CATALYST 3.4 now available

dementor · May 16, 2003, 06:08 AM

Can someone please let me know what I should do about the Counter-Strike FPS issue that is still a major factor with my 9500 pro. I know I am not the only one with this problem because i've read it all over DH and Rage3d. However, I will explain it again.... When i see a bunch of people my fps drops from 100 down to 45-50. Horrible when trying to play in a Cal Match... practically impossible. I have tried tweaking my drivers, changing settings, reformatting...etc IS there a fault in the actual cards??? Do I need to RMA it with the hardware supplier?? Is it a driver issue???
Please -- someone let me know.

Runner3001 · May 16, 2003, 06:11 AM

Yay I got it to work, It still won't work through control panel, had to use Radeonator...

Rayder · May 16, 2003, 06:20 AM

3.4's installed just fine for me. No problems there. I haven't tested too many games yet because I had to setup a PC that my bro brought home....I didn't install the new MMC 'cause I'd have to pay for that silly codec to make that stuff work right. So I'm still running the 7.7 set on that.

I tested the 3 games that I've been having problems with, I 'll give a quicky breakdown here.

First the good news,

DROME RACERS now works great, no more infinite loop error. Good deal. I can finally play this game!

And now the bad news....

INCOMING still has screwed up graphics, no difference. It's been like that ever since the 3.0's.

BIG SCALE RACING still has fickering textures and overlays. Same deal, been like that since the 3.0's.

So, 33% of my initial problems were fixed. I can deal with that for now.

I'll post my bugs at ATI feedback tomorrow with better detail, I need to get some sleep VERY badly.

I'll also test more games tomorrow.

OOOHHHHH! Sleepy time night night.........time to bust a reset

JLP · May 16, 2003, 06:26 AM

I still find some bugs that are here for a very long time:

1. Like Genius said: Descent 3 is no go (OpenGL)

2. Tooltips over Windows XP taskbar buttons and tray icons are corrupted when there is and OpenGL game or app runing.

3. There are no tooltips over toolbar buttons in Starry Night Pro (OpenGL).

4. If you try to look at a planet with rings (like Saturn) in Celestia (OpenGL), then rendering becomes extremely slow and planet textures are corrupted. With planets without rings all is OK.

5. How about Large System Cache + NTFS = corruption bug? Has this been finally fixed?

These are bugs that I currently hate the most. Oh and more work on Linux drivers would also be great.

Genius · May 16, 2003, 06:26 AM

/edit Crap nevermind I was wrong. Wizardry 8 isn't fixed.

Genius · May 16, 2003, 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by JLP
I still find some bugs that are here for a very long time:

1. Like Genius said: Descent 3 is no go (OpenGL)

The issue I brought to Catalyst Maker's attention over on Rage3D was directly pertaining to Direct 3D. I don't play Descent 3 in OpenGL as it is stuck in 16 bit color mode (an issue with the game itself). I haven't even tried it in OpenGL with the 3.4 drivers, though it did work with the 3.2's.

Aretè · May 16, 2003, 06:42 AM

I had that problem before that someone mentioned. If you check your DxDiag you are going to see that they did not install correctly, only thing you can do is clean em out as completely as you can and install in safe mode, that is what worked for me.

Aldebaran · May 16, 2003, 06:44 AM

Did a complete uninstall of all ATI stuff, ran Drivercleaner, ran JV16 powertools to clean out stray ATI registry entries. I then installed the new drivers .

2D drawing seems to be completely messed up. Browser scrolling wipes like an old 486 with a 1 meg card. Other 2D drawng of certain program windows can be seen.

Did a complete wipeout again and installed 3.1, no problems to report.

XP2000
AIW8500 128
Win2K SP3

Alpha · May 16, 2003, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aldebaran
Did a complete uninstall of all ATI stuff, ran Drivercleaner, ran JV16 powertools to clean out stray ATI registry entries. I then installed the new drivers .

