Catalyst 5.1

[exAndrzej]

...if i wasnt the only 1...

I think you need to look at the balance of probabilities

Millions (i.e. more than 1) install new Catalyst drivers every month

The exact number is hard to tie down because many magazines will carry the 'latest' set of drivers and you cannot easily track how many of those will get used

A few people per million will have some kind of issue that is the result of a myriad of components and drivers interacting together in a very particular way

Overall, the user satisfaction ratings with ATI drivers are great - and have been increasing steadily over the past 2 years

Our driver guru (Terry Makedon) presented this data at our last Tech Day in Munich back in November

We are working on a way to make this kind of information more readily available to Hexus readers... and I will post you an update as soon as I have one

[8bit]

Me neither

I have to say that I have checked and - so far - we have not had any other issues like this raised

Given the rate at which people download and install these new drivers - this would seem to indicate an isolated incident

I am not suggesting that you do this, but...

...if you loaded your system again from scratch - with a clean load of Windows etc - then still had the problem - it would be something that we could investigate...

...but your system is very similar to mine and I can't replicate your problem

Sorry

Andrzej,

I just put an Athlon 64 3500 (s939) and an Asus A8V mobo into my machine in place of the Gigabyte motherboard and AthlonXP2200+ that were in there before. I'm using the same PC4000 RAM and OEM Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb non-ViVo board I had before as well. I did a completely clean (i.e. started with format c WinXP install, loaded SP2, latest BIOS, latest VIA chipset drivers etc., DirectX9.0c, the only different software i loaded was going straight to Cat5.1 whereas I didn't get a chance to try these out on the old hardware before, I was still on 4.12.

When I boot the machine up, about 20 seconds after the XP select user screen appears the screen goes black. When attempting to play a game, anything from about 20 seconds to 10 minutes after the game loads the screen goes black and the machine stops responding. When changing Anisotropic Filtering or Anti Aliasing settings, quite often the same thing happens.

The motherboard came with AGP fast writes set to ON and the AGP bus set to 8x, I'll try changing these to see if that helps but I just wanted to let you know that given it's either games or the catalyst control panel (sorry, I personally don't like the .NET version, I consider this to be bloatware) that seem to crash the machine, my suspicion is that for some there *is* a problem with cat 5.1.

If it's still happening after I've exhausted all other possibilities, I'll contact the support details who deal with Catalyst issues.

rgds,
8bit

[Rhyth]

How can I find out what current version catelyst im running? my driver says 6.14.10.6505 is this cool?

I downloaded the 2 bits from the broadband bit to my docs them run them, did they install themselfs cuz when i try and run the catelyst control centre i get cli.exe-application error: the application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135), I tried twice and got the same thing.

sorry I am so green man

[Steve]

I downloaded the 2 bits from the broadband bit to my docs them run them, did they install themselfs cuz when i try and run the catelyst control centre i get cli.exe-application error: the application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135), I tried twice and got the same thing.

You need .net framework 1.1 installed on your computer.

[Rhyth]

thnx kez im learning (to pay attention).

[8bit]

OK in response to my own issue I think I solved the black screen crashes by reducing the AGP rate from 8x to 4x.

Incidentally, I'm told that I could also have fixed it by increasing the AGP voltage from 1.5 to 1.6v as apparently my card is incapable of running at 8x with 1.5v. Is this likely to work also? Will this shorten the life expectancy of my GPU and card? Would there be any real benefit in running at 8x, I understand there's not much difference between 4x and 8x in terms of performance...?

[bouncin]

i would think it would be fine to run at 8x agp with the 1.5v. But hey if it works fine at 4x your not losing a lot of performance anyway if any.And what psu do u use sounds like a power problem.

by the way its gr8 to see an ATI representative on the boards. Big up to ATI and andrzej for comin on here and helpin with our probs. Btw i love ATI cards lol. And now i think a lot more of the employee,s and company.

i havent tried 5.01 yet. My philosophy if it aint broke dont fix it. if it is broke throw it out the window and buy a new 1

[exAndrzej]

I am checking on 8bit's issue now

[exAndrzej]

OK

My man says that if the card worked perfectly in the old set up - with the old board + BIOS etc...

...but needs 'adjusting' in the new set up...

