Catalyst drivers are "FAIL"? Please elaborate!

[KainXS]

I say catalyst sucks in some posts because with my mobility 5650 aa is broken in window mode for every game and in fullscreen for some games, erased everything and rebooted same problem

not saying I hate amd for it but its something I expected to be fixed by now.

now nvidia's cp is also buggy to me also, but i lean towards amd

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Works perfectly fine for me. It takes a little time to setup the profiles, but they've been working for quite some time. I can't remember when it didn't work to be honest.

Alright I'm getting confused. What do you mean with the phrasing "work"? I thought he was saying the feature didn't even exist. I thought it was addressed ages ago cause someone said it was in another one of these threads. Are people confusing per game settings for crossfire profiles? If not how do you access per game settings cause I look but I never see a page for it.

 

[cadaveca]

Not mine, not of many others. Perhaps you feel it is of all users as the only threads you are searching for are those pertaining to your particular problem.

That being said, out of hundreds of thousands of cards sold, .1% have issues.

It's more than possible I've had bad luck; I've had to RMA many cards. However, each and every user HERE has cursor corruption, 5-series and 6-series alike. In fact, it's a large enough issue, that it's mentioned in the release notes, so clearly I am not the only user affected by this problem. It's also been there for a few months now.

Mouse cursor may intermittently be corrupt/missing in one of the displays under Eyefinity configuration while playing games/samples

-10.10 release notes.

Do you have all matching monitors?

Yes. I actually requested the manufacturer validate Eyefinity operation after they replaced 3x$2000 monitors, and they said they were not able to validate any of thier products except one, contrary to AMD's postings of supported monitors for Eyefintiy. That situation may have changed though, as that was back in May.

I tried to help in another thread, but you ended it by acting stuck up, and saying that ALL users had the issue.

You cannot help me. Rest assured I undertook proper steps in identifying the issue, replacing parts, and isolating the problem. I know what causes it on my rig.

However. A google search for eyefinity review shows alot of results and out of the top few, none had issues with cursors, adding cursor to the search reveals most users having problems have overcome it by now (as of 10.3) and some overcoming it by enabling cursor trails.

Forcing users into a certain configuration, without declaring that config is neccesary as system requirements, is fail. It's also kinda illegal.

It seems that the 3D effects applied to the desktop have a large role, but in some as you mentioned the timing issues of the monitors and the calculations of the refresh rate have issues on others.

It has NOTHING to do with 3D effects(at least for me). In fact, for alot of users, disabling hardware pointer acceleration will fix the issue completely. But that is not an acceptable solution to me.

But, talking about refreshrates and timings is headed along the proper direction as to the actual cause of the cursor corruption.

Anyway, before you start spouting figures as to how many users have issues, you best have a source, or you best crawl back under your bridge. I'll gladly agree, I'm at the high-end of the userbase, for sure.

 

[gunsmoke]

I made the move from a NVIDIA 8500gt two a ati hd-3870 in my rig last mouth
And when i first seen the new ati Drivers i throught what the hells this crap
it looks like some school kids programed the ati drivers for some school progekt

 

[qubit]

ATI drivers are not crap and haven't been since at least 2003, when I started buying high end graphics cards, which at the time where all ATI. They do the job, but could do with some significant improvements.

Overall, I do prefer nvidia at the moment though. The driver control panel interface is much better and has more 3D options. I particularly dislike the ATI driver in the way it forces you to keep clicking at the top left all the time to select a different menu option. They had it right previously, with the standard hierarchy down the left side. Why f* it up?

Another thing I don't like, is that you can't turn off AA & AF. You can either set them to a minimum of 2x or application controlled and has always been this way. nvidia allows you to turn them off completely. This is so basic, I don't understand why they block this out by design in Catalyst.

These issues bug me so much, that I buy nvidia to avoid these problems alone, let alone the performance merits of either brand.

And now the following I am speaking from observations from about 18 months ago, so AMD may have improved in this time, hopefully:

I had a HD 4870 512MB from new, which I was happy with and worked quite nicely. Saw a few glitches in games like you do and is kind of inevitable with PCs, such as animation hitches and big frame rate drops sometimes, and general oddities.

Then a few months later I bought a used 8800 GTX for cheap to play with, because they're such legendary cards and I wanted to try one out. Now, if you compare benchmark reviews, the 4870 beats it by a fair margin.

However, on installing it and loading the latest driver at the time, I was really surprised how well my games played. The frame rates weren't much lower at all than my 4870 and in one or two cases somewhat higher. The animation was also smoother, with less hitches and things overall just worked a little better. And the much superior driver interface, of course. I was amazed and very surprised by all this.

