CATALYSTâ„¢ 3.8 Rating

i voted 9 (shoulda voted 8). I think they're great drivers and would've been perfect if it werent for a few SMALL bugs (just annoyances) and the fact that the profile thing completely sucks ass.

i love them..

 

No real big change here i gave them a 7

 

I give these a 7 few things i have noticed since my upgrade from omega 3.5s

+
1. In some games everything feels slightly smoother! (halo etc)
2. Great image quality as usual!
3. Desktop feels more responsive.
4. Nice pixel shader effect's! a fun novelty


-
1. The different control panel is nice thou i'd prefer they kept it as it was so i have to click less to change stuff
2. The game profiles thing need's to be expanded upon so we don't have to goto the control panel to change them.
3. Althou the pixel shader effects are a fun novelty there appeal wears off after a while

 

Couldnt help but laugh and share symphany with ya bud!
For me drivers have worked well, I am also using a 9800 PRO - I tend to agree with ya about the O/C feature and VPU Protection

:hmm:

I have a FX5900 for sale if you want it?!!

 

I'll give them 8.
They look pretty stable, no hardlocks like 3.7 yet. Games run as fast as with 3.5 and Smart shaders look pretty cool. Why are people nagging about smart shaders. They look cool and give drivers a shiny look. I had fun while testing them with games. I have to admit that i expected more resolves to bugs but these drivers include more new features than the last five releases altogether. 3D tab could look more futuristic with Windows XP buttons and sliders, maybe in future... I'd like to thank ATi for another great driver release, keep doing these and keeping customers happy.

 

I gave them a 1. Installed the whole suit on my all in wonder. Now I have to format. To ammount of troubleshooting will fix this mess. BOOOOO!

 

Drivers Great Uninstall-Reinstall horrible, so 5

The Drivers are very stable. However, the new uninstall is merely a chained windows uninstaller. It gives one no option to save previous settings, lihe simple add/remove does. It did not remove all ATI software properly at all. Did not realize hydravision and MMC would be toasted. After installing 8.7, it won't start , add/remove uninstall locks, repair doesn't work. Have to re-use CD for DVD if one doesn't catch that one in uninstall process. A driver uninstaller is useful, but messing up the rest has wasted hours. First time ever such a prob since pre 128 days.

 

quotes from Kuja

mostly agree with you, but i'm betting it will improve in time,
meanwhile the Cat. makers could take a look at the Kyro card which had the best & easiest way of making gameprofiles i have seen to date.

maybe at the moment yes, but it will be a feature needed for MS longhorn, and you never can start with implementing this early enough.

Yeah just a play thingie atm, but who knows what will grow out of it.

Cannot comment I do not play these games, do you ?

Question of taste I think, when ranting on something, you can find much more i guess

Yes it is, that is why people buy new cards for : new features, Vcards evolve, you can't make A Lotus Elite out of a VWbuggy.
A waste of time to reply to you, I know, but like you I have norring better to do with my life.

My vote ? a 9 for the drivers, 5 for the new features....

 

I gave them a 4 because the One and only game which I built this computer around is fubar!

IL2 Forgotten Battles got totally hosed on this set. Flashing textures, must turn off multitextures in game to rid this problem. Choppy game play even with 70-80fps. When activating perfect mode in game it will show only the plane and a solid blue background.

I am also not so thrilled with the CP layout. I wish at least the 3d tab would default to the last one you used. It always opens with DX checked and I only play OGL. What a pain!

Anyway, I have been a proud owner of a 7200, 8500 and now a 9800 and I have always had excellent performance and never any problems like this. Everyone makes mistakes. I will just use the 3.7 ogl file with the 3.8's and all is well for now.

Patiently waiting for 3.9's! :taste:

 

I like these drivers. I would have rather had a saturation control (like NV. DV) in 3D apps than the silly smart shaders- But they are still cool- and hell why not, I'm sure it didn't take too long to add these "filters"- So I'm not complaining about them.

I like the profiles too, I have about 4 set up for both D3d and OGL, and they work great- it does save time, without question. I still wish that you didn't have to did so deep into the settings every time, but it's not that bad.

