Driver Hell

[closed_deal]

Since updating to the latest Catalyst drivers 7.11, I've not been able to play any game for more than 30 mins even with PC at stock settings. If i roll back to 7.10 or before, the textures just go wierd (ie. flashes of land mass appear) and the games become un-playable. I've disabled Crossfire and swapped the cards over but still the same. I'm not sure if many people have had this problem but it has now left my PC usage to web surfing/benching & norp until newer drivers are released WTF !!!

I've tried underclocking, reinstall's and temps are miles away from max by about 10-20C. I have a beefy PSU so that isn't it. Maybe it's just an odd setting that CCC doesn't like however, it's now all default. If there is a tempory fix for this it would be great? Specs in sig powered by Hiper 880W and botched together with MSI K9A Platinum.

This is a bit of a rant but ATM it leaves this un-biased AMD/ATI fanboy massively disappointed!

P.S. As for benching with Crysis specs etc... Crossfire doesn't make a difference if it's engaged or not. With 3DMark06 Crossfire works fine .

 

[Onus]

Who makes those 3870s? Mine is from Diamond. They aren't even listed as a partner on AMD's site, and I found it impossible to sign up for support (or further downloads) on Diamond's site. I had to use RivaTuner to get my fan speed to ramp up or down depending on core temp.

 

[closed_deal]

Mine are Sapphire. All the help i get from them is completely remove driver and reinstall which everyone does anyway so that didn't help. As for Temps etc... I can use Rivatuner to change the fan speed however i have to disable Crossfire, reopen RivaTuner so it then see's both cards set the fan speeds close RivaTuner then re-engage Crossfire.

But that isn't a problem as it's around 5C outside tonight and system temp is 15C, GFX atm load at 57C. Yes i'm wearing a sleeping bag converted into a jumper and trousers it's that cold . I can also use oZone3D GFX stress prog and that works fine as does rthdrible opened 4 times with 16x AA on.

 

[Onus]

If you've heard the expression "half-assed" for a slacker job, you'll appreciate my use of the term "quarter-tail" for the "support" I got from Diamond earlier today. I still cannot register on their site. Here's the (annotated) brief transcript from earlier today:
> SYSTEM: You are now chatting with 'tech03'.
> Joe: Hello.
> Joe: Hello?
> Joe: "Tech03," are you there? (10 minutes since connection indicated)
> tech03: hello, the registering part of the site is being worked on. but as long as you have your receipt your warrenty is good
> Joe: Ok.
> Joe: I have a Radeon HD3870 and I cannot control its fan.
> Joe: The Diamond Tools won't install, saying I don't have a Diamond product installed.
> Joe: I bought the product at Newegg on 11/20/2007. ATI has no updated drivers for the card either.
> Joe: And, since I cannot register on your site, I am unable to download drivers there either. Do you have a fix for these issues?
> Joe: Hello?
> Joe: Hello?
> Joe: Disconnecting; posting useless transcript on tech forum(s). (another 10 minutes)
========================
I think the guy must have been using an English to Id10T dictionary to translate.
Anyway, I'm using Rivatuner 2.06, with only partial results. Even with multiple fan profiles set up, it generally won't ramp between them properly at various threshholds. I can generally only get a couple of settings to stick. I think it might be a driver issue, but ATI doesn't have drivers for this specific card (DiamondMM Radeon HD3870), and I can't get registered on Diamond's site in order to get to any downloads.
If my wife had not already discarded the box, I'd probably RMA the card.

 

[closed_deal]

Yeah i've been having the same problem i get 20, 66 or 100%. As for actually clocking the two i can run a 3DMark06 bench fine but if i try games it just crashes with a 'windows has restored display driver settings'. Thats even with fans at 100%. Max gaming stable i've had is 800/2402.

Lol at the english to Id10T - i never fell for that in training. Hopefully 7.12 will sort things out but i seem to be ok with the 7.11 hotfix atm .

 

[hok]

Crossfire doesn;t work in ANY game I am playing. ORANGE BOX, Crysis, Bioshock, DiRT, so this is such a useless setup. ATI better fix all my issues in 7.12.

But anyway. I had the same issues as you. and what I did was fresh install of windows.... I didn't want to do it all the driver cleaning again so i just put 7.10 on a fresh install and it has worked some. but not crossfire. I hate ATI so much right now.

 

[closed_deal]

Just did i little check to see how often ATI create new drivers. Seems it's every month between around the same week 15-20, so hopefully only a couple more days left till we should Crush Crysis with Crossfire. .

I've found HL2, Bioshock, DiRT and every other game other than Crysis gets slaughtered by even a single 3870. So i'm disapointed with ATI for not getting the drivers right with the release of their new gfx, but i have no complaints at all with the image quality of any game yet.

Great cards poor drivers.

 

[Phin]

Great cards, poor drivers? So true..so true.lol.but.. I CAN say that my HD2900XT has improved tremendously since i got it back in May. Good thing is, the architecture for the 3800 series and the HD2900XT are virtually the same. So,as better drivers are released for the 3800's the HD2900XT will greatly benefit also.And this gives me breathing room to wait for the r700 series. *crosses fingers*

 

[Phin]

oopps.r700? hehe.meant r800, if there ever is one.lol

 

[systemlord]

I love NVidia so much after hearing posts like this one, it does make me feel bad for you guys though because I know what its like to have your hardware not perform the way it was meant to. I wish you all the luck.

