AMD Catalyst (Modified Build)

I'm new to this modified ati driver business, just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction for a decent one for a 2GB HD 6950.

Thanks

 

@TwL do you think you could bypass EDID check so we could use bezel compensation in eyefinity with different monitors ? Actually if monitors aren't the same bezel tab doesn't even appear in the control center

(why the hell do they do that stupid restriction ?...)

 

I don't think it's an standard function so sadly no. I don't think I can override an driver installed setup.

@commonly

Well, been playing a bit and build couple web sites in the mean while since modding 11.7-11.8 makes little difference in speed. The quality we currently get on gaming is going from worst to absolutely horrible.

I just did see Deus Ex and it got some detail but in full while I look the actual detail it's just not there. horrible. Also been watching a bit older titles
like Crysis, COD series and MOH/BFBC2 and seems some of the textures are actually changed even to speed currently and only drivers actually keeping
at least some textures are some alpha/beta builds AMD keeps making. Just makes me wonder what is the point of buying new graphics from AMD, if
the quality is not going further and quality is dropped over pushing FPS.

 

^
time to switch alliance to Nvidia!

 

So you would recommand still your 5.10?

 

How would they be changing the texture's quality through drivers? Limiting texture size?

Which specific drivers did you notice the low quality textures?

 

Been thinking this for sometime. Would be sweet to have for top end GeForce cards, but happen to own a lot of AMD hardware.

I don't know these days, if NVIDIA side is any better, but as far I've looked on how AMD/ATI handle the unknown content NVIDIA is 100% currently
better on that area. As their 'default' is not to screw up everything on screen like on every AMD driver since Catalyst 9.xx.

Where:

* NVIDIA acts as 'we are slow sure, but everything comes to screen'
while same situation:
* AMD/ATI lair is 'We disable what ever on application we can as we don't understand the application and at least our hardware is fast'.

This is the game breaker what makes NVIDIA currently almost sure pick of graphics hardware instead of AMD and something like modified catalyst can
only fight against this functionality, but as of drivers currently this has become pretty impossible mission. Only the 'Alpha' (and REALLY rare 'Beta')
drivers of AMD seems to remove sort of restrictions.

No I would not. I would recommend usage of (11.7)/<any> Alpha driver currently only the 11.7 seems to draw correctly. However comes with another bugs.

I removed the 5.10 from main page as it's not ideal on some situations. We need new modded driver, but I am tight up on work and really little on time
currently. (heck, even my project folder has stand still for past months only because I simply didn't have time while 11.8 was released to mod a new set).

We need combination of 11.6b on CrossfireX setups and 11.8 fixed to single cards and AMD/NVIDIA hybrid setups and somebody on AMD driver team
needs to damn look on how Intel SB PCI-Express 2.0 restricts their cards and optimize accordingly.

Look what I answered robolee above on this message.

They are not 'restricting' they are defaulting to '0' as in no show, if unknown by profiling/driver. This has nothing to do with 'low quality'. AMD simply is
ignoring to code by API and instead uses application detection.

What I meant before was application code. Games do not have detail (for example we can compare Bioshock the first DX10 game to anything out on market DX9-11 and mostly nothing comes even close). Quality goes really low currently on gaming market.

(perhaps we are returning to MS-DOS where only thing cool about the game is the start-up movie and then we get nethack 22 rows and moving @ sign attacking the + and - again for DX11 ;P)

Just saying shouldn't we be improving through sequels of games. Game companies has the data already yet decides to use none of it and try to
build completely new while there was nothing wrong with old where they could of simply use the same time half the people and simply create maps
and story to play (Maybe a perfect example here would be 'Alpha Prime', 'doom').

