Best ATI drivers = catalyst 3.5

by **shockwave203** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 5:45 pm

pulled this off of Rage3d forums, supposedly a bunch of people have re-installed the 3.5's and performance in Battlefield 1942 has gone up. 3dmark loses some points (very small loss), but overall people are saying BF1942 is more smooth with less chopps. The demo 'far cry' also works properly, allowing AA/AF to work, with faster frames and less jitttering. I think I'm going to roll back and try these out instead of using the 3.9's. Lots of people have been having trouble with the 4.2's, so I never bothered installing them.

Having read all the general praise for the 3.5's, and having had a few probs with the latest Cat 4.2, I thought I'd give the old 3.5's a whirl in my system.

Holy crap what a difference it has made! No kidding. I'm astounded.

Ok, so it's not that much of a difference, but when you get consistent and smooth frame rates in all your games, and you experience less bugs you can't help but notice the impact.

• 3dmark03, though getting a slightly lower score (like 40 points less) is now noticably smoother. The airplane demo highlights this the most: no stuttering or 'catching', just smooth flyby's for all the plane shots.

• Far Cry now works with AA on and it runs pretty decently with all settings maxed in 800x600.

• Battlefield runs the best with these drivers too. I can't benchmark it, but I can easily notice the lack of stuttering and general smoothness now has.

It seems that with later drivers, ATI have managed to 'technically' make the drivers faster and thus give better benchmark scores, but the cost of this is increased stuttering and a lack of consistent framerates.

Any drawbacks? Well, no, none I can think of...Oh yeah, wait, there is just one; you don't have the pointless smartshader effects. Hands up anyone who has any smartshader effects enabled right now? Thought as much!

So basically, I'd highly recommend people try the Cat 3.5's out. In contrast to 4.2 they make quite a significant difference. The main points being alot more consistent framerates and less game bugs. Forget about not being able to say you have 'the latest drivers'. Being able to say you have the fastest is much more valuable.

p.s. Sorry if something like this has been posted before, but having personally seen the difference, I just had to get the word out incase there are others who'd massively benefit from this.

*EDIT*

Download 'em from ATI here (XP driver):
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k...009437c-efg.exe

Control Panel:
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/control...009437c-efg.exe

by **shockwave203** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 5:53 pm

Jeffro here's a link to omega cat 3.5, I know you're always freaking out about which drivers have the best performance and such

http://www.driverheaven.net/downloads/index4.htm

by **RCinator** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:37 pm

The 4.2s have been rock-solid for me, and I wouldn't trade the OverDrive feature for anything.

by **Bagginses** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:47 pm

Not to sound like a noob, but what type of procedure would I have to go through to roll those drivers back?

-Bagginses

by **shockwave203** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:18 pm

you uninstall the ATI control panel (if you installed it), and then uninstall the actual ATI display driver. (i think you can do this in add/remove programs)

you then restart your computer, and then install the 3.5's. then the control panel.

I like to run a driver cleaner, to make sure that all the drivers were taken off the hardrive. You can get one from http://www.driverhaven.net/cleaner.

by **igloo17** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:20 pm

I'm still using 3.7, altho I've downloaded the newer ones, when I read someone has problems with them, I hold off updating to the newest driver.

Still at this point I'm gonna stay at 3.7,

bf42 plays very well, I see no need to update at this time.

by **Jeffro** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:52 pm

Originally posted by shockwave203
Jeffro here's a link to omega cat 3.5, I know you're always freaking out about which drivers have the best performance and such

http://www.driverheaven.net/downloads/index4.htm

EDIT:

I changed my mind...i'm going for the 3.5 omegas and fixing the damn problem...

by **Jeffro** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 10:45 pm

Is it normal when reverting back to get messages warning of overwriting new files...i said "yes" to overwrite...

I followed the instructions and used driver cleaner :confused:

by **shockwave203** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 10:59 pm

you shouldnt get any rewriting messages if you uninstalled the 4.2's. did you unisntall the previous omegas you were using before?

make sure ATI control panel is uninstalled as well. same with radclocker

by **Jeffro** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 4:02 pm

What about the fix that fixes the haze not appearing correctly?

And other fixes too?:confused:

by **Jeffro** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 5:04 pm

UPDATE:

I have just installed Catalysts 3.10s because of the "hazing" effect of the 3.9's and below...

Best ATI drivers = catalyst 3.5

Best ATI drivers = catalyst 3.5

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