...the the finger does not point to the card/driver UNLESS you uninstall 5.1 on the new box - put 4.12 on and the problem disappears

(also - it would be interesting to know if 5.1 on the old box 'caused an issue' - I suspect that it wouldn't)

If you can try that and let us know

[8bit]

Andrzej,

Thanks for the response, highly appreciated. The card did work fine until I rebuilt the PC around the new board and CPU. I went directly onto cat 5.1 from a fresh XP Pro and SP2 install after rebuilding, I had 4.12 on XP Pro SP2 before, so the items that changed in the whole thing were the mobo, CPU and drivers.

As I stated before I got around the problem by reducing the AGP rate from 8x to 4x. I also rolled back from 5.1 to 4.12 prior to the AGP rate change based on negative feedback on the Lock On forums at ubi.com from other OEM Rad9800 Pro users about 5.1 stability and performance. I (perhaps foolishly) decided to try upping to 5.1 again last night and got a crash, although it was after a couple of hours play as opposed to the 5 mins until crash I got before.

Tonight I will be doing a complete uninstall (using DriverClean Pro) of 5.1 and going back to 4.12 where I will stay put until I hear good things about a Cat release again. I'm not bashing the ATi driver guys, they must have a complete nightmare job getting things stable on lots of different games, hardware setups, OS patch levels etc. but as I see it it's up to the end user to decide if they really need to upgrade drivers to a given version or not.

While we're at it Andrzej, can you confirm if running the AGP voltage at 1.6 instead of 1.5 is likely to cause a problem? If it will help matters and not be too risky (can't afford a new GPU at the moment!) then I'll give it a shot.

[Taz]

I've gone straight to Catalyst 5.1 on my new PC and been playing around with some of the settings. I've had stability issues in the following three cases:

a) If my anti-virus software (Kaspersky) has realtime filesystem protection switched on;
b) If I use the Overdrive in the 5.1 drivers.
c) If I set the PEG setting in the Asus BIOS to FAST or FASTER (default is AUTO).

Any of the above three combinations cause random lockups and random reboots, particularly if I stress the system with 3DMARK 05. Leaving those settings to default and disabling realtime filesystem protection gives me stability. I've got a generic ATi Radeon XT800 XT (PCI-E).

If the Overdrive feature is enabled then it only overclocks to 506MHz (from 500MHz). As this causes stability issues i've switched it off. Also, the other configurable settings in the 5.1 driver are all set to 'Let The Application Decide' (or words to that effect!).

[exAndrzej]

...issues in the following three cases...

Not being specific about one manufacturer or another, but...

If a graphic card based its clocks on the PCI-Express clock given out by the boards and - for example - the mainboard manufacturer decided that the 'baseline' was not 'X' but instead 'X + 10%'... and you have a card that is clocked at 500MHz... then your mainboard might be asking your card to run at 550MHz

Some manufacturers have slow, standard, overclocked and extreme (or similar) settings on their mainboards

If 'standard' means 'PCI-Express standard clock' then that is one thing

If 'standard' means 'PCI-Express standard clock + 5%' then that is something else

Maybe the Hexus crew can put a post in here on the very best way to work out if your mainboard has been shipped 'pre-overclocked even when it is set to normal' ? i.e. how can any customer know what the bus is really doing (Scopes 101 version please - using only hand held tools !)

You should definitely run the Kaspersky query past the software writers (i.e. Kaspersky) to see if they have hit this issue before

The ATI CATALYST drivers which we release every month are WHQL certified and have been tested to the highest standard possible before release

Millions of people upgrade to the new driver and then we monitor any issues raised

As far as I am aware, the issue raised by 8bit is not being widely reported...

...but without a complete 'ground up PD-style rebuild' it is not easy to ascertain what is causing the problem

<Outro> Myth & Legend Segment: PD has - at some time in his life or other - built the fastest system ever seen by PC Pro, PC Magazine, Custom PC and many other publications. Not only that, but he has also been the Technical Director for world-class cooling solution companies and a system vendor shipping over 50,000 high-spec PCs a year. He has that annoying habit of taking systems that are 'broken' and then getting them to work without changing any parts. He has a god/guru-like ability with hardware and hand-built the servers that keep almost half a million Hexus readers happy each month... </outro>)

I think that the Taz issues (2 & 3) are more easily understandable in terms of what the card is being asked to do

Bear in mind that with any product - from any manufacturer - you could well get it to overclock by a massive amount
(not recommended - but fun - file under expensive/expansive !!!)