I got the highest score ever in 3dmark03 the first run w/ an OC on my card- Games run smooth- so far.

Because no saturation control when I know ATI could do it- and slight annoyances, they get an 8.

 

9. They can do better, they know it and I am waiting for it

 

9

Fixed every issue I've had with older games (most notibly Blade of Darkness). AA seems to work with System Shock 2 now so I'm pretty pleased. I've got the new 'Rebirth' models installed and it looks pretty cool. Now if only I could find my retail cd so I could see the cutscenes.

 

4
Loaded it after an uninstall and running driver cleaner.

Game speed improved and looked beautiful. However, my 2D desktop seems bleached out and the icons do not have sharp defined edge and look really fuzzy. I do not play enough games to accept the poor desktop. Going back to Omega’s version of 3.4 as it is the most stable up to this driver, games run great and the desktop looks way better.

 

Good but...

Good but not as good as I expected

 

Bro, if you cant talk without being mature and such, please zip it and move on. Your tone is totally uncalled for and will not be tolerated around here.

Clear?!?
Thanks'

 

Sigh, I originally gave them an 8, but they definately aren't worthy of that after some more testing. A whole bunch of games that I play have seen fairly large performance drops, Quake 2 and IL2 FB being the main two. Quake2 seems to have lost 20fps in the client I run, which is fairly major drop considering the client I am running isn't your stock Q2 and does not run at 500fps. Ive actually had it drop below the 90 fps its capped at, reliably, in areas of some maps. As for IL2...well they seem to have introduced a multitexturing bug of some sort, but beyond that, they broke hardware shaders. Hardware shaders in FB allows you to run a version of the Perfect setting for landscape, its like a compressed less high quality version. My framerates with this turned on are 1/4 of what they were, they aren't even in the 20's with it on. So they broke 2 of my most played games...im not happy.

Consider one of the 8's a 4. Yes I reinstalled them to make sure it wasn't a botched install of some sort, I always start clean with reinstalls anyway, there isn't a trace of ATi drivers in any of the windows XP cab files or anywhere in my windows dir let alone my entire boot partition, I also verified all the files were the ones from the 3.8 set as well. These drivers just aren't up to the standard im use to from ATi...Once the novelty factor wore off...sigh

Im not sure what to do either because these fixed that stupid 32bit texture bug in opengl, but crushed the performance in plenty of my games...bleh. Anyone got a link to the drivers from that Dell leak? Id like to try the OpenGL and DX dll's from that set.

 

Re: A BIG 9 For Me

Wow, I am glad they finally got that fixed for you in a new release.. congrats man. you waited a while!

 

I have to give them 1 they a lot slower than 3.7 on ati 9500. Big fps drops in all games..... I dont see any thing new that work be usefull.. Games are so slow now they not playable.

I hope they do a better job with 3.9

UNSTALLL TIME

 

Ditto that man! I uninstalled them in less than 10 minutes. My LCD looks so blurey that I was getting a headache. LCD's are the future, why would they make them look bad?

 

This guy work for Nvidia??

Quotes from Kuja

quote:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

d)The release fubared many, many popular games, including BF1942, Morrowind, DAOC, IL2FB, LOMAC, Homeworld 2, UT2003 (when using their stupid PS effects), NASCAR 2003 etc etc.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I happen to play UT2003, works fine, and BF1942, also fine and better with AA and AF enabled just wish text was a little less blurry, Nascar 2003, also fine, so I don't know what your talking about with those games, and I don't think you do either. Do you actually own and play these games or just repeating crap you read somewhere else? The only reason I rated these a 9 is that I still had the "SmartGart not so Smart" issue where I had to manually force SmartGart to run before my desktop and games responded like they were supposed to. Other than that, these drivers are fine.

I think this guy works for Nvidia, as I could see why he has a dislike for Terry......heh.

Keep em coming! I like a company that busts its ass to make its customers happy. Where would Nvidia be now if they hadn't forgot who buys their hardware?