To 4.9 or not to 4.9?

[beast16t]

As you'll see by my posting history i've had grief with my newly upgraded 9800Pro and pretty much the rest of my system. I am pleased and relieved to say it all works rather well now.

So do I want to risk going to Cat 4.9 drivers?

I've got the 4.8 at the moment and quite happy with the performance on UT2003 (this is the most recent game I got). I will hopefully be getting Doom3 when I can and HL2 when they (Valve) can :r

Has anyone got any improvements from the 4.9 drivers or even any problems?
I have read they are a must to run Doom3?

Cheers :t

[Bigjakkstaffa]

The 4.9's arent a "must" to run Doom III, however they are the first release to "officially" support D3.

As for performance, seems to be big boosts in UT2k4 and many people out there are reporting big gains in general across a range of games, though ATi doesnt make any mention in the release notes.

Most issues seem to be tied to the new CCC, so if you are goign to upgrade i woudl advise you to stick to the version with the older Contol Panel.

As always it's a case of suck it and see, but i've yet to hear of any compelling reason not to install them

--Jakk:t

[BadDriver]

Yeah, they are a great set of drivers but do stay with the old control center. The beta 4.9s gave me grief but the official ones are better across the board for my machine. I also run a 9800 pro so I would guess they would help you too.

Vid drivers aren't hard to revert back to anyhow.

[ooops]

On this subject , if you upgrade to 4.9 is it better to un-install 4.8 or just install 4.9 over 4.8 ??? ( sorry if I semi-hijacked ) :t

[Bigjakkstaffa]

You should be able to install over the top.

However, if you do encounter any issues after the upgrade, you should remove all driver components via add/remove and run drivercleaner (from www.driverheaven.net) to clear up any remnants, then reboot and install the driver set a-fresh

--Jakk:t

[beast16t]

Was kinda wondering about the same thing Ooops so you didn't really hijack.

Very good point about vid drivers being easy to uninstall. Never used the driver cleaner tool, may give it a go on one in work :D

I'll benchmark with 4.8 and then again with 4.9, shall report back with any revelations.

Cheers :t

[ooops]

Originally posted by beast16t
Was kinda wondering about the same thing Ooops so you didn't really hijack.




WHEW !!!!!

I didn't want Bigjakkstaffa to yell at me......... I'd start crying .......it would be an awful sight.
:D

[zybch]

I used the beta 4.9 and now the official ones, not stability/quality issues at all, not a huge jump in doom3, a few FPS that aren't really noticeable unless you do a benchmark.
I have an MSI 9088XXL (recognised as an XT) and have only good things to say about it.

My brother and one of his friends have the same card. My bro's card works perfectly but his friends one doesn't. Perhaps its because he has a dodgy system, unbranded RAM, stock Prescott cooler, ecs mainboard.

Perhaps those who have had trouble have similar systems that are the cause of the problems rather than the video card or its drivers.

[RamonGTP]

The 4.9s are the best catalyst to date IMO. I did have some issues with the beta ones. Neither farcry or Halo would work properly with them. However these official 4.9's didn't have this issue on my machine. I got a nice performance boost too. I personally always uninstall my drivers before installing the new ones. I didn't use to until I started noticing everytime I upgraded, my benchmark scores would drop by like 100 points while other people were reporting gains. I eventually did a complete unisntall of the drivers, when I reinstalled I also saw the gains everyone else was reporting.

[beast16t]

Back fom a week hols without any PC or email! And no withdrawal symptoms either
:r
Will uninstall my driver then put them back on as didn't see any performance gains on the 4.9 over 4.8 either. Not done a proper bench yet, only used the one in UT2003.