ATI's Overdrive feature gives you additional performance in a very safe environment - without affecting your warranty

Anything to do with voltage changes - I would suggest that you contact the card manufacturer and ask them to confirm by email what can and cannot be done within warranty

[Taz]

I've played around a bit more. I've used the ATi Catalyst uninstall tool to remove the 5.1 driver. I then re-installed all the Asus supplied drivers from the original motherboard CD. I also got the latest 1003 BIOS for the A8V-E motherboard. I then reinstalled Catalyst 5.1 without any problems.

The motherboard has been set to AI NOS +10% overclocking. The Overdrive setting in Catalyst 5.1 was enabled. I then ran 3D Mark 05 three times in succession and got scores of around 5700 consistently (not sure if that is good or bad). The system did not crash.

It's now only crashing (freezing up completely, not rebooting) when I play Flight Simulator 2004 (with or without Kaspersky antivirus - that appears to be a red herring). The PEG mode was set back to Auto as that defintely causes crashes if set to fast or faster. I would have thought if it was going to crash then 3D Mark 2005 would make it crash, but it doesn't.

Hence, I think the problem is really down to some sort of problem with FS 2004 compatibility. If I leave the Asus BIOS overclocking to 'Auto' (the default) and switch off Overdrive in Catalyst 5.1 then the it still crashes in FS2004.

I haven't tried using 'normal' mode in the BIOS (i.e. no overclocking at all) yet. Apart from 3D Mark 2005, is there any other software I can use to test the graphics out (FS2004 is a DirectX game, it's the only game i've got!)?

Edit: I've just read 8bit's posts in more detail and those are the same problems that I am having. Differences in hardware are that he's using an Asus A8V (AGP) mobo and i'm using an A8V-E (PCI-E) mobo with a generic ATi Radeon X800 XT graphics card. I was also getting lock-ups when in the Catalyst Control Panel and changing the AA/AF settings. Those have gone away now and it's only in FS2004 that I get crashes after seconds or several minutes.

[exAndrzej]

...how can any customer know what the bus is really doing...

I'll say it again - you really need to establish what the baseline on your mainboar dis

If it is pre-overclocking (even when set to 'standard') then that could be the answer to your problems

As far as testing goes, you can easily get hold of the 'basic' versions of 3DMark01, 03 and 05 from www.futuremark.com

You can stress your DX9 game-play ability with the free HL2 download from here... http://www.ati.com/gitg/promotions/h...emo/index.html

...and you can see how the next generation of computer games will pay on your box by downloading the brand new CryTek Project demo from here... http://www2.ati.com/misc/crytek/theprojectv1-1.exe

Remember, when you use The Project - it has a benchmark option in the folder it installs into - always good for a bit of 'next gen stress testing' but remember to enable 3Dc to really see how future DX gaming will work

[Taz]

Okay, I uninstalled ATi Catalyst 5.1 using Control Panel and rebooted. Windows XP came up saying new VGA controller found (as I expected). Instead of re-installing Catalyst 5.1, I went to Windows Update and found an X800 XT driver in the hardware updates section. It was a little over 20MB and I installed that. There is no Control Centre with this so I had to check/change things in the Display Properties. FS2004 works fine! It's a much older driver from ATi Technologies Inc., dated 25/08/2004, version 6.14.10.6476.

I'm going to uninstall this version and re-install Catalyst 5.1 to see if the problem reappears. The file I have download from the ATi site for 5.1 is called wxp-w2k-ccc-8-09-041221m-020455c-english.exe. I am assuming this is the right file for my generic ATI Radeon X800 XT.

If re-installing Catalyst 5.1 causes the same problems then it's a fair bet that there is a problem with it as a much older driver on the Windows Update site has no problems (other than causing a much slower 3dMark05 score).

[exAndrzej]

Hmmm..

I think we have had 3 people post queries about 5.1 here that have proven 'interesting' to track down the cause of

As I may have mentioned before, teh naming strategy is <year>.<month> so 5.1 = 2005.January

Given that ATI post monthly WHQL updates - and it is now February - we will have a new one along soon

Maybe you could use the installed driver you have already - then go to 5.2 when it is posted ?