best drivers/software for AIW Radeon 8500DV?

[Hairy Jay]

My AIW card came with Catalyst 2.1 and MMC 7.7.0.0. I have successfully
updated to Catalyst 2.5 (with the corresponding Control Panel and WDM
Capture versions). BTW, thanks for Joseph Sullivan's 12/5/2003 post
explaining how to deal with the "Found New Hardware - cannot find drivers"
problem - installing Control Panel and WDM Capture (with reboots) indeed
solved that problem.

When I tried installing Catalyst 3.1 (many posts indicated 3.0 wasn't very
good) things went well until I was unable to install DVD Player 7.6 because
I had no separate DVD Player software on my installation CD (it was part of
MMC 7.7.0.0). This made MMC 7.7.0.1 useless without a DVD Player, and
Catalyst 3.1 with MMC 7.7.0.0 gave me an error message that MMC wasn't
installed - I assume it wanted MMC 7.7.0.1. I also assume that if I spend
$9.99 (plus S/H) for the newer installation CD (which came with the 9000
series cards) I will be able to install newer Catalyst, MMC and DVD Player
software. My question (finally!) is - is it worth it to buy the CD and
install the newer software? TIA for your opinions (and corrections if any
of the above is wrong).

J

 

[Sleepy]

I had the same problem - I think it stinks that you have to buy new drivers
and software because it refuses to acknowledge you have the original cd.
Unfortunately some new games have problems with older drivers which forces
an upgrade. I tried Knights of the Old Republic on the 2.x cats on my cd and
its a slideshow - even with the 3.1s its unplayable. I had to upgrade to the
3.7s like it or not. btw the 3.7s are the most stable/compatible of all the
Cats.

 

[Asestar]

Next to 4.2. I own 8500le, and get a slightly better fps in 4.2, which are
also better in opengl than 3,7 .