Switching from Nvidia to ATI.

[EvilGrin]

Couple of questions..

1) how do I kill the nvidia drivers off so it won't interfere with the new ati card?

2) Which drivers should I use? ATI's Catalyst or the Omegas? (Can someone do a quick comparison of whats different/better between them?) Are there any other driver sets to consider other than these two?

3) Do I need to rejigger the refresh rate fix? (I'm using WinXP SP1)

[phantom]

1) pass, last time i switched it was a clean reinstall job for safety reasons :)

2) I prefer to stick with ATI's offical drivers myself, 3.9s with teh hotfix are proabably your best bet, generaly the latest are teh best, however i find a quick shifty at the rage3d.com boards helps to find any problems which might appear (once you get passed all the 'user error' problems)

3) I use the rage3d tweaker to jiggle my refresh rates

<rant mode>
as a side note however the refresh rate problem shouldnt effect D3D & OpenGL games which give you an option to set the screen size and refresh rate as a properly programmed application can ask windows what rate to set it at
</rant mode>

[EvilGrin]

My current thinking with the driver removal is to boot up in safe mode and just uninstall the device in device manager.


<rant mode>
as a side note however the refresh rate problem shouldnt effect D3D & OpenGL games which give you an option to set the screen size and refresh rate as a properly programmed application can ask windows what rate to set it at
</rant mode>

I play 'dated' games like Medeval: Total War and a little known game called 'Half Life' which has no knowledge of newer Windows API as they predate XP. (Is it possible to get a 'wrapper' program I wonder?)

[DizMatt]

you can use the detonator destroyer maybe??

or the nasty file remover...
seriously..
try for driver removal on guru3d or something

[phantom]

yeah, thats why it was rant mode new stuff shouldnt really have that problem imo
and 'old games' are why i've jiggled my refresh rate ;)

Its probably a plan to do it via safemode, although it accures to me better instructions might be present in the FAQ for this section ;)

[The Dark One]

set your gfx card to be svga
reboot
just uninstall det's
reboot
make sure you're still in svga mode, if so, install cat's

[phantom]

It might not be as simple as that, as both drivers could leave bits laying around, its often better to get a dedicated remover of some sorts

[GroovYF]

I got a 9700PRO last week. Only issue I had was refresh rate in HL (which was sorted using RefreshLock)

I uninstalled my nVidia drivers via Add/Remove Programs. Deleted the card from Device Manager, removed my ti4400, replaced with 9700pro and rebooted. Installed Omega drivers and am sorted :)

[T-Bag]

Just done this myself today.

1)Look in the sticky, there is a driver cleaner, I used that.

2)dunno, i would like to know too, my fps are worse than on my GF3 in DOD...

3)Yes

[Randell]

hmm

what drivers bageh?

[T-Bag]

3.7 cats.

CS is fine, 100fps even in smoke, yet DOD runs completly shit.

COD also runs worse than on my GF3.

Can't get powerstrip to work either.

Not impressed at all so far...

(16k in 3dmark2001 and 5500 in 03 totally untweaked)

[TheBuZZard]

Im using 3.7 Omega version. The Omegas are generally much faster for actual games than the ATI drivers. I get fantastic performance in every game with my 9700 non pro. Call of Duty runs great no slown even in the most manic of battles.

Id always reccomend a format and re-install of windows to make sure PC is ready for new card, although XP is much better at switching than any previous version of windows.

The Omegas include quite a few useful utilities to fix the refresh rate etc.

PS T-Shirt is a n00b :P

[Randell]

try the 3.9's Bageh.

There is something wrong with your set-up, the 9700Pro should smoke the Gf3, even with 4xAA and 8x or 16xAF.

[TheBuZZard]

A few people have had problems with 3.9 CATs on CoD.

[T-Bag]

Im gonna try various drivers today, but I don't see it as a setup problem or a lack of formatting. Many games run perfect, such as max payne, gta:vc, 3dmark and many more. Its just a few that wont work.

And has anyone got powerstrip working with a radeon properly?? Every time I load an application, like irc, ie, my gamma goes off the scale. I use PS in nearly every game and really need it working as my monitor is quite dark.

[TheBuZZard]

Change your gamma in the control panel, Powerstrip stuff can be done with either the ati utils or with the omega ones Ive found.

[T-Bag]

found something called game gamma but it doesn't do anything.

Changing the desktop brightness works though, but I have to do that every time before I load a game...

The only thing I used powerstrip for IS for gamma.. It saves my gamma settings in each game and returns them to normal when I go back to my desktop. So I load CS and my gamma goes bright, I quit and go back to desktop and gamma returns to normal. It also allows me to change the gamma on the fly in games using ctrl alt numpad plus or minus. I use this in all games I have and need it badly.

[Randell]

are fastwrites disabled and AGP aperture either 64 or 128meg?

Does DOD use the ati-npatches and ati_subdiv options in the config? If so set them to 0.

umm dunno what else really

[megadaisy]

Hi - I just bought a 9800 np and although it was running ok it wasnt really running at full pelt. This was most evident when running the aquamark benchmark. It turned out it was the AGP texture acceleration wasnt enabled because i had "foolishly" installed the drivers in the wrong order (how your supposed to know this I havent a clue) so i had to reinstall my motherbaord drivers (nf2) and then reinstall my vid drivers and presto! all was well. Just an idea.

MegaDaisy

[phantom]

this is probably something which needs addressing better in the docs if it doesnt already exist as to anyone who knows about computers its kinda logical that the chipset drivers should be installed before the video drivers so they know what they can work with, where as to others it wont be..

[megadaisy]

yeah your right it is logical when you think about it :) but you know whats its like.... 4am and youve just spent the best part of the last six hours putting your new system together, fiddling with all those little screws and so on.

You want to see what your new vid card that youve just shelled out far too much money for can do so you bung the latest drivers on and you blearily admire the wonders of 3dmark wizzing along... it was only the next day i realised something wasnt quite right.

Documentation of this sort of thing is a good idea!

MegaDaisy