 

I dont-wont-cant ever switch to nvidia card.)sorry for language faults)
Only reason is this: my friend has the same cpu-mobo and all but one thing: hes got a gtx470. While I can crank up aa to extreme levels in bfbc2, his machine hits 40-50fps only with ingame 8x AA setting. While I can play gta IV like photorealistic, he cant. I purchased my 2 5850's for a same price of his gtx470. so how is this gonna help? If I had money I would build nvidia SLI, +1000watt power supply, +water cooling too..... theres no point in NVIDIA too this is just my humble opinion. sure they got a better development team behind their software/drivers. hell they even got companies making them physx games so they can show it off to kids.. but thats not even reasonable, I meam they got so many bs on their products too.
I hope some of these days amd guys just find out about the thread and hire twl & all problems solved (mad positivity)

 

Been unlogged for a whille but still following this thread on a daily bases. 2 things: NVIDIA purelly sux. My friend's GTX470 and i7 (stock speeds) perform a lot worse than my i5 @ 3.6 ghz and 5850 @ 850/1200. It's a fact that games on my rig look beautifull and a lot smoother than on his. That's obviously even better after having TWL's drivers installed, cause I have no stutering or mouse lag.(Nvidia stutters like mad!). So I just say: NVdia is a piece of crap hardware surviving on marketing and software. AMD may have **** driver development but they Do make the best Cards. They only need TWL on their team xD. Long live the KING!

 

I may be a fanboy, but what I said is not fanboyism, its just the facts. AMD has a lot more potential due to its depending on beter software to show its stuff off. Nvidia on the other side, as any, has a limit to whatever their drivers can do and that is far below AMD's. And about your 50% of the pie line... it works the other way around too or it wouldn't be 50%.

 

@Killer344
The amount of ignorance of the two posts above you is astounding at the least.


@chest_rockwell
Then specify the make & model of said cards, both your 5850s and your friend's 470, whether you bought it from the same store and/or bought it new or used, and whether you bought it around the same time frame as your friend.

Btw, only BFBC2 and GTAIV?
Care to test other games?


@pixoide
So, you're basically comparing an OC'd i5 to an i7 with default BCL, and an OC'd 5850 to a 470 with default clocks, and say yours are faster.

No sh!t, Sherlock. :3eyes:

 

TwL

How your modded driver release numbers correspond to ATI Catalist release numbers? I.e., does your last available driver 5.10 correspond to Catalist 10.12a as 2-nd post seems to claim? Why don't use matching release numbers (or matching folder numbers in download section) to avoid user mix-up and the need to scroll through 100+ posts?

In what your drivers are different from regular Catalist drivers? Do they combine gaming, HDTV and FireGL functionality, making all available on a single card at the same time depending on the application used? Your 1-st post doesn't clarify the purpose of your mod series - why?

Can this AMD Catalyst™ Preview Driver – OpenGL 4.2 Beta be modded to deliver FireGL functionality? Is it a better driver to modify to unleash FireGL than Catalist 11.8 stock driver? Or it can be used instead of FireGL driver without a notable difference in features and rendering speed?

 

@ k1net1x
sure, ill explain. but I need to correct something: its a 570 not a 470, sorry for mistake. long summer got my brain sponged lol.
mines are 2 sapphire 5850 one of them is xtreme version lately came out which sucked at overclocking; other one is the vapor-x version. his gtx570 is not evga or zotac, only a sparkle with stock clocks. We both get the cards from same online seller at discount weekend prices.Best deal we can get where we live.

hmmm..lemme think..
of course we did tests but that was months ago and I will share the all I can remember with you (I will only write which Im sure of remembering correct):
3dmark11 extreme preset or any preset: my friend almost had his card return after the tests thats all I can remember. cos I told him to buy 2 amd instead of buying single 570 at a higher price, 1 week later we plugged it in scores were bad. I dont want to pollute TwL/Genetix Thread I will simply write the other titles im sure we got tested and 2 stock 5850 is better: dirt2&3, call of pripyat and other 2stalker titles, cod mw titles, crysis titles, world in conflict, CoH, thats the games I remember surely we tested and 2pair of 5850's got ahead single 570.

btw I checked: in my country, 570 is still 400 bucks.more expensive than 2 5850s. this is just the way things are where Im living. wish I have chance to order best cooled and looking evga 570 card from newegg at discount. amd is cheap here and nvidia isnt cuz ppl buy amd more and I dont think this will chance. Situation is this like here, Im not sure how it is in rest of the world.

personal message to TwL: sorry for polluting the thread with wall of writing.

 

Actually TWL have already rigged that, either with intent or just blind luck.
I have the same problem since I got 2x 24 inch and one 23.4 and ATi removed Bezel compensation, theirs even read the EDID directly from the monitor rather than the driver!!!

