nights at 1024x768 with no AA, no AF, and fairly high quality settings (everything but environment shadows), I get maybe 30 frames per second if I'm lucky. That didn't seem right at all, so I pulled the 9600XT and used my GeForce2 Ti with whatever drivers were on Nvidia's site on June 15, 2004. With my GF2 using the same settings in Neverwinter Nights, I get 50 frames per second all the time.

The 4.6 Catalyst drivers are obviously the problem, but which version should I use?

 

[BFG10K]

The 3.10s are the best drivers.

 

[ronnn]

Probably depends on the game. 4.6 works best for me in far cry. Just installed the new omegas, as my son plays cs and they have special support for that (old gl drivers).

 

[dguy6789]

Use the Omega drivers, they are MUCH faster then the catalysts. goto www.omegacorner.com and get the newest omega driver there. and always use the newest driver, it may be a tad slower, but your comp wont crash in things it would before.

 

[DoobieOnline]

Just a heads-up, Omega Corner has changed their web address to omegadrivers.net.

 

[Cat]

Try turning off shadows.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Use the Omega drivers, they are MUCH faster then the catalysts. goto www.omegacorner.com and get the newest omega driver there. and always use the newest driver, it may be a tad slower, but your comp wont crash in things it would before.

huh? So is the Omega driver suppsoed to be faster or a tad slower??

edit: The omega's have 2 version, performance/quality both of which should not be slower (or at least as fast) than the catalyst version as he claims.

 

[ShawnD1]

Those Omega drivers helped, but they have a lot of rendering problems, and I can't use dual monitors anymore.

 

[ronnn]

are you using driver cleaner? Personally I think ATI cats are slightly better than omega usually, but omega has other supports, such as soft mods.

 

[ShawnD1]

Yes I used driver cleaner.

 

[Dman877]

4.6's were slow for me as well. I rolled back to the 4.2's but now UT is crashing so I'm considering rolling back to 3.1 now. 3.1's were the last problem-free drivers from ATI for me.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
The 3.10s are the best drivers.

Thanks! Major performance gain. With 4.6 drivers, my frame rate was maybe 30 at most. With the 3.10 drivers, my frame rate is 150!

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: BFG10K
The 3.10s are the best drivers.

Thanks! Major performance gain. With 4.6 drivers, my frame rate was maybe 30 at most. With the 3.10 drivers, my frame rate is 150!

turn off vsync...

 

[SickBeast]

Are the Cat. 3.1's the best drivers, even for newer games like Far Cry? I'm going to try them out now, thanks for the tip!!

 

[SickBeast]

OK I just tried the 3.1's in UT2004...they were actually a bit slower than the 4.6's. I would get around 31FPS in a certain spot with the 3.1's, then I got 35FPS with the 4.6's.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Originally posted by: virtualgames0

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: BFG10K
The 3.10s are the best drivers.

Thanks! Major performance gain. With 4.6 drivers, my frame rate was maybe 30 at most. With the 3.10 drivers, my frame rate is 150!

turn off vsync...

I just can't seem to get away from them either. 3.10 for me too with my 9700 Pro.