ATI Catalyst 6.5 drivers released discuss and rate them here

MEABeemer

At least for me they do!
All I can say is try it!


C U L8R!!!

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MEABeemer

ATi is actually always about 2/3 months ahead of the Catalyst releases (like now they actually allready have Catalyst 6.6, 6.7 and 6.8 ready) but they're still testing them on all different configs and hardware/software wich takes about 2/3 months!
Where do you think the "Release Notes" are based on?!
So from the first time you ever read about the Chuck Patch you have to add about 2/3 months to it before it will be implemented in a Catalyst package!


C U L8R!!!

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Merkor

Still texture errors in The Settlers 5.

Ib Al-Musaheb

I've installed 6.5 (beta) now and have had a little color glitch problem in my internet streams.

I've fixed it by typing some lines into the run command prompt and after a reboot this problem is gone.


Going to try these with Bf2 now ... can't wait.

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Gnerma

Well, assuming Rialto(sp) could handle the R520 or R580 cores, the problem is with ATi's board partners rather than with ATi themselves. The bridge chip is there for any of them to use if they feel it is a good idea. However, I suspect the prospect of redesigning the highly complex refrence PCB, along with the low sales potential of such a part has stayed their hands.

I think most people anticipate new drivers for no concrete reason, including myself. Yes there are some who have their pet obscure bugs (Judas comes to mind) but most people like to anticipate new drivers just because its something new. It's often just another example of what I call, "new code addiction". Or the condition where people have to be running the latest code regardless of whether what they're currently running has bugs that affect them or is suboptimal in any way.

I (and I'm sure many others) participate in it mostly because I enjoy it. It's fun to stomp ones feet in anticipation of a new set. You won't see me complain very often though. Not that a lot of complaints aren't at least semi justified, although often misdirected.

I also enjoy interacting with the ATi staff and the rest of the ATi users since we have something in common. I am usually running current gen so I have a bit more to look forward to when it comes to performance enhancements and such. As in, a 3 FPS increase instead of 2

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X1800XTTOP

Holy **** a 50% increase!!! You´re a lier!!!! J/K.

Anyways, i agree with most (if not all) things you said And sometimes, its really fun to try new things out. I finally dared installing the Chuck patch and whoah doesn´t oblivion look (even more) nice

Maxxed, 1280X1024, 4xAA, 16xAF:
http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?im...45424286ex.jpg
http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?im...45506377ee.jpg
http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?im...45530964zw.jpg
http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?im...45900151vu.jpg

As you can see, the performance is still good with these extreme settings. What more can i say than thank you and good job ATi

Ib Al-Musaheb

Yeah, I really don't count to those people who suffer from serious problems caused by their (maybe ill coded) graphics driver. They keep waiting for the right driver set which will hopefully fix their problems ... thank god, I'm not concerned by that.

Like you're saying, it's maybe a kind of interest to a new thing and I clearly admit that I'm always interested in new Catalysts/Omegas wondering what new bugs have been fixed or enhancements have been integrated.
It's everything just out of curiosity rather than of real sense.


And besides, just as you I kinda like this forum with all the people in here.

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The_Neon_Cowboy

Again AGP officially "Died" was replaced with PCIe on 12/30/2005. Though there is a
marketthat AGP isn't / hasn't been completely ignored. But newer system bought I have
to say PCIe takes up the majority. Its bad finically to make AGP chips any more. Less
chips = more cost per chip and the fact they have to run more then one chip or a brige
chip wich adds about $25-50 to the cards price. That before the etailer adds their chunk.
Move on the PCIe already if you can afford a new graphics card you can afford a new
mother board. So there is really no valid excuse.... "you just don't want to" doesn't
count either. Just count you self luck companies have catered to you at all because their
only propping up a dead body. Time to burry it and move on....

Oh and those boosts are for crossfire mode on PCIe where there is NO dongle
thus they talk t each other over PCIe. Which AGP would be TOOOO SLOW. Not to
mention you know why you don't have Crossfire or SLI on AGP? It's outdated and
slow. repeat that to your self a few times. And realize the AGP spec allowed for 2
agp slots on one board. But never has and never will be done.

You do have cards available from ATI the X1300 and X1600 for example which are
just fine cards along with the existing AGP X800 and X850 line ups. There is no point in
slapping a X1800 or X1900 chip on a AGP board to see most of it performance lost
due to the old system it's plugged into.

A fine example was going from a AGP system AMD XP 3200 + 2.2 Ghz with a 9800 pro
I got well over 3,000 2001se 3dmarks going to a 2800+ AMD64 @ 1.8 ghz and that
was over a CRIPPELD AGP express buss, becouse the board has both chips.So beyond
agp being old and slow in compairision the systems that have it are slower. With the
exaction of a few boards now that offer full AGP and PCIe16X but it called upgrade boards.
To allow you to upgrade your board 1st like you need to then your grahics card later.

Not to mention any agp hardware you buy was obsolete before you bought it and it's
value will drop at the ever faster rate. Even though as they grow scarcer their price will
continue to raise which might offset that a little. Still a bad investment..... If you don't
buy with tomorrow in mind you get what you deserve...

