ATI Drivers vs Microsoft

[LoneEagle]

Anyone installed drivers from ATI?

Better? More stable?
How about gaming?

Or should I stick with the one with Vista and wait?

Thanks

 

[pkellmey]

The ones from MS cause no issue and work straight from the installation, but I upgraded to the ones from ATI just because they are later and I have had no problems.

If you use an HDTV Wonder card, Vista won't recognize it - and I don't believe it is on their hardware compatability list either. However, there are several websites which say you can use the XP drivers and they will work. I still have to try it out.

 

[LoneEagle]

Thanks for your answer in less than a minute!

If you can, keep me informed on problems discovered and gaming experience with this thread.

Notice a difference?

Again, thanks.

 

[Zoron]

Microsoft drivers don't have OpenGL support, ATi drivers do... something else to consider.

 

[darious00777]

I couldn't tell you how it's like going from XP to Vista, but there has been one problem with my ATI card. When I first installed it my main monitor didn't want to work. Kept flashing "Out of range" a lot, then disappearing before I could get a good read on the numbers. I used another monitor that almost never works, booted, downloaded the drivers off the Internet (the CD was useless), and it's been working fine since then.

 

[danny9894]

Microsoft drivers don't have OpenGL support, ATi drivers do... something else to consider.

Yea I don't think OpenGL is intergrated into Windows Vista like it was in Windows XP. I think support for it has to be provided by the drivers.

 

[mad_murdock]

There is zero reason to stick with the drivers from Microsoft. They are provided simply as a means to get youup and running and to have Areo work.

If you're gaming, then you must run the drivers from ATI (or nVidia) for that matter. As there are optimizations and other tweaks in the full drivers over the WDDm drivers. It makes no sense to stick with the default drivers

An example, is my 3Dmark06 score was 4800 with the MS drivers and 5989 with the ATI 7.1 drivers. I'm running the 7.1 with an X1900XTX and though performance is slower (whihc is expected) only the game FEAR so far seems to have some issues. Every so often, when exiting the game I'll get an all brown screen and Vista is hung. I've gotten a few tray icons telling me my ATI card as recover from an error. This is only under FEAR.
I've played with Doom3, HL2 and play alot of Battlefield2142 with no problems. I'm sure the next couple of driver releases will only make things better.

Yea I don't think OpenGL is intergrated into Windows Vista like it was in Windows XP. I think support for it has to be provided by the drivers.

Well that true to a degree, but load base Windows XP and it will load drivers for you, but they are not the full feature set of the card. Check out this old article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/283751

excerpt
The Windows 98 drivers are upgraded automatically to Windows XP video drivers, and the Windows XP video drivers do not have OpenGL support.
To resolve this issue, contact your video hardware manufacturer for drivers that are compatible with Windows XP and that provide OpenGL support.