Dumb question on ATI CAPs

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by enoy21, Aug 24, 2011.

  1. kn00tcn

    kn00tcn Ancient Guru

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    unless the cap is telling to use another profile (let's say to fix some rare bug), it's POSSIBLE but highly unlikely that single card will get worse

    as for CAPs coming with the drivers, yes there is a cap file that comes with all the drivers, but it's an awkward version that's sometimes in between 2 CAP releases if you look at the date & filesize, so just get the latest CAP

    here's an example of what could happen
    disabling forced AA is not pointless of course, lots of people might be sitting there with forced AA all the time, then they launch some game that has a problem with that option, either the people wont know what's going on or they have to open CCC again
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2011
  2. Yadda

    Yadda Active Member

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    My understanding is the same as yours. When CAPs first appeared, I remember reading that their purpose was to allow ATI to quickly and easily provide optimisations for new games in between driver releases (so we, the users, don't have to wait so long), and that these optimisations would still be built into the next driver release (as they were in the days before CAPs).

    Having said that, when a new driver is released, I see many people installing the last driver release's CAP alongside it (eg, cat 11.8 with 11.7 CAP3) so God knows!

    Edit:

    Just had a quick look around and found this in Rage3d's CAP FAQ which seems to confirm it:

    Link to source.

    Now, I'm puzzled - why do people sometimes use a CAP that is older than their driver?
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2011
  3. kn00tcn

    kn00tcn Ancient Guru

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    cuz some caps change something in the game they want to play, or the CF profile changes, so they want to stay on what it used to be, simple

    an example was shift2, they disabled cf in a cap due to flickering, then the game got a patch, but the cap took a while to reenable cf, so you had to use an older cap or rename the game exe
     
  4. Yadda

    Yadda Active Member

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    That's understandable, but doesn't explain why someone would use the last 11.7 CAP with the 11.8 driver, before the first 11.8 CAP is released. I understand it could be because of the way driver development is managed, new fixes are sometimes developed whilst the new driver is "frozen" awaiting WHQL review but wouldn't incorporating those last-minute fixes immediately into a CAP for the new driver (in this example, 11.8 CAP1) be a more logical approach?
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2011

  5. kn00tcn

    kn00tcn Ancient Guru

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    if the driver is frozen while it's being certified, that includes the CAP file it comes with, so if a profile is made after that time, what are they gonna call it? either wait till the driver is public & call it cap1 or just make another cap # on the current driver to release it sooner
     

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