2D drawing seems to be completely messed up. Browser scrolling wipes like an old 486 with a 1 meg card. Other 2D drawng of certain program windows can be seen.

Did a complete wipeout again and installed 3.1, no problems to report.

When 2D drawing is slow it's usually because SmartGart hasn't run yet (sometimes after installing drivers it doesnt activate the first time after reboot)
Rebooting again usually cures the problem.

Azariel · May 16, 2003, 07:01 AM

Hi CM,

Rage 3D is down so i'll post here. I just downloaded the new 3.4 drivers so I don't know what type of results im going to get on my rig. I haven't ever had any huge issues with my set-up and your drivers so I can't really complain but regardless of this thanks for looking out on the forums (both here at Rage3D) for problems and letting people know that you are aware of their issues and trying to do somthing to help, this is more then I can say for most other product manufacturers and it's great to see.

Much appreciated.

DanielPt · May 16, 2003, 07:14 AM

i unninstalled smartgart just in case .. :\

Aretè · May 16, 2003, 07:16 AM

I put them in just now and i am about to uninstall after i post this. Impossible to play Asherons Call 2, it locks up at character selection screen and i have to restart comp.

plexdude · May 16, 2003, 07:26 AM

These drivers seem heavily biased toward optimizations for 3DMark03 instead of improving performance for real games.

I wish ATi and Nvidia would stop wasting their time optimizing their drivers for these stupid synthetic benchmarks and spend more of their driver development time towards optimizing them for real games.

I don't about the rest of you, but I'd get much more enjoyment out of drivers released by ATi or Nvidia if I noticed improved framerates in real games rather than seeing some meaningless numbers on the screen after running an equally meaningless synthetic benchmark like 3DMark.

MarleyGPN · May 16, 2003, 07:27 AM

For some reason all my games run only at 60hz, i tried setting the directx setting with no luck. Any Ideas?

Alpha · May 16, 2003, 07:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DanielPt
i unninstalled smartgart just in case .. :\

It's not recommended to uninstall smartgart unless its the cause of your problems

Runner3001 · May 16, 2003, 07:31 AM

I figured out my problem. These drivers appear to be using the DVI port as the default primary device, anything on the VGA port is secondary to the drivers regardless of which you set as 1 and 2, it doesn't look like I can change this. My main monitor is hooked up on the VGA connector, so it is throwing the control panel settings under secondary, but they have no effect. If I turn off my secondary monitor before I futz with the settings it works fine. Why I didn't try this earlier I don't know, but I do know it didn't work like this in previous drivers

Why was this changed? Turning off my secondary monitor isn't too bad to get around it, but it worked fine before...didn't it?

DeathscytheFish · May 16, 2003, 08:19 AM

I have no idea why, but after a fresh install of windows, everything was running fine, and when I went to restart Windows, it would go about it's business and restart quickly... now after installing the 3.4 drivers, reboots take FOREVER... it sits there for a good 2-3 minutes before finally starting a reboot... all my tray items go away, and it just goes into a state of nothingness as I can't open up task manager or anything, I can go and hit shutdown or restart and it still hangs until it's damn well ready to reboot. There's GOT to be somebody else out there with this problem, or would know if it's something else causing this

Miksu · May 16, 2003, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aldebaran
2D drawing seems to be completely messed up. Browser scrolling wipes like an old 486 with a 1 meg card. Other 2D drawng of certain program windows can be seen.

Could it be that Windows is installing the generic 2D-drivers from some cache-directory? Some people had this same problem with Cat 3.2 and WinXP. They had to clean some dll-cache dirs and install it again. Without that, Windows installed something slow and old

Miksu · May 16, 2003, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by dementor
When i see a bunch of people my fps drops from 100 down to 45-50. Horrible when trying to play in a Cal Match... practically impossible. I have tried tweaking my drivers, changing settings, reformatting...etc IS there a fault in the actual cards???

