ATI owners: All those having GS or graphics plugin errors

[jroc74]

I found out today ATI is having issues with drivers after 7.6 or 7.7, AGP cards and Direct3D. I saw an update on microsoftupdate for ati drivers and got it. Not knowing it was gonna screw up my card. Not sure if the same can be said for Nvidia drivers tho. It wouldnt hurt to check it out. Just google modded video drivers and u may find the site.

My only solution for using the lastest drivers with no Direct3D problems? Get some modded drivers. There is a site that is well known for modded video drivers, but I dont wanna violate any rules here. And within that site is links to other websites, some have modded ATI drivers from 5.7 to 7.10

The place was a godsend for me.. I need the latest drivers. There are some additions to the settings/config of my card thats not in older drivers.

[PCXL-Fan]

You can link jroc74, as the ATI drivers are open source and no reverse software engineering or copyright violations are taking place. I've put a hundred links on this forum from everything from youtube videos to comedy pics to driver links to newegg sales and haven't been once given a warning.

[Squall-Leonhart]

NEVER EVER EVER EVER!
download Video or Chipset drivers from Microsuck Backdate

[jroc74]

Ok.
OmegaDrivers.net - Home of the Omega Drivers for ATI & NVIDIA desktop/laptop cards.

One site thats posted there that had all modded ATI drivers from 5.7 thru 7.10:

Radeon Omega Driver Downloads

And again I dont know about Nvidia problems. But they do Nvidia drivers too. And as you know these are not official drivers, but modded ones. They have overclocking tweaks too. But I dont know or mess with that much.


And for ATI owners: if u dont wanna mess with these and still want to be rid of the GS problem, just go back to the last ATI drivers that worked with Direct3D. I think its 7.6 or 7.7. It might even be drivers in the 6. range...

[Squall-Leonhart]

Omega has not done Nvidia drivers for along time, he was threatened with legal action.

[Mako Eyes]

Originally Posted by Squall-Leonhart

Omega has not done Nvidia drivers for along time, he was threatened with legal action.

That's the story? Yeesh, that's pretty harsh.

I was once contemplating switching to nVidia, but I hate factory drivers. I'm sticking with ATi for now.

[Cid Highwind]

7.7, 7.8 and 7.9 had problems for AGP X1950Pro cards, I think they fixed it with 7.10, but I don't know for sure.

At least the Omega's are running fine here. I only update occassionally for the sole reason that I don't fix what ain't broken.

[runawayprisoner]

Weird... under the most extreme conditions would I use modded drivers. They are mostly intended to increase performance and reduce IQ by a bit... or the other way around. At least it's true for nVidia.

[jroc74]

^Same here. I was hesitant on using modded drivers. I remember trying some from Omega a lil over a year ago. I just tried em for the tweaking ability. I didnt know I had a problem until I tried to play Sims 2 recently. Sims 2 worked last month. Then a few weeks ago I got a 'cant find compatible graphics adapter' error. Then the first time I tried to use Pcx2 it wouldnt work: GS plugin error. (of course all this happened after I updated my ATI drivers)

The wild thing is how can official drivers break your hardware & modded ones dont? Aint it supposed to be the other way around?

[Squall-Leonhart]

its usually caused by an incorrect driver update.

uninstall drivers first before installing new ones.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by jroc74

^Same here. I was hesitant on using modded drivers. I remember trying some from Omega a lil over a year ago. I just tried em for the tweaking ability. I didnt know I had a problem until I tried to play Sims 2 recently. Sims 2 worked last month. Then a few weeks ago I got a 'cant find compatible graphics adapter' error. Then the first time I tried to use Pcx2 it wouldnt work: GS plugin error. (of course all this happened after I updated my ATI drivers)

The wild thing is how can official drivers break your hardware & modded ones dont? Aint it supposed to be the other way around?

No offense to ATI fans... but... doesn't that tell you ATI's quality control? At most my nVidia drivers would BSOD me when my graphics card overheats, but that's about it.

[mudlord]

Not to mention, OpenGL support in ATI drivers has been broken for years ....

[StriderVM]

Well, my first video card in mt system when I bought it was an ATI Radeon X550.

I also did have problems with the drivers. For me, I solved them myself, by installing an old version of the drivers, then installing new ones. (Maybe the new drivers are intended as an update and not standalone?)

[Squall-Leonhart]

no, the new drivers are always made to be fresh installed.

[Mako Eyes]

Originally Posted by mudlord

Not to mention, OpenGL support in ATI drivers has been broken for years ....

I don't understand why people keep saying this. I have never had any issues in OGL (1 or 2) with my X800. In fact, I find it has more trouble rendering Direct3D.

That could just be the games I'm playing, however.

[mudlord]

I don't understand why people keep saying this. I have never had any issues in OGL (1 or 2) with my X800. In fact, I find it has more trouble rendering Direct3D.

That could just be the games I'm playing, however.

I had nothing but hell with OpenGL when developing on a ATI card. NVIDIA cards from my experience have superb OGL support, whereas ATI drivers have horrid support for GLSL shaders, NPOT support, and loads other bugs. Unless AMD severely rewrites its Win32 OGL ICD, I am never touching a ATI card again.....Most likely, the games you play have seperate rendering paths for ATI and NVIDIA in OpenGL (Doom 3-based engine games, for example)

[tuanming]

ATi Catalyst 7.12 was out 2 days ago. Go update now! Omega driver sucks btw... He can't code it for Vista and lazy! His newest driver is 7.10... That should tell you something All he do nowadays, is playing WoW...

[Mako Eyes]

Originally Posted by mudlord

... the games you play have seperate rendering paths for ATI and NVIDIA in OpenGL (Doom 3-based engine games, for example)

Bingo. God bless John Carmack . The only OGL-based games I play heavily are Quake, Quake 3, and Quake 4. I use OGL whenever possible for other programs though, like Google Earth and older games that give the option (such as Half-Life), but such programs and games lack most of OGLs fancy features. I also use Pete's OGL2 plugin for ePSXe and, once again, I have no issues. I have more trouble getting D3D plugins to work properly. N64 plugins (of which there are no OGL ones, if I recall correctly) never seem to work right either. Though that could be problems with the plugins themselves.

The only Direct3D games that works flawlessly on my current machine is Half-Life 2 and Dreamfall. HL2: Lost Coast and Episode 1 inevitably come to a total freeze when playing, that is unless I lower the settings and make it look like ass. I never tried these two titles since I installed my new power supply though, that may make a difference. I'm not much of a PC gamer, though I do plan to continue playing the Half-Life series and pick up Crysis and Duke Nukem Forever *snicker* sometime down the road.

Out of curiosity: Do you use Catalyst drivers or Omega drivers? I'm running on Omega, that may make a difference.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by Mako Eyes

Out of curiosity: Do you use Catalyst drivers or Omega drivers? I'm running on Omega, that may make a difference.

Not so much for developing OGL apps.

[Mako Eyes]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Not so much for developing OGL apps.

Haha, well, fair enough. I know little about software development so I'm taking your word for it.