[AMD Radeon 6870] How do I install old drivers so I can play games that aren't fully compatible with modern hardware?

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Twario

Twario

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I bought Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (PC) from amazon fully aware of the lighting issues the game has on modern hardware. This issue causes most of the dynamic lighting to not be rendered, and most light sources in the game do not cast any shadows, basically ruining the game visually. I was assuming it would be fixable through the ini files, but after hours of tweaking nothing worked. I even tried an old program called 3d analyzer hoping it would be able to emulate an old GPU, but I guess I was mistaken about the program's intended usage since it didn't work. The latest versions can't run the game so I had to use a much older version. Even then, it didn't do anything. It only caused weird graphical effects like making Sam glow, and the game crashed when certain boxes on the 3d analyzer program were ticked.

However, I've read that some Nvidia users were able to fix the problem by installing old drivers. I'm not sure if it'll work with AMD but it's worth a try. So how would I go about doing this? I've tried installing old drivers from 2005 but a box came up saying it couldn't find compatible hardware to install the drivers on. So I'm assuming that I did it wrong. So is doing this even possible? Are there any risks to installing the old drivers? Will they replace the current drivers or will the current drivers remain installed?
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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You can't install an extremely old driver package for your 6870 because any driver package before late 2010 predates the 6870 and won't recognize the card.

One possible solution that might work would be to hunt down some ancient Catalyst Driver package from 2005, and extract the Direct3D driver from it, probably called something like atiumdag.dll, and put that file inside the game's directory. That will hopefully override the regular driver with the older one and might allow you to use the old lighting features, or it may not work at all because the 6870's architecture is too new. No guarantee that it will work, but that might be your best shot short of digging up an ancient GPU just to play that one game.
 
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Twario

Twario

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Well what would the package look like? Is it a setup application or a collection of files? Because there is a lot of files on disc 1 of the game that could be useful, and one of the folders says "ATI Catalyst 4.2". However, inside the folder seems just seems like a setup application, don't know if that's useful or not but it's worth asking. There's also a different folder called "DirectX", again, I doubt any of these files are useful but at this point I'm getting pretty desperate. Is it possible that this disc has any useful files that can help with this issue? There's lots of dll files and such on it.

 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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Normally if you run the setup, it should extract the contents to a temporary folder, possibly under Program Files\ATI Technologies\Catalyst 4.2 or something like that. What you may have to do is run a search for the file name and see if you can find a file called atiumdag.dll or atiumdag.dl_ under a folder labelled as Catalyst 4.2 or having a file modification date going back to 2004. If you have atiumdag.dl_ then the DLL file you need is archived in there, and you will need to extract it using your command prompt. I believe the command you need to use is Expand atiumdag.dl_ atiumdag.dll

This all operates under the assumption that ATI/AMD has not radically altered their setup in the last decade though. I've never used a Catalyst driver from that time period, and they might have done things differently back then.
 
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Twario

Twario

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Well there is "C:\ATI\SUPPORT\wxp-w2k-catalyst-7-981-040127m-013420c"which was created by the old driver setup exe, but it doesn't seem to contain atiumdag.dll. With the installation process I can go in a few steps but when it gets to installing the drivers there's an error message saying the hardware isn't compatible. Do I have to find a way to get it to install the drivers? Or is there a way to get that dll file without doing that?
 
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Twario

Twario

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It created two folders, one called "wxp-w2k-catalyst-7-981-040127m-013420c" and the other called "5-6_xp-2k_dd_cp_wdm_23864"

"wxp-w2k-catalyst-7-981-040127m-013420c" :
2guxx8g.png


"5-6_xp-2k_dd_cp_wdm_23864":
2dw831v.png


They seem to be identical except for the dates on the files, I've used the search feature to look for the atium file but unfortunately it didn't come up.
 
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Twario

Twario

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Sorry for the late reply, I didn't get an email notification for some reason. I do see the data1 and 2 cab files and they look like zip files. However when I double click on them windows says it's in an unknown format or damaged.
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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All I can suggest is to try running the setup under custom settings, and see if there is a prompt to specify where to extract the files, then you can specify where they are. Otherwise, all I can suggest is try googling and see if you can find some source that has an old ATI Direct3D DLL file lying around.
 
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Twario

Twario

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Don't know if anybody is still reading this but I just want to vent some frustration. I've tried looking for atiumdag.dll files from old ATI cards but the more I try to search for it the more pissed off I'm getting. (http://binarydb.com/driver/AMD-Radeon-HD-8500M-Series-v380822/2) This pointless website called binarybd.com is the top item when I search on google for the files, but when I get to the page there's nothing you can use to download it, what's the point of the site then? I think I'm giving up, I'll either just deal with the missing lights or buy the game on PSN instead, I'm tired of jumping through hoops with no results. I'm done.
 
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