 

[closed_deal]

There is a comfort in knowing that every ATI driver released is better and does enhance performance quite a bit (except 7.11 for the RV670 ). I did have a x1900xtx crossfire setup till one card *ahem* broke (5-6 months back), and everytime a new driver came out i would see a noticable 3-5 fps increase in the single xtx's performance (not Crysis it's a monster and scares liitle ones).

The 3850/3870 are still ATI's new toys for us atm , they will look at our feedback and fix it normally within the next driver release. I will stop i know i'm slightly bias'ed but i am well aware in single card setup high end nvidia cards whup ass.

 

[aevm]

If it makes you guys feel better, nVidia's drivers stink too...

 

[Onus]

Yeah, Systemlord, and this was my first ATI card after a string of nVidias. It's almost enough to make me into a nVidia fanboi. We'll see what happens.

 

[hairycat101]

I was doing a fresh build for my dad here a few weeks back. I put in the 7.11 and I was having an odd issue with Halo (yes, I know its not a recent game, but he loves the on line player). Halo kept saying that there was a debugger and it would not load. I tried everything and finally figured out that Halo didn't like the 7.11. I found 7.10 on an old drive. That was lucky I didn't delete it. I put it on and it worked fine. 7.11 is Jacked.

 

[50bmg]

I installed 7.11 and lost 20FPS in COD4 and BF2142. I rolled back to 7.10 and all is good.

I used ATI solely until my x700 pro finally burned up dec of 06 after three years. Then i went with a nvidia 7600GT 256M DDR3. It was a ok card. The nvidia drivers were fool proof. ATI drivers are touchy, IMHO. But i prefer the image quality. I know nvidia is slightly faster, but i love my 3870. Now that i have my 3d settings the way i like them, it runs and looks great, runs cool 50c idle 75c at load.

I am not OCing. I had some crashes at any clock over 800/2400. So, i decided to wait until the next drivers come out. If the fan control doesnt get better, i want to install a duorb. I am not going to OC with the current fan and fan controls.

 

[hairycat101]

I installed 7.11 and lost 20FPS in COD4 and BF2142. I rolled back to 7.10 and all is good.

I used ATI solely until my x700 pro finally burned up dec of 06 after three years. Then i went with a nvidia 7600GT 256M DDR3. It was a ok card. The nvidia drivers were fool proof. ATI drivers are touchy, IMHO. But i prefer the image quality. I know nvidia is slightly faster, but i love my 3870. Now that i have my 3d settings the way i like them, it runs and looks great, runs cool 50c idle 75c at load.

I am not OCing. I had some crashes at any clock over 800/2400. So, i decided to wait until the next drivers come out. If the fan control doesnt get better, i want to install a duorb. I am not going to OC with the current fan and fan controls.

I too have noticed that the image quality is better on the ATI cards. I did hear that one of the benifits to DX10 is that it is more unified and it has reduced the difference in image quality. Meaning that there is no decernable difference in image quality between Nvidia and ATI. Anyone have any experience on this either way?

 

[closed_deal]

There are pictures knocking around this forum with DX10 comparision of Crysis with both ATI and nVidia cards. I believe ATI still has the lead in pure image quality. It's not so bad as going from your PC to a PS3 where the PS3 has loads of jaggy's, but it is fairly noticable.

People say if your looking for jaggies you aren't playing, but really games such as Crysis are about the pure greatness in the 3D image. Yes it's fun and ingenious in places, really i doubt people would talk about it half as much if it looked like Dungeon Keeper for example. (yes i was one of the ppl who loved slapping the chickens)

 

[50bmg]

They both have great graphics. Benchmarks say nvidia is fasters. Some say ATI has better image quality. When your topped out at 75FPS with verticle sync because your LCD has 75hz refresh, i doubt anyone can tell the difference. Unless you have a real good CRT with 120hz refresh and you can hit that. Even then anything over 60FPS is very hard to distinguish.

 

[physx7]

Wait a min. How did anyone know he has 3870's and not 3850's? does it make a difference?

 

[Onus]

Well, I asked him about 3870s in my first post, and he didn't correct me, saying he had 3850s. We ran from there.

 

[hok]

Well I went back to 7.10 and Crossfire works in most of the games I play except Crysis. (Bioshock, Dirt, all orange box) but in Dirt it decreases my fps by over 30%-40%. and in the other ones the fps are maybe 15% over. So i just wasted my money on a second card. I knew should have waited but had hardware issues that made me have to change my gfx card.
Since 7.12 is out i'm about to get that. But I will most likely ghost my C drive just to make sure I get a fresh 7.10 machine when 7.12 doesn't work (I'm assuming)
yup i'm bitter. I just paid twice for triple the problems.

 

[closed_deal]

As for not knowing which GFX i'm running i assume my Sig isn't working, so yeah i have two Sapphire 3870' in CF. I'm on my other machine now so i can't test the new 7.12 drivers .

I think Bioshock for me worked fine with CF the same with DiRT and HL2. Just Crysis so far that doesn't work with it. Have you tried Call of Duty 4 to check if CF works ok. It has Duel Cards or summit of the like in the GFX options and with FRAPS open you can see instantly if it makes a difference.