x800 owners - which drivers you use ??

[TheMafioso]

Hi guys, I have a x800xt 256MB AGP with me ......

I want to know which drivers version you people use ??


My Experience:
I tried the following drivers
Catalyst 6.9
Catalyst 6.10
NGO Optimized (based on catalyst 6.6)
Catalyst 6.11

I've found that drivers which i used initially were the best(i.e Catalyst 6.9),
Nothin special was obtained with NGO Optimized, rather i felt my card slowed down a little...

But interesting trend i observed was performance is getting worse with each subsequent release ie.6.9>6.10>6.11....there has been lot of stutering in 6.11 in NFS:MW..ever since I installed them..

Are other x800 users experiecing the same trend...or is it just me

[chiefnz]

Using Cat 6.9 here, the 6.10's delivered lower performance and some of my games, COD2, GR-AW and Company Of Heroes took ages to load, compared to the Cat 6.9 drivers.

I usually try every 2nd driver release.

Cheers

chiefnz

[TheMafioso]

So you experienced the same thing too...Well i wonder what guys@ATi are doing........agreed the x800 series is old, but its not that old, they start to neglect it..

Well here's a word of advice for you, don't try Cat. 6.11, they're even worse than 6.10

[111REAPER111]

Hi

I've recentl installed an X800XT PE - thought it was best to use latest drivers (6.1) ran 3DMark05 & results were 6086 but had weird problems that whenever I tried to logon to my profile (XP) after coming out of the login screensaver it would look like it was going to boot to desktop but then jump back to login screen - entered password again & it went straight to desktop - odd.

Anyway I went back to 6.2 Cats & 3DMark05 went up to 6206 & no login issues - Not tried any others yet but someone else on this site told me ATI stopped optmizing drivers for the 800 series after cats 5.12!

Good Luck

[TheMafioso]

^^6.1 or 6.2 is way too old....they may not optimize but they do fix bugs you know..
You should give Cat 6.9 a try, them seem pretty good...

Cheers

[b3nny]

that sucks i just installed the latest drivers on a fresh install. Also i used to swear by the omega drivers but i really like the new Cat's and the Control Center looks hella cool as well.

i havnt tried gaming yet as i am still re-installing from a computer nightmare.. anyway thats another story..

[Numinous]

I currently use the latest 6.11 drivers and am very happy with stabilty and performance. I used the 6.9 drivers prior to that and cant really notice a difference. In the past I have used the NGO drivers but again I couldnt really notice any sort of improvment on speed or quality. I am going to stick with the 6.11 for a long time now. They are in, they are solid and there is no reason to replace em.

[TheMafioso]

^^what games you play ?

[flow]

A reason for me to start using newer cat drivers was the message that came with the 6.8 drivers which said about improved performance for cod2 amongst others.And idd,with my x850pro opengl based games seemed to run better also.I can imagine 6.9 and up run the same with some minor differences.In any case,the newer fixes don't exclude older cards like the x8xxxx series.So it's better to prefer 6.9 for instance ,opposed to the older 6.2
Best is to find some intense scenes in your games,do a quick save and note the fps while not moving mouse,and after moving.Also make a note of your 3dmark score.Now when using different drivers you can reload those scenes,and compare the fps.Maybe you have more fps drops but overall higher,or less fps drops and overall lower.You can decide which driver you want then.
You can google for console commands that come with your fav games so you can reveal the fps on screen,without the need of an extra program like fraps..
But it's important to keep the rest of your system and settings the same,for fair comparisons.