Have you tried forcing vsync off from OpenGL? This is something that helped me with FuhQuake. And it isn't Ati's problem, it's the way vsync works. It was explained well at Rage3D.

erickmOrillo · May 16, 2003, 12:30 PM

Works like a charm

ATI just rull the world ehehee

BWX · May 16, 2003, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by express15_99
You must have a P4 3.0 GHz comp to run UT2003 with 16x Anisotropic filtering.

What? I can run 16xAF with my rig..... In the demo anyways- That is ridiculous- what difference does it make if you have an Intel or an AMD?

znick · May 16, 2003, 03:23 PM

but why mobile solutions are not supported anymore???

cmac · May 16, 2003, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by dravicus
Datagg: im not running any firewall of any sort, im behind a router, but DMZ is enabled, like i say the only thing ive changed that has made me gone from having no problems with it to having it crash on load is changing from gf3 to 9800pro also seems very strange that it doesnt happen when i play counterstrike :/

Did you reinstall the game after installing the 9800? Also I would do a reformat if I was switching from Nvidia to Ati. But thats just my opinion

cmac · May 16, 2003, 03:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by dravicus
yep, i have formatted this comp twice since i changed the graphics card

sorry for the previous post. I should have kept reading

patje · May 16, 2003, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by znick
but why mobile solutions are not supported anymore???

Because, Ati leaves that to the OEM companys such as Dell or Compaq or laptop manufacturer X

if you want support there are 2 options:

either visit your OEM support site
or visit www.hardwareheaven.com/patje --> you'll see what i mean

heavya · May 16, 2003, 04:02 PM

every time ati comes out with a new catalyst driver, i'm impressed more and more. i can't wait to try the 3.4, I downloaded it, but have to wait till i get home to install them

Lustmord · May 16, 2003, 05:19 PM

I hope this version won't crash my Mafia game like the last ones !!

~~Hundredswords~~ · May 16, 2003, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by CATALYST maker
Actually buddy the amount of work we did on performance improvements versus bug fixes versus new features breaks down like this 10% for performance, 60% for bug fixes and stability and 30% for new features.

What is broken for you? You coming on here and tell me to "come on" doesnt really give me much to go on. Right now I am scanning the various forums and dont see any new bugs across the board. All I see is individual system type issues which usually can get fixed.

So please let me know what I can do to make you happier. Give me a detailed problem description and a steps to reproduce scenario. Of course the forums are not the best place to give me this info so make sure you use CATALYST CREW thats what its there for. But feel free to let me know in the forums I may end up reading it and spending some personal time to make you happy!

How about changing the break-down to this:

Performance 10%
Bug-fixes 80%
New features 10%

And performance improvements focus on optimizing DirectX, OpenGL in general or some "actual" game engines; not optimizing those benchmark programs.

*CATALYST maker* · May 16, 2003, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Hundredswords
How about changing the break-down to this:

Performance 10%
Bug-fixes 80%
New features 10%

And performance improvements focus on optimizing DirectX, OpenGL in general or some "actual" game engines; not optimizing those benchmark programs.

ummm because we have big customers like Dell, IBM, and HP wanting new features, thats why.

Our performance boosts are on "actual" games for both DirectX and OpenGL if you read the release notes you will see some examples.

Mwarhead · May 16, 2003, 06:57 PM

Please Please Please Release a driver for windows 2003 server. I am willing to be a beta tester. I sent in an
application. Email me at Mwarhead@tampabay.rr.com

May 16, 2003, 06:26 AM	#124
JLP DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Slovenia Posts: 249 Rep Power: 0	Bugs I still find some bugs that are here for a very long time: 1. Like Genius said: Descent 3 is no go (OpenGL) 2. Tooltips over Windows XP taskbar buttons and tray icons are corrupted when there is and OpenGL game or app runing. 3. There are no tooltips over toolbar buttons in Starry Night Pro (OpenGL). 4. If you try to look at a planet with rings (like Saturn) in Celestia (OpenGL), then rendering becomes extremely slow and planet textures are corrupted. With planets without rings all is OK. 5. How about Large System Cache + NTFS = corruption bug? Has this been finally fixed? These are bugs that I currently hate the most. Oh and more work on Linux drivers would also be great.

