ATI 9800

[the goolster]

Hi,

I was kindly given a PC by a friend and it has an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
video card. The machine is beginning to act up and i want to reformat
the disk. Do I need the driver software for the card or whould
everything work out fine when i reinstall windows XP.

thanks

J

 

[Barry Watzman]

You should get the driver software. XP may have a built-in driver (I'm
not sure), but at this point it will be dated and many years (YEARS) old.

 

[Bill]

Hi,

I was kindly given a PC by a friend and it has an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
video card. The machine is beginning to act up and i want to reformat
the disk. Do I need the driver software for the card or whould
everything work out fine when i reinstall windows XP.

thanks

J

It's a good idea to get the latest drivers for all your hardware and
burn them to a cdrom. Copy any sata/scsi drivers you may need to a
floppy. Then you'll always have a copy of working drivers incase you
need them.

Drivers you may need: Motherboard chipset, Network card, Video card,
Display, Printer, Scsi/SATA, TV card, Modem, Scanner, etc...


Windows XP will install some kind of working driver for the 9800.
After the base install you can use your driver cdrom to install other
drivers as needed.

Bill

 

[Matt Ion]

Hi,

I was kindly given a PC by a friend and it has an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
video card. The machine is beginning to act up and i want to reformat
the disk. Do I need the driver software for the card or whould
everything work out fine when i reinstall windows XP.

XP does have a working driver for the Radeon cards, and although it will
work just fine for you, it probably won't give the best performance.
Once you're up and running, though, you can download the latest driver
from ATI's website.


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[Guest]

snip

Further to the previous replies I would suggest trying an older Catalyst
driver rather than the latest offerings. Some of the more recent ones have
proved troublesome if I recall.

I've got 4.8 I think. Or maybe 4.9. Most are available here
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=18

 

[Jonathan A.]

Further to the previous replies I would suggest trying an older Catalyst
driver rather than the latest offerings. Some of the more recent ones have
proved troublesome if I recall.

I've got 4.8 I think. Or maybe 4.9. Most are available here
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=18

For all I've heard, the 4.12 Catalyst drivers are supposed to be the
best "all around" performers on the 9800-pro. There are links to that
version on the guru3d page linked above. Even if you have the .NET
framework installed, though, I'd certainly recommend avoiding the CCC
(Catalyst Control Center) version. I don't know how much better CCC has
gotten, but from all the reports I heard it was a bug ridden, memory
hogging nightmare back in the 4.12 days.

To the OP: if you're going to run any relatively recent games on that
"new" computer, you'll probably want more current drivers than 4.x, as
they will likely have bug fixes, etc. to enable them to run your game(s)
better. Just be careful, as ATI have been known to "break" older cards
with driver releases for the new X-series cards.

If you really care how that card performs, do some research on the
Catalyst forum at Rage3d before choosing a driver version:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=59

My $0.02,
Jonathan