Thursday, November 22nd 2007
AMD/ATI turns back on AGP users
For the past few months some of ATI's older AGP cards like the x800 and other second generation series cards, have been unable to run the latest Direct3D games. Users have noted problems in Hellgate London, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, Need for Speed Pro Street, and Crysis(These problems often consist of not just minor artifacts, but D3D not even working!). These second generation series cards can not even pass Direct x diagnostics with the current drivers. Some say that those users on "old" graphics cards should upgrade and its simply their fault for having outdated technology. This Bias is contrary to what is actually going on, the x800 series cards are perfectly capable of running most of these games at medium to high settings especially Call of Duty 4 and Hellgate London. The Second and Third Generation ATI graphics cards are often referred to as minimum requirements for these new games, and yet they are incredibly unstable right now. And as being listed under AMD/ATI's supported products list, these cards should work with the latest drivers, but they don't. These problems started roughly with the 7.9 Catalyst release (Back on November 10th). Today ATI released its 7.11 Catalyst set of drivers and still has not provided a solution for these second generation AGP cards.
See Read More for solutions:
Their are two methods to get around this problem.
The first and in my opinion best solution is Omega Drivers 7.10 Release. The omega drivers release is fully compatible with AGP.
According to Deluxe TNT over at Guru3d forums this method yields the following results:
Hellgate London: 100%
Call of duty 4: 100%
Gears of War: 100%
NFS pro street: High frame Stutter even with Frame Rates Above 50+ FPS
Crysis: Untested
The Second method is to install 7.7 Catalyst Drivers then copy the ati3duag.dll and ati3d1ag.dll(if u have this) from last working driver (7.8;7.x) in system32 to a temporary location. Next uninstall the 7.7 drivers and do a driver clean with driver cleaner pro. Then install 7.10 Catalyst drivers.Finally replace the 7.10 ati3duag.dll in safemode! with the one you copied to a temporary directory from 7.7 release.
See This solution here
According to Deluxe TNT over at Guru3d forums this method yields the following results:
Hellgate: Working but some low FPS
Call of duty 4: 100% ok
Gears of War: 100% ok
NFS Pro Street: untested.
Crysis: working but with bugs and terrible graphics
The best of luck to you who are toughing it out with x800 cards, hopefully AMD/ATI will help out the old AGP users soon. I hope this helps some of those select users with this major problem. Might I add a Personal Happy Turkey Day to those of you who live in the United States!
Source:
Guru 3d Forums
See Read More for solutions:
Their are two methods to get around this problem.
The first and in my opinion best solution is Omega Drivers 7.10 Release. The omega drivers release is fully compatible with AGP.
According to Deluxe TNT over at Guru3d forums this method yields the following results:
Hellgate London: 100%
Call of duty 4: 100%
Gears of War: 100%
NFS pro street: High frame Stutter even with Frame Rates Above 50+ FPS
Crysis: Untested
The Second method is to install 7.7 Catalyst Drivers then copy the ati3duag.dll and ati3d1ag.dll(if u have this) from last working driver (7.8;7.x) in system32 to a temporary location. Next uninstall the 7.7 drivers and do a driver clean with driver cleaner pro. Then install 7.10 Catalyst drivers.Finally replace the 7.10 ati3duag.dll in safemode! with the one you copied to a temporary directory from 7.7 release.
See This solution here
According to Deluxe TNT over at Guru3d forums this method yields the following results:
Hellgate: Working but some low FPS
Call of duty 4: 100% ok
Gears of War: 100% ok
NFS Pro Street: untested.
Crysis: working but with bugs and terrible graphics
The best of luck to you who are toughing it out with x800 cards, hopefully AMD/ATI will help out the old AGP users soon. I hope this helps some of those select users with this major problem. Might I add a Personal Happy Turkey Day to those of you who live in the United States!
63 Comments on AMD/ATI turns back on AGP users
I think it makes sense to continue support for AGP products, as the lowest common demoninator is still DirectX8 (or is it 9 now?) which these cards are still perform well in, & it'll take a while for game developers to release completely native DX10 based games. Plus, with the arrival of good news, that being ATi releasing the 3850 (and hopefully the 3870) in AGP there is still hope that decent driver support will continue, I just can't see them continuing support for the 'older' GFX cards.
It's simple really for progress to be made to have to let go of legacy hardware/software.
I think what NamesDontMatter is getting at, is the fact that stability and the a-like have since been forgotten for products that are listed in the latest game's minimum requirements/supported video card lists. If they're listed, then don't the graphics companies (in this case, ATi) feel an obligation to create the support for their products that are supposedly able to run these games - albeit not at the games desired maximum, but the cards maximum ability?
On the other-side of the coin, ATi will probably stop optimising the Catalyst drivers for the older cards in favour of their new AGP series. Hoping that you'll purchase one of these instead of upgrading to a whole new set up - at least they're supporting 'us' in that sense.I have an AGP X1950 Pro as you can see from my specs, and I can't use any of the latest drivers (can't comment on the official 7.10's or .11's as I'm currently without ADSL so I'm unable to download them). I think this was more of a programming fault more than the fact they're limiting support. The 7.10 betas worked fine, and I'm looking forward to trying out the 7.11's too!
I wouldn't say AGP is dead either, I haven't read of any card that can fully utilise the available bandwidth through AGP, maybe with the exception of the 8800 Ultra, but even then I haven't read anything to say so.
At the moment it is a benefit to support DX9, soon this is going to become unecessary so you will have to move to new hardware or stop playing newer games totally.
The AMD executive that thought it would "save a few bucks" to kill support for x800, and consequently alienate hundreds of thousands of customers, should be FIRED.
if companys are going release new products then they should support new products,just bought agp 2600 xt,what a nightmare fnding drivers that work 100%,tried 7.8,7.10,7.11 text allways ends up corrupted:mad:...if they cant support,dont release:banghead: