a guide, warning, and anecdote
 

This is a quick question for all Ati 9700 pro owners, have any of you used the new(ish) omega drivers 2.5.76? I recently installed an arctic cooler on my 9700 and formatted windows as it was getting clogged up (rather like my bath plughole, and it too needs cleaned every 3 - 6 months). I then proceeded to use ATITool to OC my card (to 370/320 from 325/310, any good?), and downloaded the brand new omega drivers. When I started farcry in sweaty excitement, loaded the first level only to find a bizarre world that made me think that this is what it would be like if I took mushrooms or acid. After a couple of reloads I was close to having a heartattack, as nothing was changing. After much messing about reinstalling, uninstalling, then installing more drivers, aswell as rebooting several times I was close to giving up as Farcry wasn't even loading any more, and ATITool was going haywire which made me think I'd blown the graphics card.

After much messing about, and trial and error practises, I managed to get everything working, and my card if fine (i think).

Any way this story just goes to show even when you think you have major hardware/software problems, always use a methodical and thorough system to check and isolate the problem. Start from a basic stand point where the problem could be anything (i.e the game is cluedo, and anyone could the murderer) and gradually rule things out using proper testing, that way you will probably never need to rely on anyone elses help or advice. But if you ever do need help madshrimps is by far the best place to ask, as I can testify as I was a complete N00b this time last year, and look at me now (hmm maybe not the best example, sorry!)

Alex

Give yourself some credit Alex :)

I too often throw the never-change-more-then-one-setting rule overboard, and when things go bad, I don't know where to begin because the combinations are seemingly endless :gay:


But what was the problem then? from your story I get the impression it was due to the new omega drivers and although I've always been very pleased with them, I haven't downloaded the latest ones.My version of the omega drivers is from before ati started with this command control center or whatever it's called, alhtough if I recall correctly, that shouldn't be the problem because "Omega" (dno his nick or name) didn't implement anything from the ccc because most of those changes were already in some way incorporated in the omega drivers and some of the features that are in the ccc will be patched in or will be in a later version.

yeah i'm 90% certain it was due to the drivers as it was a clean xp install. This was the first bad experience with omega drivers, so i may retry further down the line.
I'm happy to know i'm not the only one to get over excited, change 10 settings, and then wonder what happened