ATI Catalyst Driver Comparison 3.x
 

A-star pulled it off! Great job matey!


http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=104

is need for speed still buggy in the 3.9 drivers?
cause it sure is in the 3.6 & 3.8 .

, a fan

Well actually I can not give you an advise on that.
I don't play nfs, and I didn't test it also.

I play NFS with 3.9 and a R9700Pro without problems

I still got the 3.6 and with motion blur on, the frame rate drops like hell on my 9500 PRO

think i need to install the 3.9

i have got a 9600 pro ,
installed the 3.9 catalysts
still got probs :
(look a bit like the xp bug in gta3 , my os is win200 sp4 btw)

and between races etc :

got XP SP1 + DX9.1b + 3.9 , no bugs
check your driver quality settings, but them all to default.

you should also test omega drivers

180 was a nice number don't you think ;)
rule of thumb for the omega drivers: more features, more quality/performance options, at default same performance, at highest quality setttings a little slower then catalyst @ high settings, due to the omega upping the bar a nudge higher.

bonbon, that looks like some lod bias setting. But you have a radeon, so I also would suggest to check video quality somewhere :)

Piotke gettings Calantak's disease? :p

directx 9.1b winxp and 3.9 with an 9800 and no signs of framedropping over here

default didn't help

this did it :

go into your video cards driver panel and just put the image quality for direct3d up to "high quality".

now it works , only pitti the game doesn't run zo smooth anymore now.
oh well , you can't have it all i quess

(and the game crashed after 3 'levels' , i didnt save it :( )


edit : halo also works now :D

Catalyst 3.9 has major OpenGL problems. OpenGL doesn't work at all on All-in-Wonder cards with Cat3.9 and even on normal cards all sorts of crashes occur with newer OpenGL games like Star Wars: KotOR and Call of Duty.

It's a good write up overall, but you should have tested more than just one OpenGL game. Also, you could have tested the beta Catalyst 3.10 drivers that are available as a hotfix for the Call of Duty problem : http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4291.html

At the time of testing the 3.10 driver was not available and I wanted to test only the official released drivers.

Will add more Opengl benchmarks in next update (somewhere in the near future, since I had to return the test card).

ehr.
 

i just laughed when i saw the diagrams...when you look at them you could think that one driver is a lot faster than the other..
but then you watch the scale, 30 to 35... of course it's going to look like that then.
but the real speed difference between the drivers are in almost all cases about 1fps...often less.

so i think that the review should have focused more on what the real difference is between the drivers...like bugfixes and added features.

i just hate it when diagrams are not starting at 0.

there are always ways to improve an article or review, thank you for your suggestions :)

I appreciate that you tried to illiustrate the differences in the Catalyst drivers,........However, Since Catalyst 3.8, there are a significantly higher amount of bugs evident especially with OpenGL, there are an increasing amount of reported CTD's, Graphics corruption, system hangs, and general failures, your review is extremely limited and only focused on several of the Benchmark games, there was nothing stopping you running Fraps and taking averages (if framerates were the absolute necessity), however in todays relative benchmark uncertainty with the nVidiaGate episodes (coming to a nVidia PC near you) increasing and benchmarks being rendered specifically to artificially inflate their scores, benchmarks are swiftly becoming unreliable and subject to scorn, what users want is drivers that run ALL their games without issues and to know everytime they power up their system they aren't going to be presented with a BSOD citing ATi Drivers, that is why most game sites are now stating that Catalyst 3.7 are the only safe bet at the moment, check out Activision, UbiSoft etc, there is one thing that is prevalent,

Speed isn't everything,...stability IS!

I can say only 1 thing, during all the 180 test I did'nt have a single crash with any of the drivers.

I tried to give a view about the performance of the drivers, not about something else, however I plan to do an update when I can find some free time (which I don't have a lot), with the difference of each of the drivers.

Adding more benchmarks will be a little difficult since I already returned the card to the shop which loaned it to us for a limited time.

I also didn't test any of the beta drivers because there not officially released.

For the next driver overview (in a couple of months), I will add more game benchmarks.Suggestions about which games to use are always welcome.

And I want to repeat that during all the benchmarks I didn't have a single crash or lockup.

direct3d games didn't pose a problem so it seems with the 3.8/3.9 but Opengl games do.

only Q3A used OpenGL, 1 out 10 :)
suggestion for more games is: more OpenGL based games :)

http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/29866 :super:

Someone is replying here but due to my ignore "Unregistered user" settings I can't read them. Please register when you feel the urge to comment our reviews...

uhm.. un-ignore them then & change the setting :)

nope, if you take time to comment something, taking time to register before you do so is something like euhm, being polite?

so mr or mrs unregistered, I feel your a very unpolite, rude and probably abused by MJ person.....

keep it easy'n'clean, people...

installed need for speed on xp , no probs anymore

Intel TH7-II + P4 2.26 + R9700 Pro , Call of Duty, max details @ 1024x768x32bit.. playable overall, some small dips below 30fps though :/

the game crashes with CAT3.9 btw , upgrading to CAT3.10 beta fixes this


VSYNC setting was apparantly on ;) 85Hz