Best Windows 8 drivers for legacy cards are ...

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by masterchan777, Aug 17, 2012.

  1. masterchan777

    masterchan777 Master Guru

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    Hello all,
    I've been testing Windows 8 with one of my old rigs which has a 4870X2, and as you may know, AMD decided to limit their *cough-crappy-cough* divers support of their "legacy" products, therefore, no new drivers for Windows 8 will be coming anytime soon for AMD's "legacy cards".

    Although Windows 8 has built-in drivers for legacy Radeon cards, with those default drivers you can't start CCC to adjust settings, and APP (AVIVO) applications don't seem to work, This almost cripples those graphics cards and limit almost all the functionalities of Catalyst software, so what can be done to resolve this and get the functionalities back?

    I tried to install the latest 12.6 legacy drivers for Windows 7, but the default installer does seem not to replace Windows 8's default drivers, so I tried to manually install the 12.6 drivers through Windows 8 device manager, and indeed they install fine, however, CCC does not start up and gives some error message instead, and APP applications seem to crash when APP is started, this happened with every single catalyst from 12.6 all the way down to 11.11.

    The best working solution I found is to uninstall any previously installed ATI software through the express uninstaller, then to install Catalyst 11.10.
    Catalyst 11.10 seem to be totally compatible with Windows 8 , and has a working CCC as well as installing 11.10 Xcode makes APP software work perfectly fine.

    I think those drivers are currently the best option to be used with Windows 8 if you have an HD 2000, 3000, or 4000 series card.

    You can download Catalyst 11.10 drivers for Windows X64 from this link

    You can download XCode pack 11.10 for Windows x64 from this link

    Good luck.

    Update: 8.951.1 March 3rd leaked drivers also work fine with Window 8 if you don't care about WHQL, those are newer than 11.10 but you'll lose OpenCL with them, thanks kevsamiga1974 for the tip.

    you can download those non-WHQL drivers from this link
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2012
  2. kevsamiga1974

    kevsamiga1974 Master Guru

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    You forgot the "if ever" bit...

    And what about 8.951.1 March 3rd leaked release...

    Work in Windows 8 for 4xxx no ? :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2012
  3. masterchan777

    masterchan777 Master Guru

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    Do you have a link for those? I've only tried the official WHQL sets from AMD, but I can give them a go and see if they work.

    Edit : Those install fine and work perfectly after removing all the previously installed ATI software, they seem to be the best non-WHQL option for now.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2012
  4. kevsamiga1974

    kevsamiga1974 Master Guru

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    Here, all better...

    http://gamingeoc.forumfree.it/?t=60751579

    Haven't tried them myself since planning to stay with Win7 x64, but I believe they do infact "work" and install ok.

    What is the version number of the default Windows 8 drivers out of sheer curiosity...? Not that i'm planning to switch to Win8 on 4870x2...

    Stay away from 12.x series for da legacy cards, their utter ****, legacy card crossfire performance will plummet...,games that ran fine will now run like ****, forcing you to believe your cards are no longer worthy to game anymore against cards sporting a higher generation, and you'll need rentokill in to deal with the many bugs that materialise overnight as if by magic.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2012

  5. masterchan777

    masterchan777 Master Guru

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    I have to agree with you, Catalyst drivers gave me nightmares back in the days when my main rig had a red card, now I am all green for good, but anyways, the default Windows 8 drivers are custom 8.97 and they are named as ( Microsoft Corporation - WDDM v1.1 )
     
  6. kevsamiga1974

    kevsamiga1974 Master Guru

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    Oh dear, I won't be gaming on Windows 8 then...

    I have a couple of Nvidia 8800GT's VF900 Zalmans, at least I can pop them back in if ever I feel the urge to play around with a tablet OS on a desktop...

    On the surface, Catalyst drivers seem ok, but when it comes to the deep down level nitty gritty and extensive testing, you come to realise how inherantly broken and still full of bugs they are playing around with something as simple as altering game settings, yes even 4 years on....Now it's the 7000 series that seems to have it worse and has all the teething problems. I was kinda hoping upgrading to 4870x2's they would have got their act together since the Rage 128 days, apparently not.