May 16, 2003, 06:26 AM	#125
Genius ID10T Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Midland, MI Posts: 146 Rep Power: 0	/edit Crap nevermind I was wrong. Wizardry 8 isn't fixed. __________________ [color=White]Abit NF7-S v.2.0 1.5gb ram at 10-3-3-2.5 AMB Barton 2500+ @2215MHz (211x10.5) Dual WD800JB (Raid 0) / WD1600JB / WD800BB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers Radeon 9800 Pro Sony G420 19"[/color]

May 16, 2003, 06:44 AM	#128
Aldebaran DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 7 Rep Power: 0	2D problems with 3.4 Did a complete uninstall of all ATI stuff, ran Drivercleaner, ran JV16 powertools to clean out stray ATI registry entries. I then installed the new drivers . 2D drawing seems to be completely messed up. Browser scrolling wipes like an old 486 with a 1 meg card. Other 2D drawng of certain program windows can be seen. Did a complete wipeout again and installed 3.1, no problems to report. XP2000 AIW8500 128 Win2K SP3

May 16, 2003, 07:26 AM	#133
plexdude DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 8 Rep Power: 0	These drivers seem heavily biased toward optimizations for 3DMark03 instead of improving performance for real games. I wish ATi and Nvidia would stop wasting their time optimizing their drivers for these stupid synthetic benchmarks and spend more of their driver development time towards optimizing them for real games. I don't about the rest of you, but I'd get much more enjoyment out of drivers released by ATi or Nvidia if I noticed improved framerates in real games rather than seeing some meaningless numbers on the screen after running an equally meaningless synthetic benchmark like 3DMark. __________________ Abit NF7-S v2.0 mobo AMD Athlon XP 1700+ TBred @ 2200MHz/400Mhz FSB Thermalright SLK-800 w/ 80mm Tt SmartFan 2 2x256MB Corsair PC3200LL XMS DDR RAM Gainward GF4 Ti4400 Golden Sample @ 295core/635mem Audigy OEM WinXP Pro SP2 ForceWare 77.76 beta display drivers 1 120GB WD HD 7200RPM 8MB buffer Last edited by plexdude; May 16, 2003 at 07:32 AM.

May 16, 2003, 07:31 AM	#136
Runner3001 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 41 Rep Power: 0	I figured out my problem. These drivers appear to be using the DVI port as the default primary device, anything on the VGA port is secondary to the drivers regardless of which you set as 1 and 2, it doesn't look like I can change this. My main monitor is hooked up on the VGA connector, so it is throwing the control panel settings under secondary, but they have no effect. If I turn off my secondary monitor before I futz with the settings it works fine. Why I didn't try this earlier I don't know, but I do know it didn't work like this in previous drivers Why was this changed? Turning off my secondary monitor isn't too bad to get around it, but it worked fine before...didn't it? Last edited by Runner3001; May 16, 2003 at 07:38 AM.

May 16, 2003, 06:08 AM	#121
dementor DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2003 Location: Montreal, Canada Posts: 0 Rep Power: 0	Can someone please let me know what I should do about the Counter-Strike FPS issue that is still a major factor with my 9500 pro. I know I am not the only one with this problem because i've read it all over DH and Rage3d. However, I will explain it again.... When i see a bunch of people my fps drops from 100 down to 45-50. Horrible when trying to play in a Cal Match... practically impossible. I have tried tweaking my drivers, changing settings, reformatting...etc IS there a fault in the actual cards??? Do I need to RMA it with the hardware supplier?? Is it a driver issue??? Please -- someone let me know.

May 16, 2003, 06:11 AM	#122
Runner3001 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 41 Rep Power: 0	Yay I got it to work, It still won't work through control panel, had to use Radeonator...

