Point me in the right direction? New ATI owner, ex Nvidia owner

[Newf !!!]

Yup, I've converted. Ex Nvidia owner now has a 9800 pro 128 in my
machine.

I did a driver clean up. installed that latest drivers from ati's
site. Now, I'm wondering what tricks there are

1. What are the best version drivers to use?
2. What is the best overclocking program to use.

Is there a faq for the ati overclocking? I'm not familiar with the ati
stuff yet.

 

[Ben Pope]

Yup, I've converted. Ex Nvidia owner now has a 9800 pro 128 in my
machine.

I did a driver clean up. installed that latest drivers from ati's
site. Now, I'm wondering what tricks there are

1. What are the best version drivers to use?

Always the latest, unless you know that a specific problem has been
introduced for a particular game in a late version. (ask or read here if you
have problems)

2. What is the best overclocking program to use.

I like ATItool, finds errors better than trying to spot them youself.

Is there a faq for the ati overclocking? I'm not familiar with the ati
stuff yet.

Dunno.

Ben

 

[Kill Bill]

Yup, I've converted. Ex Nvidia owner now has a 9800 pro 128 in my
machine.

I did a driver clean up. installed that latest drivers from ati's
site. Now, I'm wondering what tricks there are

1. What are the best version drivers to use?
2. What is the best overclocking program to use.

Is there a faq for the ati overclocking? I'm not familiar with the ati
stuff yet.

A lot of us like the Omega drivers. http://www.omegadrivers.net/ Comes with
an Overclocking utility built in.

 

[Dark Avenger]

A lot of us like the Omega drivers. http://www.omegadrivers.net/ Comes
with an Overclocking utility built in.

And a great tool to set graphic settings FOR EACH APPLICATION on itself

So in games like Vice City you can raise the anti aliasing high while in
Farcry keep the original settings.

Damn usefull at times...

 

[who be dat?]

1. What are the best version drivers to use?

ATi does a pretty good job at improving drivers while stomping out bugs.
Personally, I'd grab the latest as they probably are the greatest. Other
than that, I can't recommend a specific driver.

2. What is the best overclocking program to use.

I use a great little utility called RadLinker which I'm suprised I don't
hear about more often from others. This allows you to overclock, set per
game visual settings (have game A run at Higher AA level with no ansio while
game B runs at lower AA level with Ansio on, for example), and several other
goodies that practically all the good utilities have. The two primary
things about this utility it's freaking easy to use and it uses no memory
whatsoever. With most utilities, in order to setup per game settings you
have to go to display properties and change things or use a utility in the
tray icon. With radlinker, you adjust the settings for an individual game
by going to it's shortcut in the start menu and right click on it. The
first time you do this, you'll see two new menu items with an ATi symbol
next to them, one of the says custom settings. Click this. Then, right
click on the shortcut in the start menu for the game again. This time, go
to properties. You'll see new tabs at the top now. You can set the visual
settings for the individual game now. You can even set overclocking settings
on a per game basis if you want although I set that in the video
setup/display options myself. Do the above for each game. So freaking
easy. Bottom line: you want to set up per game display settings, just right
click on the game name in the start menu.

Another thing I like about this utlitity is that it doesn't use any memory.
Most utilities load a service or something that runs in the background
everytime you boot up. Not this utilitiy. It saves memory!!

Here is a link if you're interested.
http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/

Chris Smith

 

[Wayne Youngman]

Hi,

I have only been using ATI (9800) since last August, and only recently have
I began to overclock the card as it was so good at stock!. Anyway I can
100% recommend ATITool + Cat 4.5's. ATITool will *intelligently*
test/overclock your card for you, pumping the MHz up until it find errors
then it will lower the MHz until it can run a preset amount of time
error-free.

I have used Cat 3.7 for ages, just worked well for me, but just this week I
have switched up to Cat 4.5, everything still works well and the control
panel is improved.

You can find out more about ATITool here:
http://atitool.ocfaq.com/

and you can download the Cats here:
www.ati.com/support/products/radeonwinxppreviousdrivers.html

I began life in ATI land using a Sapphire Atlantis 9800 (325/290) and after
using ATITool, flashing to a Pro BIOS and adding an Arctic VGA-Silencer my
9800 now runs faster than a 9800XT (440/390), that's +115MHz on the GPU and
+ 100MHz (200DDR) on the Sammy 3.3 memory.

People used to kick sand in my face as I am a graphic-card-overclocking
nOOb, but thanks to ATITool I can now flex my silicon muscles!

 

[Aki Peltola]

I have used Cat 3.7 for ages, just worked well for me, but just this week I
have switched up to Cat 4.5, everything still works well and the control
panel is improved.

Err, as an ATI-newbie I'm a bit confused... Is the latest
control panel compatible with all the previous driver
versions, or do I have to downgrade control panel to
"match" the driver?

 

[McGrandpa]

Err, as an ATI-newbie I'm a bit confused... Is the latest
control panel compatible with all the previous driver
versions, or do I have to downgrade control panel to
"match" the driver?

Yes you do, as stated in the driver downloads area at ATI.
McG.

 

[Aki Peltola]

Yes you do, as stated in the driver downloads area at ATI.

Apparently I am blind.
How "handy", with control panel that makes ATI driver pack
about 20 megs in size, compared to Nvidia's drivers that
are about half of that and include all stuff needed.

Well, I have used the latest v4.6 control panel with v4.4
drivers (because of messy graphics in Thief3 with v4.6 drivers)
till now and haven't encountered any problems... luck?-)

 

[McGrandpa]

Apparently I am blind.
How "handy", with control panel that makes ATI driver pack
about 20 megs in size, compared to Nvidia's drivers that
are about half of that and include all stuff needed.

Well, I have used the latest v4.6 control panel with v4.4
drivers (because of messy graphics in Thief3 with v4.6 drivers)
till now and haven't encountered any problems... luck?-)

Hah! I don't know; I've just done as the ATI sites instructions say to
and used the control panel they say to with each of the drivers.
McG.

 

[Newf !!!]

thanks guys, all great tips for sure. Ati tool is cool in that I can
just leave it, let it do it's thing and find the max. I'm too busy
playing far cry now to let it run for as long as it takes though
410/370 is where i am at so far.

I've got the best scores with the omega drivers so far. I'm surprised
how little fps I actually gain considering how much it overclocks
though. I got to get me a new gpu cooler now.

 

[Aki Peltola]

thanks guys, all great tips for sure. Ati tool is cool in that I can
just leave it, let it do it's thing and find the max. I'm too busy
playing far cry now to let it run for as long as it takes though
410/370 is where i am at so far.

And you say it's working?
I had to lower clocks about 15MHz from "max" ATITool
kindly detected to get rid of artifacts in games...

 

[Newf !!!]

And you say it's working?
I had to lower clocks about 15MHz from "max" ATITool
kindly detected to get rid of artifacts in games...

I let ati tool go for about an hour, it went to 412, and 378, and no
artifacts yet. Igot tired of waiting so I just clocked it back to
410/370 while playing Far cry. I'm using the omega's, and I'm setting
up custom settings for each game. Far cry is one of the only ones I
feel I should oc it a bit. It stutters like a bitch sometimes. Seems
like once the level is loaded, all is good though. I only have 512
ram, and I'm still waiting for my new cpu to arrive from ncix