ZylonBane on 17/9/2006 at 20:10
No, this isn't me asking how to enable fog!
In the name of pretty clouds, visible stars, and proper transparencies, I've finally jumped ship from nVidia to ATI with a shiny new Radeon X1300 Pro (yeah yeah, it's a low-end model). But being a newbie to ATI cards, I have a few questions...
Adjusting the gamma in Thief is really slow and jerky, whether I do it in-game or through the interface. Is this normal?
The Catalyst Control Center appears to be hideous slow-loading bloatware. Do I have to use this piece of crap, or is something leaner available?
A few seconds after exiting a 3D application, the screen will flash some random garbage for a moment. Normal?
This is all running on a Window 2000 system, with whatever drivers came with the card. 6.14, I think.
Biohazard on 18/9/2006 at 05:24
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
No, this isn't me asking how to enable fog!
In the name of pretty clouds, visible stars, and proper transparencies, I've finally jumped ship from nVidia to ATI with a shiny new Radeon X1300 Pro (yeah yeah, it's a low-end model). But being a newbie to ATI cards, I have a few questions...
Adjusting the gamma in Thief is really slow and jerky, whether I do it in-game or through the interface. Is this normal?
The Catalyst Control Center appears to be hideous slow-loading bloatware. Do I have to use this piece of crap, or is something leaner available?
A few seconds after exiting a 3D application, the screen will flash some random garbage for a moment. Normal?
This is all running on a Window 2000 system, with whatever drivers came with the card. 6.14, I think.
After using NVidia for the longest time I made the switch to ATI in preparation for Thief 3. My reasoning for changing from long time Nvidia fan to ATI? It was cheaper and a better product at the time. I actually liked ATI better for most applications except the original Thiefs. My ATI burned out and for some unknown reason ATI said it was covered in my 3 year warranty so I swear to never buy an ATI or recommend anyone else to buy it again. Anyways...
Things are going to be a bit choppier running the Thief games on an ATI when adjusting graphics, but it shouldn't be anything drastic...
Uninstall the Catalyst Control Center. Its a worthless piece of crap that just rearranges many settings that can be accessed via the windows video settings. I never used it.
ATI's do tend to have flashes after exiting 3D applications if I remember correctly. I guess I was so used to it flashing that it doesn't even bother me.
I would recommend updating your video drivers. The ATI site has the newest drivers out, but be sure to download the drivers only without the catalyst control center! Not only is a much smaller download, but it won't keep installing a resource hog into your startup.
Gestalt on 18/9/2006 at 06:46
Definitely update the drivers, yes. Just grab the Display Driver Only package from the Low-Speed/Dial Up section of ATI's driver download thing under the Support section of their website, and you should be good to go. There's also some helpful tweaks (
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_7.html) here if you just want to make the Control Center less of a system hog. Even if you stick with the Catalyst Control Center, you'd be better off downloading things individually from the Dial Up section. I've had some trouble with the full package automatically trying to install the WDM drivers in the past, despite the fact that they cause my computer to crash constantly. My card is an old Radeon 9600 manufactured by Sapphire though, so this probably won't happen to you.
I've heard good things about the (
http://www.omegadrivers.net/) Omega Drivers, but never tried them. It's another alternative to the CCC, anyway.
Could you describe the random garbage you're getting? I generally just get black screens.
You're better off creating a (
http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/) Radlinker shortcut to Darkloader than the individual game executables, by the way. In addition to fixing the fog settings for T2, you can also use it to apply your custom AA and AF settings to everything Darkloader handles. That's the way I remember it working, anyway; it's been a while since I last tested this.
jermi on 18/9/2006 at 16:46
And RadLinker isn't necessary either, since ATI Tray Tools can control the fog settings also (under tweaks / advanced tweaks / advanced d3d tweaks). I'm using Catalyst (drivers only) and ATI Tray Tools and the combination does everything I need ... except the clone mode on secondary display doesn't work exactly as I'd prefer.
I haven't had any problems with the gamma control, either. Smooth as a baby's butt.
Gestalt on 18/9/2006 at 20:01
Does ATI Tray Tools support per-application settings? That's the main reason I'm using RadLinker right now.
S_Hole on 18/9/2006 at 20:44
yes, it has application specific profiles
and it's a fairly all around good application these days
radlinker was always rather unreliable, though it was a brilliant app in it's time
ATT is a very good replacement and merger of nearly all needs of ati fiddling
latest version added nvidia support aswell i think
don't know how realiable that would be, but the ati side still works as ever
apparently nobody have a link, so here;
(
http://www.guru3d.com/article/atitraytools/189/)
