Release 3.10 ---- Ati's perfect drivers just got better..................... ???

From Avault:-

" ATI has issued the final release in the 3.X series of Catalyst
drivers. The next release will kick off the 4.X series. The current
version upgrades the Multimedia Center to version 8.8 and the Windows
driver to version 7.962. The new release also adds support for the
OpenGL Shading Language - a graphics programming language that allows
application developers to take advantage of the programmable vertex
and pixel processing units present in 3D graphics systems. ATI also
says the new drivers improve performance in various 2D applications by
as much as six percent across the entire RADEON product line. The new
drivers also incorporate various fixes for the following games:


Comanche 4
Madden 2004
Blade of Darkness
Battle Field 1942
Call of Duty
Flight Simulator 2004
Homeworld 2
Jedi Academy
Formula 1 2002
Lord of the Realms 3
4x4 Evolution
Indiana Jones
Morrowind
Halo Combat Evolved "

-------- end of quote............

Quite a list.

For me this comes as an interesting revelation. Compiled from
samplings of Ati-user comments on the Ati and nVidia newsgroups,
all of the above games ran perfectly under the previous Cat 3.x
drivers. Obviously Ati's recent Cat attempts have been so focussed
on Half-Life 2 optimizations that a few minor(?) things in the other
games must have escaped them. Misplaced shadows etc........
Now that HL2 is delayed, fingers are now available to plug other
leaking holes in their driver dike.

At least Ati is now making another attempt at a working
OpenGL port. Doom3 is obviously staring them down
the throat.

Maybe the 4.xx drivers will fix the rest of the latest games not
listed here. Also, by the time Release #10 of the 4.xx series
is available, OpenGL should be sorta working......:-) :-)

Now, which color hard-hat should I wear today ??

John Lewis

Maybe the 4.xx drivers will fix the rest of the latest games not
listed here. Also, by the time Release #10 of the 4.xx series
is available, OpenGL should be sorta working......:-) :-)

Nonsense. After about 3 years of being optimistic all the problems will be
"fixed in the next release" I decided to freeze my system with the original
AIW Radeon in it at the last set of drivers which broke the smallest set of
the stuff I use regularly :-(.

Now I no longer have to keep reformatting my hard disk to eradicate every
trace of the lastest driver that broke more stuff than it fixed.

I just hang around this news group to see if a driver ever happens to
show up that no one complains about - I might be tempted to try it :-).
--
== The *Best* political site URL:http://www.vote-smart.org/ ==+
email: icbm: Delray Beach, FL |
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Troll!

-100 karma

I never had any problems with ati's installers. I just made sure that I
uninstalled the drivers before installing a new set.

--
Robert Pendell

ICQ# 15670441
AIM: shinji2570
MSN:
Yahoo: shinji2572000

" -" wrote in message
...
Norton Ghost/Drive Image is good to have since ATIs driver installations
sux
big time.

To ATI if they read:
Do you ever test to install your drivers on any system running a previous
driver?

/ J


"Thomas A. Horsley" wrote in message
...
Maybe the 4.xx drivers will fix the rest of the latest games not
listed here. Also, by the time Release #10 of the 4.xx series
is available, OpenGL should be sorta working......:-) :-)

Nonsense. After about 3 years of being optimistic all the problems will
be
"fixed in the next release" I decided to freeze my system with the
original
AIW Radeon in it at the last set of drivers which broke the smallest set
of
the stuff I use regularly :-(.

Now I no longer have to keep reformatting my hard disk to eradicate
every
trace of the lastest driver that broke more stuff than it fixed.

I just hang around this news group to see if a driver ever happens to
show up that no one complains about - I might be tempted to try it :-).
--
== The *Best* political site URL:http://www.vote-smart.org/ ==+
email: icbm: Delray Beach, FL |
URL:http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley Free Software and Politics ==+

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:32:59 -0500
"PB" wrote:


"Robert Pendell" wrote in message
link.net...
I never had any problems with ati's installers. I just made sure
that I uninstalled the drivers before installing a new set.

Which is absolutely ridiculous, thre should be no need to uninstall
old drivers to install new ones.

This is a computer, not a car, you have to strip a car before you can
repaint it, you have to remove the old tires to put new ones on, but
there is NO reason why an install program can't remove the old drivers
and replace them with new, * even * if it has to do two reboots to do
it, although that shouldn't be necessary either.

Every time I read this uninstall crap I regret my decision to give ATI
another chance.

And you think that nvidia's drivers do any better?


DD

--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Hate to tell you this but I do the same thing with the Nvidia drivers. Only
I can't go so clean as I could with my ATI card. With my ati card, I did
some work and got rid of the Windows XP default drivers too so it would be
as clean of an install as possible. Generally, you should be able to just
upgrade the drivers but I always remove the old drivers before installing
new ones anyways. I have done this for every device. Not just video
drivers. I treat my sound drivers the same way.

--
Robert Pendell

ICQ# 15670441
AIM: shinji2570
MSN:
Yahoo: shinji2572000

"PB" wrote in message
...
Which is absolutely ridiculous, thre should be no need to uninstall old
drivers to install new ones.

