Best Driver for Half life ( radeon 9600pro)

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by TheGivingTree, May 12, 2005.

  1. TheGivingTree

    TheGivingTree Active Member

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    Hi, I play natural selection alot and I have a radeon 9600pro and I get real bad FPS. I was just wondering what is the absoulte best driver to install for my radeon to get pure fps, I don't care about quality or stability I just want pure performance. Thanks!
     
  2. Davy2

    Davy2 Maha Guru

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    GPU:
    Radeon x800Pro+Samsung 172X
    The newest one. Even though NS will hit your card a little harder than normal HL, a 9600 should have no problems with it at all.

    (I've never noticed any significance performance difference from changing drivers with the exception of the 8.07b and higher drivers which fixed the ATI memory bug.
     
  3. TheGivingTree

    TheGivingTree Active Member

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    Which newest driver? DNA? Omega? Catalyst? or the other ones I'm not sure what their names are.
     
  4. sputnik

    sputnik Member

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    GPU:
    Saphire 8800gts
    Use the latest Omega drivers for the best HL2 performance/iq combo.
     

  5. Ehecu

    Ehecu Maha Guru

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    GPU:
    Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750
    Catalyst - Stock... Usually more stable than the others because of massive internal testing.

    Omega - Great performance/IQ combination and normally just as bug-free as Catalysts (personal favorite)

    DNA - Can tend to be buggy, and the IQ isn't as good as you would find in Omega drivers, but these usually perform best if you select all the highest "speed" options during install. Basically it absolutely butchers the image quality but makes it run quite fast. I suppose this is what I would suggest given your situation.
     
  6. TheGivingTree

    TheGivingTree Active Member

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    So DNA would give the best performance? What version of it should I download to get max performance? I dont mind much about HL2 yet just mostly HL1 for now.
     
  7. richardjames

    richardjames Guest

    I used to play NS and CS and TF a-lot. If you are getting bad frame rates in HL1 then something is seriously wrong (I'm talking more wrong than the wrong drivers) with your setup. I used to play CS on a Voodoo2 P2 300, and I had average frame rates 30-50fps. What frame rate are you looking for and what resolution are you running, what AA, AnsioTropic Filtering options are you using? What sort of system do you have?
     
  8. TheGivingTree

    TheGivingTree Active Member

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    I would love just a steady supply of 60 fps. I get about 10-15 with people on the screen or alot of buildings on the map. Everything moves and runs choppy. I run it on 800 resolution and I have every setting turned off, no aa no atf I have everything set on performance. I have also tried to set everything on high and it just runs slower. I downloaded about 5 different drivers and I'm using 4.12 which seems decent ( omega ). I have a 1.6p4 512ram 60gig hard drive, ati radeon 9600pro and some built in sound card AC'97?
     
  9. richardjames

    richardjames Guest

    That sounds really wrong. It could be the video card or it could be something else such as your connection to the game server.

    To determine if it is your connection to the server, you need to run a local NS game on your machine. If when you run this local game it is still choppy then you can look at the options of video card drivers or sound drivers etc. If it is not choppy then you need to look at you connection to the game server.

    To run a local NS game, start Steam then select Natural Selection. When the NS screen comes up click "Create Server", this will bring up a dialog box. There are two tabs at the top of this dialog box, click on the right one labelled "Game" and then click on the box next to "LAN Game" to make a tick appear. When the tick appears click on the "Start" button at the bottom. NS should load up a local server game. Join the aliens so you become a skulk, then run around the map and check your frame rate. Your frame rate should be a constant almost 60fps (this is a limit in the game engine). Reply back saying what your framerate in a local game is.
     
  10. TheGivingTree

    TheGivingTree Active Member

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    Well the tihng is, even if I play normal regular single player half life, I get like 20-30 FPS if their is alot of boxes and bots around. I've went through all different video cards and I've tried all different drivers which each and it only varies slightly. It has to be my processor or something. I got no background services on, everything on performance, hard drive defrag, newest drivers for everything, tons of v-card drivers and various v-cards, XP tweaks and performance programs, v-sync on and off, power strip, refresh rates, registery tweaks, atioglxx file switch, I've read countless forums over the years and nothing yet has gave me stable FPS so I just assume its my processor and maybe mother board.
     

