Im having big problems with drivers with the graphics card I just bought and would like to ask advice before I really screw something up. I bought a Radeon 9000 128mb, its a “powered by ATI” which is ATIs buzzword for made by third party mfr. The company that made it is called PowerColor. I had the card installed at the computer shop along with a new 80g hardrive I bought thats partitioned with both win 98 and XP. The card worked flawlessly when I tried out CFS2 and CFS3, but when I ran Forgotten Battles, the forest terain on the ground would flash like it was a lit up neon sign. So a freind told me I had to download updated drivers from http://www.ati.com . I went to that site and clicked the “find drivers” for the powered by ATI section which brought me to this page:
http://mirror.ati.com/support/drivers/powered.html
which is labled “reference driver download”. I dont know what that means, I guess its generic ATI drivers, but anyway I instead clicked the “partner list” icon to the side and found the link for PowerColor (second from top) which I clicked, and then clicked the english html link for PowerColor, and then clicked the “download driver” link at the top of the page which brought me here:
http://www.cptech.com.tw/powercolor/web/notice.htm
The first download listed is the “newest ATI catalyst directX9 driver” (whatever that means) for card models including mine. I followed the instructions by uninstalling my current card drivers and (like an idiot) I ignored the second step of intstalling directX9 whcih Ive never heard of, then I downloaded and intalled the drivers. Needless to say it didnt work, and my monitor stayed on 16 colors. So I unintalled this driver download and reinstalled the drivers on my graphics card disk. Now none of my games I working right(game actions stutter or delay). I did go ahead and download the first CATALYST RADEON 3.4 driver at the above mentioned reference driver page, which seemed to cure the forest flashing on Forgotten Battles, but thats all it did. Now Ive got a mess and dont know where to start to fix this. I hope some of you simmers out their can make sense out of all this. thanks
By: mixtec - 9th June 2003 at 16:43
portrait of computer idiot
Im writing this at internet cafe because my computer is not working anymore and I waiting for the computer shop to open so I can have my computer formated and OSs reinstalled. Last night I just got fed up, went to control panel>uninstall programs and uninstalled ATI drivers and ATI control panel. Then I went to program files at drive C and deleted everyfile with ATI or Radeon on it. So ofcourse when I tried to install my drivers fresh of my disk, Ill I got were a bunch of error messages staring at me in 16 color.
nikumba- When I get my computer back, do I really have to uninstall ATI drivers and ATI control panel to install directX9 ?(I dont want to go through this again). And is the catylst driver from ATI just an update, or do I have to uninstall the driver that came on my disc to install the catalyst driver?
I have a couple of other questions since were on the subject. I read that XP runs games at 60fps because it doesnt recognize the framerate you set on the OS, and when I tried to run CFS3 on my XP patition, thats what happened. How do I fix that? Also Ive had a problem with this new graphics card and my last two graphics cards (geforce 4mx440, geforce 2mx440) where when I run the flight sim “Battle of Britain” when I exit the game in 1024×768, my monitor goes into 800×600 and 60fps. My new graphics card only goes into 60fps. What can I do to fix that?
thanks everyone for your help
By: Nikumba - 9th June 2003 at 12:38
mixtec,
Try the following:
1) Unistall both the Catalyst Driver and its Control Panel
2) Goto www.microsoft.com/directx and downloand DirectX 9.0
3) Install DirectX 9 and reboot your PC. Depending on which OS you use for games eg 98 or XP you will have to install DirectX on both of them or only one of them
4) As you mentions there is a generic Catalyist Driver from ATi or the one from your board manfacture. There are two schools of thought on which to use. As a rule ATI will release the new drivers before a 3rd party company. Most ATI based cards will run find on the ATI drivers, but some companies such as Gainwood, Hercules build extra features into their cards such as temp monitoring, fan speed, voltage use etc, using a reference driver would disable this functions. It would not do any harm to your card you just would not be able to use these features. Whereas using the driver made for your card you should be able to use those features if your card has them.
In my opinion unless you are a computer nut concerned with the heat in your case, or overclocking your card then you need the fuctions of the drivers, however as you seem to just use it for games etc the reference drivers should be fine.
The drivers can be found at http://mirror.ati.com/support/drivers/powered.html you need to download the Catalyst Driver AND the Catalyst control panel. Install the drivers and reboot followed by the control panel then reboot. You will have to do this for both OS if you use both for games.
5) Once that is done all should be well. If not come back and we will all try to help again.
Nikumba
By: Arabella-Cox - 9th June 2003 at 10:35
Check which version of DirectX you are running by clicking on the “run…” option on your start menu and typing in “dxdiag” without the quotes. This should run a diagnostic program that comes with DirectX. DirectX is the software used by the drivers on graphics cards to work. The Current version is version 9. Each version adds new features which some cards and some games use. If you are running DirectX 8 or lower and a game requires version 9, or the card needs version 9 to use features or textures or drawing techniques then you might have problems.
DirectX is a microsoft product so it should be downloadable from the microsoft website… I normally get new directx versions of computer mags or game disks.
(note when you run dxdiag the screen might go black and a dialog box will appear. It might then go black a few more times as it checks your system. The amount of info is quite impressive and useful.)
By: Bigglesworth - 9th June 2003 at 02:02
Check the help forums on the site,it is all there. Have a look in the ATI section of the downloads, look for the latest driver, click download and you’ll get the info…..
” Catalyst 3.4 – Windows 2000/XP
Description: Fixed in this driver:
display corruption around wheels in the game FI Racing Championship…
health meter not being drawn in Bounty Hunter…
Texture corruption in the game Combat Flight Simulator 3 is now resolved ”
may try www.flightsim.com and the help forums
GL
By: mixtec - 9th June 2003 at 01:07
Thanks Bigglesworth, but the driver download section of www.guru3d.com is even more confusing than the ATI site as they give no description of what the downloads are or what they do. I want to know exactly what I need to download rather than try this stuff by trial and error.
By: Bigglesworth - 8th June 2003 at 23:50
Mixtec, I don’t know much about your particular card, however try…www.guru3d.com EVERYTHING you could possibly need and more. …you did know that its possible to convert your card to the ‘Pro’ version to run OpenGL didn’t you? (3dsMAX):D (RivaTuner)
BW
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June 8, 2003 at 11:18 pm