May 16, 2003, 06:20 AM	#123
Rayder Mostly lurking lately.... Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 2,160 Rep Power: 71	3.4's installed just fine for me. No problems there. I haven't tested too many games yet because I had to setup a PC that my bro brought home....I didn't install the new MMC 'cause I'd have to pay for that silly codec to make that stuff work right. So I'm still running the 7.7 set on that. I tested the 3 games that I've been having problems with, I 'll give a quicky breakdown here. First the good news, DROME RACERS now works great, no more infinite loop error. Good deal. I can finally play this game! And now the bad news.... INCOMING still has screwed up graphics, no difference. It's been like that ever since the 3.0's. BIG SCALE RACING still has fickering textures and overlays. Same deal, been like that since the 3.0's. So, 33% of my initial problems were fixed. I can deal with that for now. I'll post my bugs at ATI feedback tomorrow with better detail, I need to get some sleep VERY badly. I'll also test more games tomorrow. OOOHHHHH! Sleepy time night night.........time to bust a reset

May 16, 2003, 06:42 AM	#127
Aretè DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: New York Posts: 53 Rep Power: 0	I had that problem before that someone mentioned. If you check your DxDiag you are going to see that they did not install correctly, only thing you can do is clean em out as completely as you can and install in safe mode, that is what worked for me.

May 16, 2003, 07:01 AM	#130
Azariel DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Hi CM, Rage 3D is down so i'll post here. I just downloaded the new 3.4 drivers so I don't know what type of results im going to get on my rig. I haven't ever had any huge issues with my set-up and your drivers so I can't really complain but regardless of this thanks for looking out on the forums (both here at Rage3D) for problems and letting people know that you are aware of their issues and trying to do somthing to help, this is more then I can say for most other product manufacturers and it's great to see. Much appreciated.

May 16, 2003, 07:14 AM	#131
DanielPt DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 8 Rep Power: 0	i unninstalled smartgart just in case .. :\

May 16, 2003, 07:16 AM	#132
Aretè DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: New York Posts: 53 Rep Power: 0	I put them in just now and i am about to uninstall after i post this. Impossible to play Asherons Call 2, it locks up at character selection screen and i have to restart comp.

May 16, 2003, 07:27 AM	#134
MarleyGPN DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 20 Rep Power: 0	For some reason all my games run only at 60hz, i tried setting the directx setting with no luck. Any Ideas?

May 16, 2003, 08:19 AM	#137
DeathscytheFish DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Winston-Salem, NC Posts: 25 Rep Power: 0	I have no idea why, but after a fresh install of windows, everything was running fine, and when I went to restart Windows, it would go about it's business and restart quickly... now after installing the 3.4 drivers, reboots take FOREVER... it sits there for a good 2-3 minutes before finally starting a reboot... all my tray items go away, and it just goes into a state of nothingness as I can't open up task manager or anything, I can go and hit shutdown or restart and it still hangs until it's damn well ready to reboot. There's GOT to be somebody else out there with this problem, or would know if it's something else causing this

May 16, 2003, 12:30 PM	#140
erickmOrillo DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0	Works like a charm ATI just rull the world ehehee

May 16, 2003, 03:23 PM	#142
znick DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 11 Rep Power: 0	but why mobile solutions are not supported anymore??? __________________ There are 10 types of people in the world: who understands binary language and who does not.

May 16, 2003, 04:02 PM	#146
heavya DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 22 Rep Power: 0	every time ati comes out with a new catalyst driver, i'm impressed more and more. i can't wait to try the 3.4, I downloaded it, but have to wait till i get home to install them

May 16, 2003, 05:19 PM	#147
Lustmord DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2003 Location: Québec, CAN Posts: 16 Rep Power: 0	I hope this version won't crash my Mafia game like the last ones !!

May 16, 2003, 06:57 PM	#150
Mwarhead Nforce Remix driver creator Join Date: May 2002 Location: FL Posts: 22 Rep Power: 0	Please Please Please Release a driver for windows 2003 server. I am willing to be a beta tester. I sent in an application. Email me at Mwarhead@tampabay.rr.com