  11. Hery

    Hery New Member

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    It's probably problem with your config. Change all ati_ cvars to 0 or/and disable Truform in driver options... Maybe it helps :)
     
  12. richardjames

    richardjames Guest

    I don't think it has anything to do with your graphics card drivers. It could be any of the following.

    a) bad system setup ( Question do other games lag as well? )
    b) wrong driver selection in Half Life itself ( Try each of DirectX, OpenGL, Software. Then benmark each which one is fastest )
    c) it could be your processor speed ( In which case the test is complicated, because you need to see if your system is processor or video card bound, have you run any of the 3DMark tests? What scores do you get in comparison to others )
    d) it could be your sound card ( though this is as likley as it being the video card drivers)

    Half Life does not push enough pixels onto the screen to give a 9600 problems. A 9600 is overkill for this game. More likely than not your problem lies elsewhere.

    You don't have a brand name machine do you? Such as a Dell, IBM, HP, Compaq etc as such a machine can have severe limitations not obvious in their specifications. If you have a "clone" pc what motherboard/ memory do you have?
     
  13. Handy Daddy

    Handy Daddy Guest

    All the friends that bought a 9600 card had problems with HalfLife with any driver!

    Amazing to say the least, they bought a 9700 PRO for a bit more and didn't get a single problem since, so i'm truly short of ideas about what could be the cause.

    Your question was about drivers, well for my card the best are the Catalyst 5.5 with standard CP, but remember each pc is dfferent and i cannot guarantee it'll be as good in your puter. ;)
     
  14. yaleblor

    yaleblor Guest

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    GPU:
    770gtx 2gb
    " All the friends that bought a 9600 card had problems with HalfLife with any driver!"


    i have 0 peoblems with a 9600 and hl2 runs like butter,try the new omegas(the "a"version)
     
  15. TheGivingTree

    TheGivingTree Active Member

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    "It's probably problem with your config. Change all ati_ cvars to 0 or/and disable Truform in driver options... Maybe it helps "

    I've tried that, but thanks.

    "a) bad system setup ( Question do other games lag as well? )
    b) wrong driver selection in Half Life itself ( Try each of DirectX, OpenGL, Software. Then benmark each which one is fastest )
    c) it could be your processor speed ( In which case the test is complicated, because you need to see if your system is processor or video card bound, have you run any of the 3DMark tests? What scores do you get in comparison to others )
    d) it could be your sound card ( though this is as likley as it being the video card drivers)"

    Well games like UT2003 run pretty smoothly more then any HL game does. Even wow would run better then single player hl. I have tried diffferent vdieo modes and opengl is the fastest. The other 2 arnt even playable. With ym sound card, I tried disabling it before and running hl and nothing change. It has to be my processor and the kind of computer I have is a matrix vpr. http://www.vprmatrix.com/products_desktop_1620.asp except I got 512 RAM instead of 256 and of course the radeon 9600pro.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2005

  16. richardjames

    richardjames Guest

    Then it sounds like your computer and video card drivers are fine. Which makes me think something is wrong in HalfLife. Perhaps you should remove and re-install HalfLife. And by that I mean back up your config files in the halflife folder. Then uninstall HL then delete the directory it was in, then reinstall it. Then try running HL again. If it works smoothly then either setup HL as before or try putting your config files back, if you know how to do it (but not before you try it freshly installed) the problem may be in the config files.

    If you don't know what I mean by config files, I am referring to the files that contain key bindings and settings (config.cfg autoexec.cfg etc). Some HL players have complicated bindings and don't want to lose them. You will know if you need to back this stuff up. Because HL stores more than just your key bindings in the config.cfg file you may just want to cut and paste the bindings across and leave the other settings be. Most likley however it is better that you set up HL from the menu and leave the config files alone unless you know what you are doing.
     

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