ATI video card tweaks

[jsalemi]

In trying to make my video performance better, I came across some interesting sites that I wanted to pass on to y'all. I don't know if these have been mentioned here before, but with all the recent threads on video performance, it doesn't hurt to identify them again.

The first is a site that has pages of tweaks for the ATI Radeon cards (and may also have one for nVidia): http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html .  Very interesting reading.

The second is the home of the Omega Drivers: http://www.omegadrivers.net/ .  These are enhanced versions of the ATI and nVidia drivers, tweaked for gaming. I've been using the latest ATI Omega drivers for a couple of days now, and while the difference in TS2 isn't dramatic, they do seem to perform a bit better than the standard ATI drivers.  Plus, they come with the ATI Tools utility, which is much better and more detailed than the ATI Catalyst Control Center, and best of all, doesn't require you to lose precious system memory to the memory-hogging .NET stuff.  I gained almost 50Mb in free RAM just switching to this and not having .NET loading all the time.

Check 'em out!

[Ellatrue]

ATI catalyst control center... would that be the weird ATI icon that keeps showing up on my taskbar when I start the computer? I usually leave it on because I assume it has something to do with the video card... my computer is in German, so it is hard to know if it is the same thing.

[jsalemi]

ATI catalyst control center... would that be the weird ATI icon that keeps showing up on my taskbar when I start the computer? I usually leave it on because I assume it has something to do with the video card... my computer is in German, so it is hard to know if it is the same thing.

Probably a quick link icon to it -- the CCC is the new version of the application that lets you tune your video card settings.  The old ATI Control Center added tabs to the Advanced settings in the screen properties display, and I think it also came with a quick link icon.

[MissDoh]

I had so many problem with my ATI 9800 pro video card that I purchase a new NVdia card instead.

I will send it back once, they send me a new one same model to replace it, after a month of using it started to do funny things again.  Needless to say this model is not available in stores anymore.

I will return it again and see if I can have another model that is more reliable since I don't want to spend the next 3 years sending back and forth my videocard.

I will go to the link you gave and try to set it so it won't go crazy one me again. 

And it is not my computer, I never had a problem when I use NVdia card on my system.  That 9800 pro just does not like me lol.

[Motoki]

I used to have a 9700 without any problems, and before that I had a 9500, then an 8500 before that. Since then I've had an X300 and I just got an X1800 and they've all worked great for me. It's not even necessarily ones computer, but there's just so much variation between different hardware and all the software installed that there's almost infinite combinations and some of those combinations don't get along too well, but figuring out where and what the conflic is can be extremely difficult.

If you find a card that works well for you no matter what brand it is then that's a good thing. Honestly, I think both brands are fairly comparably. I just stick with ATI because it's what I'm familiar with and used to and have had good experiences with in the past.

[anelca]

i've been using my radeon 7000 with omega drivers for ages on my laptop. the only disappointement was the last update which turned my graphics to mush, but it's the first time out of many updates to do this. usually there is an improvement.
omega drivers are very good, i think, for laptop users but you can't tweak too much when the card is integrated

[Zeljka]

I still use a... Radeon 9200? 

I know it's old and outdated (after all, I did purchase this computer just to play Sims2 and wasn't that about 600 years ago?) but I have to say I have no complaints with it's performance.

Naturally, I will expect to be blown away when I do finally upgrade, but till then, if it's not broke... I'm scared to mess with it... heh heh

will bookmark for when that changes, thanks