    When I was running the 8800GT's everything just "worked" out of the box, no game had flickering or flashing textures, I never had to worry about x or y not working. Now it's just a lottery, and the issues seem to be getting worse and longer, not shorter and better.

    I repackaged some of my drivers and inject working dll's from others, test and then throw out the ones that are buggy or have lost functionality, taking things in my own hands so to speak, to make my homebrew switcheroo drivers because it has minimised most of the issues/bugs/problems amd can't be bothered testing or fixing for months on end like broken GPU accelerated movie transcoding.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2012
  7. masterchan777

    masterchan777 Master Guru

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    I totally understand your frustration because I lived the exact same experience when Radeon was my main card, bugs keep coming and going (e.g 2D/3D clocks) and things went from bad to worse with time, yes AMD have really good hardware in theory but their software is totally rubbish, therefore, I went green and decided to give the red cards a red card for good.
     
  8. kn00tcn

    kn00tcn Ancient Guru

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    those specific versions that work on win8 sound so arbitrary, i wonder why they work & others dont...

    i also wonder... for example in a 32bit dx9 game, if you use atiumdag.dll from 12.6legacy, will it work in win8?
     
  9. kevsamiga1974

    kevsamiga1974 Master Guru

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    It's because the 8.951.1's (12.3) have specific Windows 8 .inf C8xxxx files containing support for <5k series entries, as well as C7xxx for Win 7 and CHxxx for Vista which other drivers don't seem to contain C8xxx .inf's.

    I think they were around or made available for the Win8 consumer preview at a guess.

    They're also ultimately the last ones I can use before the 2nd gpu 4870x2 clock bug appeared kn00tcn, so if I did happen to go with Win 8 not that I plan to, those would be the ones I would most likely prefer instead of the 8.97
    defaults because then I would get the CCC too. Although the AVIVO media converter stopped showing up after I think it was 12.1 despite being installed. :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2012
  10. AlexTrn

    AlexTrn Guest

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    Hey everyone..im new here:]
    When i try to open Catalyst 11.10 im gettin an error:NSIS Error [Error launching the installer]
    can someone help me?
    Im trying to find a driver for my graphics card [Ati Radeon HD 2600 XT].
    thanks..
     

  11. blacblu

    blacblu Guest

    Does someone know if the 12.7 BETA is working on Windows 8 without any problems?
     
  12. AlexTrn

    AlexTrn Guest

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    It doesn't works on me..i have radeon HD 2600XT.
    The only one who seems to work is 11.10 or 11.9..
     
  13. Miroglu

    Miroglu Guest

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    I have legacy Windows 8 RTM AMD Catalyst 12.6 driver installed windows 7 compatibility mode works fine.
     
  14. mlauzon

    mlauzon Member

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    If you didn't know it already, the official legacy drivers for Windows 8 has been released a while ago, it's 12.6 and working flawlessly here:

    AMD Catalyst™ Driver for the Radeon™ HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 Series on Windows® 8

    http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalystlegacywin8.aspx

    Applicable Products:

    This article applies to the following configuration(s):

    Hardware:

    AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series
    AMD Radeon HD 3000 Series
    AMD Radeon HD 2000 Series
    AMD Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Series
    AMD Mobility Radeon HD 3000 Series
    AMD Mobility Radeon HD 2000 Series

    Operating Systems:

    Windows 8 64-bit Edition
    Windows 8 32-bit Edition
     
  15. trocio2

    trocio2 Guest

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    AMD will put the HD 7000 series in legacy status someday. I will get my revenge.
     

  16. GotNoRice

    GotNoRice Active Member

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    WDDM 1.1 = Windows 7 drivers, so basically those are the exact same Windows 7 drivers we've already had access to for months.

    I'm running 2x 4870x2 in QuadCF in my secondary rig with 12.6 + latest CAPs, though that computer is still running windows 7.
     

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