Catalyst 5.1

[Taz]

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 ?

Thanks Andrzej. I'll redo the test with 5.1 this evening and post back here. It was strange that even when I had 5.1 installed and went to Windows Update it told me (in the hardware updates) that there was a 'new' recommended X800 XT driver! I've now got the older driver and it's working great. I can Overdrive my X800 XT (only to 506MHz but that's better than nothing). I can also overclock my motherboard (on Auto settings) and both 3dMark05 and FS2004 are rock solid stable.

Hence, my suspicions are with the 5.1 driver. Perhaps you could ask ATi if others have reported issues with FS2004? I get exactly the symptoms that 8bit gets. Random freezes and/or reboots. They could happen within 30 seconds of starting FS2004 (going into a flight) or within a few minutes.

As I said, i'll redo the test to prove it's the downloaded Catalyst 5.1 causing the system crashes and revert back to the one on the Windows Update site. One change I will make is to download the 5.1 driver without the Control Centre in it (the smaller download) to see if that makes any difference (it shouldn't do).

[Edit]: Reinstalled Catalyst 5.1 and FS2004 crashes again. 3dMark05 runs fine and I get a score of around 5700. I uninstalled 5.1 and went to Windows Update to get the old drivers and all working okay again. I wouldn't mind trying 4.12 if I can get hold of them from somewhere.

[Taz]

Andrzej: I wonder if you could comment on the following.

I found the Catalyst 4.12 drivers at http://www.techspot.com/drivers/inde...formation/3922

I uninstalled the 5.1 drivers, rebooted, and installed the 4.12 drivers. I ran 3DMark05 to test things out and the benchmark ran okay and I got a pretty good score (much better than the older drivers from Windows Update but not quite as good as the 5.1 drivers).

After 3DMark05 was successful (i.e. did not crash the machine!), I ran Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. I chose a difficult flight for graphics cards (lots of weather). It's still running at 50fps on autopilot as I type (i've locked the framerate to a max of 50fps).

I am curious as to why the Catalyst 4.12 drivers are 43.9MB in size (more than twice the size of the 5.1 drivers!). Maybe there's more stuff in these drivers? I built a completely new rig and had a generic ATi X800 XT card (it did not come with *any* software CD's, manuals or cables, just the card on its own). Up till now i've just downloaded the 5.1 drivers and these are the ones that are causing problems with FS2004. Why are the 5.1 drivers half the size of the 4.12 drivers?

My next experiment will be to install the 5.1 drivers over the top of the 4.12 to see what happens.

[exAndrzej]

I think you are just lucky myself

You can get all of the classic drivers from here... http://www.ati.com/support/products/...usdrivers.html

(note the marketing speak for old drivers )


Some of the earlier drivers included .NET as well - hence the larger file size

Now, if you notice, we simply put a big message on the ATI home page to say that you will need .NET as well for the CATALYST Control Centre