My 4870 soon went on eBay and I got a Zotac GTX 285, which I have to this day and is serving me very well. It's fast and quiet and quietness is a very important quality in a card, for me: I'll reject it totally if it's got an annoying whine or is generally loud. The inconvenience and expense of an aftermarket cooler to fix this shouldn't be a requirement nowadays . This is why my next card upgrade is going to be the GTX 580, even if the new gen AMDs bench higher. The GTX 580 on TPU's review the other day impressed me a lot.

To be fair nvidia isn't without its faults. Why don't the custom display modes work properly, for example? They've been broken for years. There are a couple of other issues, but I can't remember what they are now.

 

[Delta6326]

i haven't had any issues from any cat. i use crossfire sense the 4850 came out i really think most of the time people cause the problem from not keeping other drivers up to date or its the program. but who know maybe im the only one that doesn't see anything wrong.

 

[qubit]

i haven't had any issues from any cat. i use crossfire sense the 4850 came out i really think most of the time people cause the problem from not keeping other drivers up to date or its the program. but who know maybe im the only one that doesn't see anything wrong.

Any chance of you borrowing an nvidia card of similar power to your ATI and comparing? I'm curious if you'll see the sorts of differences I did.

 

[Delta6326]

Any chance of you borrowing an nvidia card of similar power to your ATI and comparing? I'm curious if you'll see the sorts of differences I did.

nah maybe when i go to upgrade again i can look in to some new GTX 5**

 

[Mussels]

Another thing I don't like, is that you can't turn off AA & AF. You can either set them to a minimum of 2x or application controlled and has always been this way. nvidia allows you to turn them off completely. This is so basic, I don't understand why they block this out by design in Catalyst.

These issues bug me so much, that I buy nvidia to avoid these problems alone, let alone the performance merits of either brand.

yes you can...

bam, AA is off?

 

[cadaveca]

But you cannot FORCE it off..some apps, like Metro 2033, use AA all the time. MIght be nice to disable.

But yeah, I here ya, Mussels.

 

[qubit]

yes you can...


http://img.techpowerup.org/101111/Capture103.jpg


bam, AA is off?

That's exactly what I'm saying, M. You then have to go fiddling around in the game to turn it off which is inconvenient and irritating. And if the game has a bug in it that keeps it on... nvidia allows you to just "force it off" regardless, as cadaveca put it. AF has the same limitation on Catalyst.

 

[wolf]

It seems to me that they've gotten into a "release first, fix later" habit which has degraded their reputation. Other than that they're actually pretty decent.

+1, that's how I felt when I got a 5870 a week after launch, issues out of the wazoo, and fixes came over the coming months.

Personally however I think AMD drivers are just about as good as Nvidia's on the whole, they have a committed driver team that regularly releases new versions, and they almost always have juicy in-game impovements.

my only real beef is in the GUI, basically CCC. Nvidia have had per application (read:game) settings for years now, and I want AMD to do the same.

I know I can create driver profiles and hotkey them. I don't want to. I want AMD to have a section in CCC where you choose your .exe and apply whatever IQ settings and tweaks you want to each one individually. no hotkeys, no 3rd party apps, put it in CCC.

 

[Steevo]

It's more than possible I've had bad luck; I've had to RMA many cards. However, each and every user HERE has cursor corruption, 5-series and 6-series alike. In fact, it's a large enough issue, that it's mentioned in the release notes, so clearly I am not the only user affected by this problem. It's also been there for a few months now.



-10.10 release notes.



Yes. I actually requested the manufacturer validate Eyefinity operation after they replaced 3x$2000 monitors, and they said they were not able to validate any of thier products except one, contrary to AMD's postings of supported monitors for Eyefintiy. That situation may have changed though, as that was back in May.




You cannot help me. Rest assured I undertook proper steps in identifying the issue, replacing parts, and isolating the problem. I know what causes it on my rig.



Forcing users into a certain configuration, without declaring that config is neccesary as system requirements, is fail. It's also kinda illegal.


It has NOTHING to do with 3D effects(at least for me). In fact, for alot of users, disabling hardware pointer acceleration will fix the issue completely. But that is not an acceptable solution to me.

But, talking about refreshrates and timings is headed along the proper direction as to the actual cause of the cursor corruption.

Anyway, before you start spouting figures as to how many users have issues, you best have a source, or you best crawl back under your bridge. I'll gladly agree, I'm at the high-end of the userbase, for sure.

Thanks for putting me in my place and letting me know what I am and am not capable of. I have always had that problem in life.

buh bye.

