Catalyst 3.9

[User X]

hey people
I guess this question has been asked before but I am gonna ask again. Do
catalyst 3.9 drivers really suck that bad. I have been running 3.8 simply
because I only upgrade when there is a good chance of me achieving a serious
improvement and speed. I don't plan on using 3.9 with my current 9200 but I
getting the 9600 in a week and I am wondering it its really worth installing
3.9
any thoughts ?

 

[Kent_Diego]

Every time a new release comes out, I install it. I have NEVER seen any
difference. The new ones work, the old ones worked. The only thing that
keeps me updating is the list of bugs fixed although they never seem to
affect me directly. If you install new driver and something quits working,
you can always install an older version. No risk at all.

-Kent

 

[Ngo-Minh-Khanh]

EXACTLY !!!

 

[John Hall]

Well, when I was with Nvidia, new drivers enabled features of the GPU, or
refined features, or fixed bugs. I always went with the new drivers and in
many cases they were a bit faster. With ATI, I see that they add features
like VPU recover, and fix bugs like I had running FS2004. Everybody seems
to have gotten DX 8 right in their drivers, but DX 9 is new in games and I
think Nvidia and ATI have to iron out the wrinkles. The latest 3.9 drivers
from ATI really make FS2004 look nice and run a bit faster with 4 x aa and 8
x af. The flickering with the 3.7's and 3.8's was terrible.

JK

 

[Sept1967]

You *KNOW* that isnt true.

Every Detonator version, is *NOT* faster then the previous. That is why
certian Detonators work better with certian NV cards. NV boards have the
same concerns, rolling back to earlier Detonators when the newer ones run
slower.

 

[Sept1967]

I dont see any problems (yet) with the 3.9's.
Download them, and unxip them to a folder on your PC before you ass the
9600. So when you boot up after install, point them directly to the 3.9's.
You wont have remnants of other drivers.

 

[John Hall]

I said "IN MANY CASES" they were "BIT" faster. For sure every Detonator is
not faster than the previous one. But each was an improvement in one way or
another. Sorry, MOST were an improvement in one way or another. The
biggest bug fix for Nvidia was the fixing of the infinite loop problem which
was major. But I have become an ATI convert and will stick with them for a
while.

JK

 

[Falkentyne]

You *KNOW* that isnt true.

Every Detonator version, is *NOT* faster then the previous. That is why
certian Detonators work better with certian NV cards. NV boards have the
same concerns, rolling back to earlier Detonators when the newer ones run
slower.

Speed was not a problem in -most- detonator versions.
Sure, some detonators ran faster than others in some games (who gives
a crap about 3dmark 2003; what's important are FPS's in games
themselves), like, for instance, the 15 FPS increase in UT2003 in
driver 32.20 --> 40.72, and, the famous UT (1) super-slowdown (we're
talking about up to 50% framerate loss) which first appeared in driver
27.20 and was fixed in...29.42 or around there??

What was more important was compatibility; certain drivers simply
outright broke some games. UT back in the 27.20-28.32 days was the
big one, though there were others.

There were some new broken game issues when the 40.xx driver hit also,
some which have still not been fixed.


<Gibs> When you kill 6 people in Unreal Tournament
it is "MonsterKill", In Quake3 it is "Excellent",
in Counter-Strike it is "Kicked by console"

 

[pw]

Every time a new release comes out, I install it. I have NEVER seen any

difference. The new ones work, the old ones worked. The only thing that
keeps me updating is the list of bugs fixed although they never seem to
affect me directly. If you install new driver and something quits working,
you can always install an older version. No risk at all.

-Kent

Right on Kent! Same here!

Maybe I don't have the latest and greatest motherboard. Got me!

-pw


-pw
livingston/emigrant,montana
please use "pw at williamsonenterprises dot com" for e-mail
thanks

 

[Gamer]

hey people
I guess this question has been asked before but I am gonna ask again. Do
catalyst 3.9 drivers really suck that bad. I have been running 3.8 simply
because I only upgrade when there is a good chance of me achieving a serious
improvement and speed. I don't plan on using 3.9 with my current 9200 but I
getting the 9600 in a week and I am wondering it its really worth installing
3.9
any thoughts ?

I believe I'm seeing an improvement in BF1942/Desert Combat performance, but
I can't put it in quantitative terms. I do think that these drivers have
made an improvement in framerate but it could be psychological--I mean if
you are expecting a performance increase you might see one. If someone
switched the drivers on you overnight there is a good chance you wouldn't
notice an improvement even if there is one. That is why I don't use
framerate counters or testing programs--I tend to just go with a thumbs up
or thumbs down assessment of how my games are running. One thing I think I
have noticed is that with each driver release, the ability of the card to
run antialiasing and anisotropic filtering without experiencing a drastic
performance hit is seems to be increased. In other words, 4x antialiasing
and 16x anisotropic are much more playable options with 3.9 than the drivers
I was running about 6 months ago. I would say that in general, the trend has
been toward better performance.

Just my two cents

G

PIV 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig pc1066ram
9700PRO