The truth about Catalyst 3.8... ???

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by Monrad, Oct 24, 2003.

  1. Monrad

    Monrad Guest

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    http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1673/

    I don't know... maybe I'll try reinstalling them. The problem is that I can't check my ATI temperature... but I don't think It'll be damaged. My monitor go out of range when using refresh rates that aren't supported... so... I don't think my monitor will be damaged.

    I'll reinstall them and tell you what happens.
     
  2. Drumphil

    Drumphil Guest

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    go check out the rage3d forums... THis issue has been done to death(and yes its all a load of bull).. The cat 3.8 doesn't kill monitors or fry cards. It may not be the best driver ATI has released so far, but it isn't going to kill your card or anything like that.
     
  3. HaVoC

    HaVoC Ancient Guru

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    but you must admit they added that cool feature that allows you to change the display and stuff ingame .... loooks phhhhattt AWSOME ATi
     
  4. Monrad

    Monrad Guest

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    I've been running 3.8 since yesterday. I've been playing Battlefield and I had no problems. Only when I press ESC to go to the main menu and then press ESC again to go back to the game I see a lot of grey polygons going crazy all over the screen, but that's not overheating or whatever. It's just a bug. After that happened, I restarted battlefield and play for hours. No problems at all.
     

  5. renegade150

    renegade150 Guest

    call of duty demo hangs on me and the vpu settings tell me some error on 3.8
    3.7 it ran smoothly...
     
  6. Monrad

    Monrad Guest

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    This is too weird.
    I'd recommend you to uninstall latest catalyst with Driver Cleaner. Maybe all this errors are caused because of some trash form latest drivers.

    As soon as I get any error I'll let you know.
     
  7. IronYuppie

    IronYuppie Guest

    There are two different issues here, higher temps and monitors being blown. I know for a fact that the 3.8's did heat up my card and caused massive system wide problems. I installed them the day they came out and had them removed the next day, before the firestorm over these had started. So I don't really care what some yuck-yucks at some tech rag say after doing what you could hardly call extensive tests. I guess it depends on your system, but for me the 3.8's are garbage and a danger to my system.
     
  8. nofool

    nofool Maha Guru

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    Drumphil -- how do you know?

    To this point, 28 Oct 03, I have seen no statement from ATI concerning allegations that the Cat. 3.8's can harm video cards, specifically. Do you have a news story or a link?

    Meanwhile a LOT of people have reported problems in forums all over the place, and it is unlikely that they are ALL delusional....
     
  9. Drumphil

    Drumphil Guest

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    er, check out the real situation on the rage3d forums.. AFTER ALL THE RUMORS AND NOISE ABOUT THE ISSUE we traced it back to one person on a mission, who then started a bunch of thread screaming that ATI killed his stuff and that 3.8 was to blame..

    The main reason we are seeing so much about it now it that everytime a noob has a problem and they are using cat 3.8 they think "hey cat 3.8 might have overheated or blown my monitor and they post with a title "cat 3.8 killed my (insert whatever)"", when they HAVE NO IDEA wether or not cat 3.8 has anything to do with it or not.. Then teh techies (like me) go in and help them sort out the real problem, and then wait for the next thread about cat 3.8, which actually has nothing to do with it..

    We have gone over the issue thoroughly at rage3d, and when we asked for REAL PEOPLE who had ACTUALLY had a card fry, or monitor die, we got three responses, and they all turned out to be caused by other things.. And ATI have made a public statement saying that its all a load of bull.
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2003
  10. RaZoR_Blade

    RaZoR_Blade Guest

    damn now you are telling me .. lol ive reinstalled 3.7 cats .. well ill upgrade to 3.8 tomorrow :p
     

  11. nofool

    nofool Maha Guru

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    ONE troublemaker? Now why would we doubt that...?

    Every propeller-head forum on planet Earth is peppered with numerous litanies and enumerations of problems that people had they had ONLY after loading the Cat. 3.8's. And now we're to understand that this was promulgated by ONE conspirator (oops, that was stupid...to have a conspiracy there must be at least two, I think)? I think not.

    If the questions raised here at Guru of 3D do no invoke your curiosity, then go peruse Rage3D's Forum. At least count there were FORTY-THREE PAGES of raging debate about the 3.8's and what detailed descriptions of what many have alleged that these drivers have done to their video cards and/or monitors. I cannot find it in my heart or mind to think that they're all morons, or, involved in some great "anti-ATI" conspiracy.

    In the meantime, there is nothing but stoic, stone-walled silence from ATI on one critical question: Do the Cat. 3.8's have any detrimental effect on Radeon 9-Series cards, or do they not? They reacted quickly to the issue about monitors, saying categorically that there is no effect there. Fine. Why will they not say one official word about the video cards?

    We're waiting... and waiting... and waiting....
     
  12. Drumphil

    Drumphil Guest

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    have you read anything nofool??.. they talked about the monitor thing and the gpu temperature thing in the same damn public statement..

    You are saying "but what about all the n00bs yelling about this problem".. well, when people don't read everything properly, and so come to a wrong understanding of whats going on, then post a lot about it.. THEN YOU HAVE LOTS OF PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT A NON ISSUE.
    Now the cat 3.8 drivers aren't the best made so far in my opinion, and they do have a few issues, but these are rendering issues, ot card killing ones.

    Over at rage3d we had stacks of thread being started with complaints about the cat3.8 frying cards or monitors once word got round.. So its easy to look at all that and say there must be a problem.. Till you look into it further..

