Tag Archives: ati

HP Running the ATi QA Show?

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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ATi's RubyFrom the day I built my PC a few years ago until just last week, it’s been impossible for me to play a game (pretty much *any* full-screen DirectX/OpenGL game) without the ATi drivers crashing. (For reference, stock ATi HD3870 on an ASUS RoG Maximus Formula II motherboard). I’ve tracked down each and every possible lead, and solved a number of crash-inducing issues in the process, but haven’t been able to completely prevent the display driver crashes from the days Vista or now on Windows 7.

There were issues pertaining to dual-displays in a mixed VGA/DVI environment (one display DVI, the second VGA) which were never resolved by ATi (to the best of my knowledge) and were worked around by initially downgrading the DVI to a VGA connection and later replacing the older monitor with a new DVI-based display. There were issues related to the refresh rate. There were issues related to the resolution. There were issues related to the games. There were issues related to the OS. Basically, wherever you look, there were problems caused by poor development practices and crappy QA all around.

There were issues that Microsoft/Windows’ new WDM model caught, triggering a restart of the graphics subsystem without causing a BSoD. And there were (unfortunately the majority) of the ATi display driver crashes that caused BSoDs left, right, and center.

Today, my Windows 7 PC surprised me with an interesting question:

Send info to HP?

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ATi Catalyst 8.5 Drivers Out

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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ATi has just released the Catalyst 8.5 drivers for Windows XP and Vista, you can download a copy here (hotlinking to the actual driver page is disabled).

The entire 8.x line has been of sub-par quality to date (8.3 and 8.4 in particular, which seem to crash randomly on a large percentage of Vista machines), hopefully the 8.5 release can provide a much-needed boost in terms of quality and stability.

It’s obviously too early to tell if the 8.5 releases addresses these issues, which are not listed in the release notes, but it’s possible that some of the causes of the problem have been resolved as a result of one or more of the bugfixes in this version.

Vista SP1 (Beta) and ATi Drivers: Not a Great Mix

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Continuing our line of Vista SP1 stories, we’ve been testing the leaked version of Windows Vista SP1 and have some interesting results with regards to the WDDM layer.

Since Vista RTM, one of the biggest sources of consternation and BSODs on Windows has been the graphics drivers. From ATi to nVidia, hardware manufacturers were very late in the game, not producing final drivers until January and February (3-4 months after the official release); and even then, their quality was definitely sub-par with what we’d come to expect with Windows Vista.

Perhaps we’re being unduly harsh here – after all, Windows NT driver developers had had over a decade of testing and real-world experience with the NT graphics driver subsystem, and here they were, required to learn anew everything from writing the drivers to getting them to work with Vista’s new (and stringent) driver protocols and more. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that driver-development teams at both nVidia and ATi just weren’t up to scratch.

Since then, bug reports have diminished as the list of issues and incompatibilities slowly were slowly vanquished, one by one – with nVidia undeniably in the lead. nVidia’s lead in driver reliability has grown even further with SP1: the same ATi drivers that were working just fine under RTM with the same hardware (and running the same games) are now BSODing under Windows Vista SP1.

Obviously no one is to blame here – not yet, anyway. Windows Vista SP1 isn’t even in beta yet (though it certainly isn’t alpha!), and ATi’s drivers weren’t intended for use with anything other than Vista RTM and its immediate updates. It’s quite simple, actually: if you’re a gamer using ATi and interested in checking out SP1, think twice before you act. And remember, forewarned is forearmed.

AMD-ATi Releases Final Vista Drivers!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Just minutes before Vista goes on sale to the general public all around the world, ATi [[AMD]] has officially released the final versions of its drivers for Windows Vista. They’re out for Windows Vista x86 and x64, and they’re slightly smaller than the beta drivers in download size, though still downright huge (for drivers that is, but still nothing next to the X-Fi drivers) at 40MB.

Our original rant, posted just days ago, was all about just how irresponsible and ridiculous ATi/AMD’s much-delayed drivers for Windows Vista are, so we’re especially happy someone’s done something about it. It may be too late for AMD/ATi to make good with the techie users who’ve been using Vista without real graphics acceleration for months now, but it may not be too late for the home crowd.

Go and get the drivers, we’re downloading them too. We don’t know if they have OpenGL support or not, but they most certainly better – we’ll let you know when we find out.

Hat-Tip: Wally Ballou

Final ATi Drivers for Windows Vista RTM

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
5

Nope, they’re not here; not yet, anyway. Windows Vista is here, and ATi [[AMD]] still hasn’t released a real set of drivers for Vista users. Currently 3D performance on Windows Vista – if you’re using an ATi card – is close to zero, and ATi doesn’t seem worried in the least. In an email from ATi to a NeoSmart Representative, we were told that the final drivers would be here “before the end of January,” and they would have full OpenGL support – but they’re not here yet, and even if they were, it’s far too late as it is.

nVidia has had its drivers out for quite a while now, and even before that, at least nVidia users did not have to suffer from zero OpenGL support. The rumor was, once AMD bought ATi, their customer support and driver divisions would supposedly improve. Well, that rumor has most certainly been debunked now!

Users of ATi graphics cards have crappy Direct3D video acceleration, and no OpenGL support. The default Microsoft drivers provide worse Direct3D acceleration, but they do at least provide end users with 1MB of memory for OpenGL acceleration… What on earth is ATi thinking!?

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Windows Vista Crashes, BSODs, and System Failures on Hibernate, Resume, and Wake

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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While Windows Vista has a whole host of new features to offer, it has one major problem that just won’t go away: it’s totally FUBAR’d after you resume from sleep or hibernate. Unfortunately, many of these issues weren’t present during the beta stage, and were somehow introduced in the RTM build of Windows Vista. This exclusive NeoSmart Technologies report describes some of the symptoms in detail, and we even provide links to possible fixes by Microsoft. All issues have been duly reported and confirmed by Microsoft, so this isn’t just some figment of our imagination. A number of these patches are scheduled to be included in Windows Vista SP1 (Codename Fiji).

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ATi Drivers for Windows Vista 5365

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
Reply

This is just a quick post to inform everyone in need of ATi Drivers for Microsoft Windows Vista Build 5365 on what to do…
The default drivers work fine if all you want from them is for Aero Glass to work. However, they result in very slow animations, and even simple tasks like scrolling in Internet Explorer hang for a couple of milliseconds at a time. If you follow this link you will get to a page to download the official 5308 drivers, which work perfectly on 5365… Best of luck!