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Matth

I'll freeze until 6.6, since the later 6.5 "beta" seems to be favoured by some - looks like 6.5 managed the odd gift for older cards, and the performance review shows a mixed bag (generally flat), with lower end gains (woot!) and maybe an improvement in OpenGL.

I used to go for drivers every month, or every release, but now I tend to skip a few unless there are really good fixes, tweaks, or the current one is playing up.

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lewis_johnstone

How do u know all this?

Are u Gandalf?

C u L8r!

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The_Neon_Cowboy

ROFL @ your compair you can't just look at the dates of version info?
I or anyone can edit that in like 2 seconds, it also does NOT tell the whole story.

What you need to look at are the "file versions" and "file sizes" and the files included.
and the so called beta's are probubly that "HOTFIX" driver that fixed an issue for 3d opengl devlopers in a paticular application I would assume without the chuck patch.
That was released about a week or two ago before the offical 6.5's. That showed right about the same time. Also kep in mind 99/100 of what tey say is leaked have had thier inf's modified by god knows who....

I might look at the later and see but none the less your basis for compairsion is flawed

Speculation on his part... He's some what right and IMO also some
what wrong if he really knew he wouldn't be able to tell ya becouse
he'd be under a NDA. Look around at the interviews on DH and other
sites and you get tid bits of information. Theres a really go one in the
DH interviews section. Though I forget wich one.

ex. The chuck patch was a technical preview / proof of concept thing.
It of course isn't wasn't ready in time for offical release and it still isn't
thier wise it would be in the offical release.

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Ib Al-Musaheb

Of course it has been declared as "dead" with the release of the first PCIe cards - no, wait a moment, not with the release of them: AGP is officially dead since there is no manufacturer producing chips anymore.
But hey, aren't these GeForce 7800GS cards on the market? And they currently sell faster than everybody actually expected.
What do we get then? Many people still rely on their "old" AGP system and therefore want more powerful cards - for them, PCIe is just as useless as a second sound card or something like that.

How about "I can't" ?!?! Look up my system specs in the sig. For the jump to PCIe I'm going to replace the motherboard and the card.
Seriously, the card still provides good results - and I haven't even tried out overclocking, the card therefore isn't at its limits. A point to stick to the old interface ...

Concerning the board, well, this is the most problematic case: To keep all my things, the RAM, the cpu, the case etc. I'll need a PCIe board in ľATX format specification, with support for a Northwood HT core and above all the board has to provide good performance ... however, are you even interested in this story? I don't think so.

Another point for the old technology!


No one claimed those performance gains should be avaiable for AGP. You kinda talk like I've prayed for them.
Oh, and I definitely don't need this technology which offers me to run two cards in one system. At the beginning, it sounds sensible though, but the effectiveness is senseless for the spent money. I consider it too expensive to be attractive for normal users whereas hardcore users might benefit from a second gfx card.

Probably all people - including you - argue with the aspect that PCIe offers this possibility and the old interface clearly doesn't.
Well, as I've mentioned above, what's the use of this possibility if the performance output is not worth the money.

SLI/crossfire technology is just a whole lie just like the PCIe interface.
Man, wake up: there isn't even a visible speed advantage for PCIe towards the old AGP. All cards released for the PCIe bus today could also be able to be run on the AGP interface - I mean, why not? The PCIe bus claims to reach up to a speed of x16, the double data rate of AGP 8x.
But what is today's situation? The manufactured cards like the 7900 or the X1800 series are just faster than the type of cards built for the AGP bus. No real advantage in speed of the plain PCIe bus has been estimated and in addition most people just keep saying the PCIe port is as fast as the old interface.


The first cards you're listing here shape the mid-class gfx cards for the normal market. Usually, gamers won't take up these cards (if they're well informed). The 128bit-memory interface will be spoiling every game you want to play ...

And tell me why wouldn't those X1800/X1900 cards fit to the old interface. Performance losses in combination with AGP?
To be clear here, the PCIe bus differs from the old interface but there are also many similarities between them. Or how come that there's no speed difference?


You don't have to tell me this. Motherboards offering both intefaces mostly provide really bad performance (or at least they hang back behind pure PCIe/AGP boards) due to one of both gfx interfaces separately bound whether to north- or southbridge and therefore providing terrible results in both game and system stability.


I know what you're talking about because even my card (in sig) was obsolete when I bought it. It just wasn't up-to-date anymore but what should I do? I hadn't got that money to buy a completely new system ... besides, I'm still proud of my X850XT.


Generally, I really don't want to declare war on PCIe. It probably might have good sides ... and the opposite way around the AGP is everything else as "the perfect graphics interface": AGP 8x was meant to be eight times so fast than AGP 1x - but no, it surely isn't that fast ... it just reaches up to AGP 4x.

Listen, I'm not angry on your point of view. Moreover, this industry with its tricky strategy intended to multiply their own profit with a technology seeming rather useless ... this is driving me hell nuts.
Anyway, I'll stick to my things, to my system and make the best out of it. Obviously, there may come the time when I buy a new system and therefore have to move to PCIe ... whether it's good or not I might find out then! In these days I better stick to AGP.