    We had people starting thread titled "cat 3.8 fried my card!!!".... then the first sentence of the thread was "my heatsink fell off and the card fried.. could drivers have done this??"??? ARGH.. after starting a thread with the title blaming the drivers..
    Then another "cat 3.8 killed my monitor"... then we find out the monitor died just before he installed the drivers.. ARGH AGAIN!!..

    So after stacks of this, and every noob thinking that every time anything went wrong it was cat 3.8 overheating or killing a monitor, we started a thread "post here if 3.8 ACTUALLY killed your monitor or fried your card.. Then we waited.. we eventually got three people who believed this had happened, but in the end this problems were put down to other issues..

    You may have also seen someones theory for why the ATI cards would kill a monitor "cause of mixed up refresh rate tables or something for the secondary monitor".. ATI said straight out that this isn't possible, cause they dont access the file in question at all.

    Anyways, we are still waiting for one confirmed case of cat 3.8 killing someones card or monitor...
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2003
  13. TheDigitalJedi

    TheDigitalJedi Ancient Guru

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    Drumphil.....try decaf......

    Man your blood vessels are going to explode! Well....I can't speak on the monitor issues with the 3.8's but I can speak on the rise in temps. There is a temperature rise about 6-7 degrees celcius.

    I also checked out the rage3d forums. The catalyst 3.8 thread is filled with complaints. Not all of the responses were from noobs!

    http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33715865

    The first 10 pages and far beyond are filled with users that are not happy with these drivers. Some complain about heat issues, some complain about glitches while others are just downright ticked! I've also read the monitor issues at different tech sites and it's very hard for me to believe this is mass hysteria that started from an nvidiot. The most loyal of ATI customers are complaing as well and some of these people have an immense amount of computer knowledge.

    Companies screw up all the time and never admit their faults if they feel it would be too costly for them. But I will say this.........If these people are 100% positive the ATI is at fault......we should soon see a class action lawsuit from many ATI users. If we don't .......well it just might be a load of bull.
     
  14. Drumphil

    Drumphil Guest

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    yeah, there are plenty of issues with the cat 3.8 drivers, but i spend time pover there worknign throught the issues with people, and we still dont hav one confirmed card frying or monitor death that was definately down to teh cat 3.8 drivers.. There are issues with the new drivers. I use the cat 3.7s at the moment because they work better with tribes 1 (yes i still play it)..
    But we when we started a thread saying "ok, no speculation , just post if your monitor or card was actually killed by cat 3.8", we got no positive responses.. We got stacks of people who thought that had happened, who of course had no idea whatsoever what had really happened..

    And who are all the non noobs who had a card or monitor die.. They would have been all over us when we posted questioning the validity of all this.. So for all the noise made its hard to get anyone with any credibility to put their hand up and say "cat 3.8 caused this".. That tells you how valid all the threads of noobs arguing were.. When we put them on the spot we got no answer.... So unless things have changed since i last read the forums a day ago I think my position stands.. I'll go back and check again now.
    edit: been back and checked again:
    In fact most of the threads discussing this issue on rage3d are old news and dropping down the list rapidly.. Now that people are actually finding out that their monitors aren't dying, and their cards aren't frying, the speculation is dyign down. (actually they're off the front two pages of threads now).. And I had a look through some more of the massive discussions about it. damn painfull. All that came out of that was how little idea some people have about all this stuff..
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2003
  15. TheDigitalJedi

    TheDigitalJedi Ancient Guru

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    Well if the "speculation" is dying down, that's a good thing. I would hate to see more controversy than we already have. Driver optimizations, Half Luck 2, Pixel $#!++er 2.0 performance issues, game companies coding their software to specifially run better on their card of choice and so forth and so forth.

    It doesn't take long for this to become exhausting.
     

  16. Drumphil

    Drumphil Guest

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    :) exhausting is right.. Now every time I help someone work through their GFX card problem I first have to explain why cat 3.8 didn't fry their card and monitor .. (assuming that cat 3.8 isn't the problem of course.. talking about people whos computer wont respond, or who have monitors that are playing up..)
    Sigh, we even had one guy post with the title "cat 3.8 killed my monitor", WHEN HIS MONITOR WAS STILL WORKING FINE as it turns out".. WTF!!!KLFDMrmfhajslfh!!!11! I could strangle some people i swear.. anyways, enuf of me complaining.
     
  17. TheDigitalJedi

    TheDigitalJedi Ancient Guru

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    Would you happen to know the reason for the bug in UT2K3? Do you know if ATI will correct the issue with their next Catalyst release?
     
  18. Drumphil

    Drumphil Guest

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    "Would you happen to know the reason for the bug in UT2K3? Do you know if ATI will correct the issue with their next Catalyst release?"

    if its the bug other people have been pointing out with textures being lower quality..
    People were saying this was because ATI wasn't filtering as well.. Well, it turns out that its a bug effecting 2 or 3 textures in the game, and is just incorrectly using the normal texture rather than the high detail one.. this is just for the few textures in question, and I believe this is now a known bug by ATI, and should fixed shortly..


    Im pretty sure that turned out the be the story there... Can't remember where to link too, but if its the same problem you are talking about, then this is definately the explanation..
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2003
  19. TheDigitalJedi

    TheDigitalJedi Ancient Guru

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    I hope so......I'm looking forward to the next Catalyst release. UT2K3 is one of my favorite games.
     
  20. Monrad

    Monrad Guest

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    Don't worry, ATI knows ;) I don't know if they will correct the issue with the next cat release but I'm sure they are working on it.
     

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