non ati ati drivers

**Loopy** · May 22nd, 2005, 10:03 PM

Is it possible to use non-ati manufactured (ati cards sold under a different brand name) drivers on an ati made card?

**Platypus** · May 23rd, 2005, 04:14 AM

It's quite possible that this could be done. Some manufacturers make their cards to the ATI reference design and simply use the reference drivers, rather than modifying them to their own design. However I don't know of any easy way to be sure if a manufacturer has incorporated different features into their own drivers, that may cause problems. This is the only real reason I can think of to do this, to get extra features, and it most probably will not work correctly with another manufacturer's card. What was your purpose in seeking to use alternative drivers?

**TechZ** · May 23rd, 2005, 04:56 AM

Both ATi and nVIDIA driver packs are such that any card based on their vga chips, will run using their drivers. Although as Platypus has pointed out, some manufacturers add extra features that are only accessible using the drivers from them.

**confus-ed** · May 23rd, 2005, 05:15 AM

Hang on .. is this not exactly what 'omega' does ? to make matters faster ?

I dunno if he does that by only doing a core feature set, or if he queries the card for its capabilities or whether he relies on directx or opengl to act as middleware & handle all the "can't do that's" & do software calls.

As for why you'd want to know .. I can only think he's Loopy

**TechZ** · May 23rd, 2005, 09:45 AM

There arent that many "additional" features that cards that arent made by Ati have, they already come with an amazing set of features, that sometimes get a tad too technical for most, but only a few things like specialized Memory/Core speed OC are ever extra and accessible thru manufacturer drivers. IN ATi's case, most brands stick with the exact same reference design board and all.

**Loopy** · May 23rd, 2005, 09:48 AM

Originally Posted by confus-ed

As for why you'd want to know .. I can only think he's Loopy

(Ha

)

How well do the omega drivers work? I never botherd to try them because I use windows 98SE and the omega drivers are based on older ati drivers.

I'm using a radeon 9200 video card I wanted to use alternate drivers to see how well they work and because I've had a history of problems with atis drivers.
Over the past few days I've had to reinstall my video card drivers just because my computer got stuck, and just this morning I had to reinstall the drivers again!
because when windows started all of my video settings were reset (color resoloution, agp was disabled etc)

**TechZ** · May 23rd, 2005, 11:39 AM

youre not going to notice a lot of difference with a 9200, what are the problems you are having? maybe its something else and not the drivers from ati?

**Loopy** · May 23rd, 2005, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by TechZ

what are the problems you are having? maybe its something else and not the drivers from ati?

Over the past few days I've had to reinstall my video card drivers everytime my computer got stuck, and just this morning I had to reinstall the drivers again!
because when windows started all of my video settings were reset (color resoloution, agp was disabled etc)

I just have different problems here and there It seems to be a weekly thing (windows has been reinstalled recently) The main thing is I want drivers that are more stable.

**farmeunit** · May 23rd, 2005, 07:07 PM

Try www.driverheaven.net. They have links to Omega's drivers and some guys are now working on ATI drivers. Good reference site and people always help out.

**confus-ed** · May 24th, 2005, 02:33 AM

Originally Posted by TechZ

youre not going to notice a lot of difference with a 9200..

Not to disagree with the rest of what Techz put .. but you can find benchmarks showing 3d mark scores going up by 15-20 % using omega's drivers

! (It's worth noting though that's when compared to the catalyst's which use the '.net' versions of the catalyst control centre, so that's about 10% start

..'cos that bit, is the bit that goes wrong 'mostly' & makes windoze work a bit too hard ... )

So Loopy when you say you are having 'stability issues' - are you using the control panel & whatnot, or just the driver on its own ? (& have you ever gotten the machine that this is in 'really stable' ?)

**Loopy** · May 24th, 2005, 10:32 AM

Originally Posted by confus-ed

'cos that bit, is the bit that goes wrong 'mostly' & makes windoze work a bit too hard ...

So Loopy when you say you are having 'stability issues' - are you using the control panel & whatnot, or just the driver on its own ? (& have you ever gotten the machine that this is in 'really stable' ?)

Yes im using the ati control panel but usually at the default settings, and no I have never had this old system perfectly stable but its been more stable then it has been recently. What do you mean when you say "cos that bit is the bit that goes wrong"

**peterpam** · May 24th, 2005, 10:56 AM

... just a dirty remove of old drivers? In ATI homepage you can find a lot of instructions and utilities to remove old drivers.
Your description remembers me some problems i had with a 9800 ATI card, that just disapeared after i made a total and clean removal (uninstall, clean Registry, remove several files) of all the old drivers i had from ATI.
If you do the same, believe me: you can use the catalists withou problem, any version. Thats a common problem with ATI (and by the way, with Nidia too) drivers.

Hope that helped

Greetings from the country of Sun

**TechZ** · May 24th, 2005, 11:53 AM

guru3d.com has links to lots of drivers and driver removal tools

http://downloads.guru3d.com/

**confus-ed** · May 25th, 2005, 02:53 AM

Originally Posted by Loopy

... What do you mean when you say "cos that bit is the bit that goes wrong"

I mean that the last three or four sets of ATI drivers have been released in two versions, one using M$'s '.net' framework & the other not. If you want the catalyst control centre on then you've got to use the '.net' framework.

This extra layer of programming complexity stresses matters as its extra processing, but its also another layer of things to go wrong & another layer to have to track & resolve errors through, & since this all depends on windows functions .. well I shan't go on - anyway - (& it should say this on the flipping website) the non '.net' versions of the driver perform about 10% better.

I think if ".. have never had this old system perfectly stable but its been more stable then it has been recently.." applies, then its unlikely to be the video driver version you are using but something else completely