This is a computer, not a car, you have to strip a car before you can
repaint it, you have to remove the old tires to put new ones on, but there
is NO reason why an install program can't remove the old drivers and
replace
them with new, * even * if it has to do two reboots to do it, although
that
shouldn't be necessary either.

Every time I read this uninstall crap I regret my decision to give ATI
another chance.

DD

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:35:53 -0500, "J.Clarke"
wrote:

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:32:59 -0500
"PB" wrote:


"Robert Pendell" wrote in message
link.net...
I never had any problems with ati's installers. I just made sure
that I uninstalled the drivers before installing a new set.

Which is absolutely ridiculous, thre should be no need to uninstall
old drivers to install new ones.

This is a computer, not a car, you have to strip a car before you can
repaint it, you have to remove the old tires to put new ones on, but
there is NO reason why an install program can't remove the old drivers
and replace them with new, * even * if it has to do two reboots to do
it, although that shouldn't be necessary either.

Every time I read this uninstall crap I regret my decision to give ATI
another chance.

And you think that nvidia's drivers do any better?


Actually, yes.

I have a rather large game collection with many older DirectX
titles. Seem to all run just fine on a 5900/53.03 driver. Also,
no problem also with my OpenGl titles. Compatibility with both
new and legacy titles is very important to me. I pay good money
for my games and really enjoy going back and playing
classic titles on new hardware. nVidia seems to have done
an excellent job in their drivers for "covering the spread".

I am far more interested in the above capabililty than in
HL2 Pixel Shaders 2.0 /anisotropic-AA perfection. HL2
is just one over-hyped game.

Only exception is Glide, of course and I have an older
machine with Voodoo5/SBLive installed to handle both
Glide and DOS titles.

John Lewis


DD

--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On 12/19/2003 10:08 PM Robert Pendell befouled our nation with:

Hate to tell you this but I do the same thing with the Nvidia drivers. Only
I can't go so clean as I could with my ATI card. With my ati card, I did
some work and got rid of the Windows XP default drivers too so it would be
as clean of an install as possible. Generally, you should be able to just
upgrade the drivers but I always remove the old drivers before installing
new ones anyways. I have done this for every device. Not just video
drivers. I treat my sound drivers the same way.



I take a different tack on this. While I've done the driver/registry
purge with both nVidia and ATI, I find it to be a waste of time. I'll
usually wait for something to go wrong before resorting to such an
approach. And usually when I go through all the driver cleaner I find
that something else was wrong.

--
pining for the fjords,

Steve [Inglo]

"PB" wrote in message
...

"Robert Pendell" wrote in message
link.net...
I never had any problems with ati's installers. I just made sure that I
uninstalled the drivers before installing a new set.

Which is absolutely ridiculous, thre should be no need to uninstall old
drivers to install new ones.

It's perfectly acceptable to require uninstalling old drivers before
installing new.

If you go from 2.9 to 3.8, how with the 3.8 know what to unload? What if you
just yanked a Matrox card out of your system? I guess you expect the 3.10
Catalysts to remove that too?

What should happen though is that windows shouldn't keep using the old
drivers if the old drivers aren't present. Also, if the driver detects an
old version it should warn the user. It would be great if the drivers had a
common uninstall hook that newer drivers could automatically call while they
are being loaded.

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 06:23:11 GMT
(John Lewis) wrote:

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:35:53 -0500, "J.Clarke"
wrote:

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:32:59 -0500
"PB" wrote:


"Robert Pendell" wrote in message
link.net...
I never had any problems with ati's installers. I just made sure
that I uninstalled the drivers before installing a new set.

Which is absolutely ridiculous, thre should be no need to uninstall
old drivers to install new ones.

This is a computer, not a car, you have to strip a car before you
can repaint it, you have to remove the old tires to put new ones on,
but there is NO reason why an install program can't remove the old
drivers and replace them with new, * even * if it has to do two
reboots to do it, although that shouldn't be necessary either.

Every time I read this uninstall crap I regret my decision to give
ATI another chance.

And you think that nvidia's drivers do any better?


Actually, yes.

I have a rather large game collection with many older DirectX
titles. Seem to all run just fine on a 5900/53.03 driver. Also,
no problem also with my OpenGl titles. Compatibility with both
new and legacy titles is very important to me. I pay good money
for my games and really enjoy going back and playing
classic titles on new hardware. nVidia seems to have done
an excellent job in their drivers for "covering the spread".

I am far more interested in the above capabililty than in
HL2 Pixel Shaders 2.0 /anisotropic-AA perfection. HL2
is just one over-hyped game.

Only exception is Glide, of course and I have an older
machine with Voodoo5/SBLive installed to handle both
Glide and DOS titles.

And of course you installed your 53.03 driver over an earlier driver
without clearing out the old driver? So if it's working for you why are
so many other people reporting problems with upgraded nvidia drivers
when they did not clean out the old ones first?

John Lewis


DD

--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)



--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)