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Zorg

6.5 as well as 6.4 show the same problem for me - Far Cry (fully patched) hangs on the splash screen when loading IF game's detail level is set to Very-High. Up to HIGH works flawless.

After testing a bit I found the offending option - LIGHTING effects once set to very high the game hangs while loading. All other options can be set to very high, no problems.

Hope this is fixed with the next version even it is no drama?

Spyre

Nvidia wont be able to use a shadow buffer under Vista for DX10 games since there are no caps bits and MS aren't allowing hacks to be used (no partial precision or other cheatyness either) They will uncertify anyone breaking the rules. MS want standardisation and everything to just work so are making everyone adhere to the DX10 feature list.

If you wish to discuss AGP vs PCI-e etc do it in another thread this is not the place for such a topic.

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Ib Al-Musaheb

Sounds great! So there won't be any coded/hacked advantages of a chip manufacturer over another, am I correct? No blocky shadow issues in future games, for instance.

But on the contrary to Nvidia's present "advantages" ATI won't be able to integrate optimization procedures such as Catalyst A.I., right?

I'm sorry! We'll stop discussing here ...

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Spyre

The only advantages each vendor will have over each other will be speed of execution. CATAI can still be used since it's just a way of optimising the drivers for certain games and working around game issues. NV would also be able to continue in the same vain (you can turn off some of their optimisations in the same way)

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Alien1

It's all about Marketing

And until now Nvidia has a better Marketing and better relations with Game Developers from ATI

As long as ATI does not do something about that, developers will support Nvidia features more....

Almost same thing happened with ATI Truform which only very few games official supported it and now has been forgotten


- Did you know that EPIC the creators of the Unreal games have almost 50-60 or maybe more PC systems with a Nvidia sollution installed to make tests for their upcoming games
and only 5-10 PC systems with a ATI sollution

IamLakota

Well I gave these drivers a 7 which is way better than a 4 and so far they are working ok,but then again I haven't loaded any games since my last reformat.

As for AGP vs PCIe my opnion is they never made an AGP card that fully took advantage of the AGP buss,and Unless I can find a board that I can just transfer my cpu,ram and soundcard to and only have to purchase an new PCIe vid card I'll be stuck with my X850.

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emmi

How is the CCC working in this release? Does CCC work good enough with just .Net 2.0 installed?

IamLakota

I've used just .net 2.0 for the last three drivers with no problem.

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purush

Could one of the experts in this forum kindly advise me how to configure for best performance in the CCC. I have Radeon X600 Pro 250MB card with Ben Q 30 " LCD monitor. Appreciate your advise. Have a nice day.
Peter

Chaos

well duplicating your post within 45 minutes of the original is not the answer, that much I do know for sure. if you can supply more info as to what you want the settings for specifically chances are you will get good answers. Are you looking for settings for TV viewing or gaming or what?

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purush

Sorry for the chaos. I was a bit absent minded. Perhaps you can understand a lot better about chaos. OK getting to nitty gritty stuff. I am no gamer, but love watching DVD movies and ofcourse want my desktop to look crispy clear. Thanks

Peter

Chaos

Thats ok and yeah chaos tends to follow me around. If you look inside the CCC the settings you would want to play with for watching DVD's would be in the Color, and the Video sections. These settings are usually adjusted to meet personal preferences. The 3D section comes into the picture if you want to make adjustments for gaming image quality by adjusting Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering settings.

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purush

Thank you kindly Chaos, but what is the correct setting in the 3D it says 4x 6x and 8x and in the other it is 8x and 16x what is geometry instansing ? I have set them in the following order, merely guess work.

6x 8x and geometry instansing enabled. So far it seems OK but my question is whether is the ideal settings. Thanks I hop I didn't cause chaos here.

Chaos

hahaha you are not causing chaos, the 2x,4x,6x are Anti Aliasing for removing jagged edges from textures in games, the 4x,8x,16x are Ansiotropic filtering used to sharpenand increase the definition of textures.

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The_Neon_Cowboy

If true , Than people wonder why it runs better on NV? answerd
Why there are often more ATI issues in ment to be played titles..
A lack of effort on the devlopers part (due to large sums of cash,
hardware, "bundle deals", etc... from NV)

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EnPassant

I just felt it necessary to post that these 6.5 drivers are the best i have installed in quite a wile. Thank you Catalyst Maker and crew for a very smooth release.

Auldian

My 9800Pro/128 and the Adaptive AA is sweet. The games I play have never looked better. Good stuff ATI.

Gnerma

I am getting a massively messed up Prince of Persia Warrior Within with these drivers. What I see is everything is overbright, the whole screen is messed up with a glare like artifact, plus the game's timing seems to be messed up (too fast). Anybody else? I'm running an X1800GTO.

EDIT - Alright, it seems to be two distinct problems. The speed/stutter issue can be solved by setting an affinity and the overbrightness is caused by having "effects" on high. Medium or low is fine. Can anybody reproduce this?

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