 

[erocker]

I know I can create driver profiles and hotkey them. I don't want to. I want AMD to have a section in CCC where you choose your .exe and apply whatever IQ settings and tweaks you want to each one individually. no hotkeys, no 3rd party apps, put it in CCC.

You can. You need to make a profile for whatever game. Click the "applications" tab and point the profile to the application.

 

[cadaveca]

Thanks for putting me in my place and letting me know what I am and am not capable of. I have always had that problem in life.

buh bye.

I'm sry if that hurt your feelings, dude. Let's kiss and make up.



I'm hurt and offended you think I am not capable, and you are. Very humble. So we're even. And I'm not just saying that...let's put the personal feelings behind us, m'kay?

I'm all ears, please tell me how to get Eyefinity working, becuase you know my problem, and the fix. I'll gladly try anything that I haven't over the past 14 months.

 

[phobias23]

On my personal experience, I could say this:
my latest cards...

- HD4870X2 ( CC Drivers good job!)
- HD5870 ( CC Drivers SUCKS!!!)
- GTX 460 sli ( Nv Drivers 258.96 works fine, I havent test the 260...)

What I see is that AMD did a great job Hardware/drivers on the Hd4000 series till now,
I loved my HD 5870 as a card but I got many times crazy with the new CC drivers. Stopped using CC upgrades since CC 10.4, the more I read the more i piss off on AMD drivers.

It seems that they did a good job with the HD6000, I hope they keep doing it.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

I'm sry if that hurt your feelings, dude. Let's kiss and make up.



I'm hurt and offended you think I am not capable, and you are. Very humble. So we're even. And I'm not just saying that...let's put the personal feelings behind us, m'kay?

I'm all ears, please tell me how to get Eyefinity working, becuase you know my problem, and the fix. I'll gladly try anything that I haven't over the past 14 months.

With all due respect, while not quite irrelevant you guys have your Eyefinity thread(s) and I'd prefer if you kept this there, especially if it's getting all personal and what not.

You can. You need to make a profile for whatever game. Click the "applications" tab and point the profile to the application.

We need more discussion/clarification on this actually. To be honest I havent played with it enough myself, mainly out of lazyness. Erocker is right that you can choose an .exe now but I don't think it's "fully featured" in some way hence the need for a util like Radeon Pro.

My 5850 back in my rig guess I'll do that already...

 

[wolf]

You can. You need to make a profile for whatever game. Click the "applications" tab and point the profile to the application.

thanks! however this is a bit harder than I thought it would be, it's been a while since my last Nvidia card but I remember the process being a lot more user friendly. open the 3d settings page from the main screen, and you chose your game there and then, most of them being auto detected, change a setting or two then save. this profiles thing still bugs me a little.

nevertheless thankyou, I stand corrected good sir.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

^ Ok but again while this feature is newer to Catalyst, Radeon Pro is newer too so what does it do that CCC can't? Maybe I should ask the author in the thread at XS though don't think active anymore.

 

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

I'd post my Eyefinity fix diagram but i dont think dave want's to see it again.

I'd generally say ATI drivers are littered with fail. I've only ever owned ATI GPUs and it feels like the more you spend on ATI GPUs the more problems you will have with "supported" features. High end multicard setups are all but prone to failure and spending more time troubleshooting than gaming.

 

[erocker]

^ Ok but again while this feature is newer to Catalyst, Radeon Pro is newer too so what does it do that CCC can't? Maybe I should ask the author in the thread at XS though don't think active anymore.

It's not new. It's been there as long as I can remember.. Back to the x19xx series anyways.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Really? Huh. What the hell?

Anyway another thing I definitely like on the nv drivers are the specific options to either override or "enhance" the app's AA and AF settings in addition to also being able to force off as mentioned previously. On most games I have a feeling not checking App Controlled in Cat and choosing desired AA settings and mode has same effect as "enhance" for games that have their own AA options but it's nice to see it spelled out like it is in the Forcewares.

Bottom line is Cat still needs more options than it has now. Gotten better but still plenty of room for improvement.

 

[cadaveca]

With all due respect, while not quite irrelevant you guys have your Eyefinity thread(s) and I'd prefer if you kept this there, especially if it's getting all personal and what not.

No porblem.

I just kinda wanted to highlight how you should be able to simply install driver, configure Eyefinity panel setup in the driver, and then be done. The rest of it should be invisible to the end user, and done automatically by driver. But that is not the case.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

^ Pertinent. Thanks.

 

[cadaveca]

^ Pertinent. Thanks.

Very. It's the only issue I have with ATI's drivers at this point. Everything else works great.

It sucks that they take long sometimes to add game profiles for Crossfire...F1 just got an update, but has been out for a while. Like triptex mentioned, the high-end configs get the bad end of the stick.