However, TWL must have fixed it, because if you edit the EDID in the driver and force Windows to use that, the modified TWL Catalyst ACTUALLY enables Bezel compensation!
So presently I have that enabled and I do not understand why ATi is being so anal about it.

But one thing for sure, I do not want the crappy Nvidia stuff that seems to go poof after 2 years or have loads of driver bugs.
Kinda glad the last NV card failed on me, got my money back and invested it in a 5870 that gave me tripple screens...

 

First of you need exactly 2 first posts.

As for version numbers they do not correspond to CCC version numbers as there might be as there has been maybe 10 drivers build based on same
release because there is only singular releases from ATI/AMD driver team which happen to be good time to time as base for modded drivers. So, I
decided to build against vX(main build when something huge is updated).Y(when driver versions are changed)Z(Builds against known
drivers currently aka. next beta or what ever can be improved from main build further).

My drivers where based upon none functional display data + process power of hybrid AMD/ATI + NVIDIA systems originally also the idea of AMD
blocking/not fixing purposely over a year an OCL functionality. So, I build functional drivers over that period of time also while at it improving specific
DX API layers and OpenGL to make the balanced processing actually effect on modified builds against official catalyst. So, purpose changed actually at
11.1 build from functionality correction to performance and DXVA functionality corrections including proper base to install the driver to as in
clean installation style.

You can't just mod an FireGL functionality, heh. My drivers has nothing to do with FireGL functionality. Where that whole idea came from was from
yourself. Ideally yes FireGL functionality would be included, but you would need hell a lot more to make the driver + all the applications to detect or
use such functions would need hex edit the actual FireGL drivers not any normal CCC build even while some are based to FireGL drivers.

Well, this actually was kinda hit-n-miss. Since we needed an CFX and more over triple screen QFX system working here. So, had to build some of the builds based over very very restricted drivers.

The honest truth is I stille can't get it working over something like current Alpha releases or the really new releases. So, can't exactly say I could break it.

@commonly

Well, got this weekend pretty good time on my hands as nothing on table and dropped out last laptop this morning, so, I'll try to continue my
modified drivers perhaps I can get something done by today/tomorrow.

 

TwL

Thanks for clarification. For a novice like me it was unclear, what your mod was for...

As to your current effort, hopefully you will look not only at regular Catalist 11.8, but also at Catalist OpenGL 4.2 Beta to see which one is the best to include in your mod.

 

Well keep up the good work with it regardless TWL.
For me the older build I presently run works nicely, EXCEPT it doesn't have OpenCL support and some of the newer gizmos.
But the bezel correction is without a doubt, the best feature.

 

Well, old ones were really good I am still using something like v3.95 builds for CFX here and newer builds for single card setup.

11.7 was pretty good but not for EyeFinity or CFX where as 11.6b did pretty good job as of functionality, but that again is damn slow even to compared
to my mods. These new drivers works somehow, but they are really far reach from functionality. Half the Video section is totally unfunctional,
something like 'overdrive' is unfunctional as well as most of the other displays settings screws up way or another depending on system.

and top of all AMD driver team haven't even looked to how the Intel side PCI-Express works on SB boards. Their streaming concept is directly build
against it after something like 10.12, lol. (not saying this wouldn't be Intel Corporation causing issues with their lame SB iGPU setup restricted
PCI-express including unclosable iGPU even on p67, but fact how the data is push to screen by AMD graphics hardware while loaded on to the card is just bad).

I actually was looking in to 11.6b, 11.7, 11.8 preview and skipping clean up 11.8 WHQL 11.8 OGL 4.2. This is because the OGL 4.2 is unfunctional in a
sense that it breaks earlier standards and earlier standard are 10 times more useful that the new OGL. If it would be up to me modded driver would
still use 10.4 OGL files OGL 3.3 and what goes to 11.8 WHQL seems only thing good about it is the name.

but there's multiple other things bothering me currently than what OGL to use. Here's few things:

* Processing speed through compiler and runtime to OGL is bad. Only good driver was 11.7 which seems I can't use on again on really fast drivers like 11.8 preview was (not the new 11.8 WHQL or the OGL beta).
* The DXVA at all new drivers above 11.2 are buggy. Heck I am surprised that 11.7 error correction is so fast it can handle all the crap on these new ones.
* Application Profiling: The 'High Quality' settings disabled Application profiling paritially. Problem is this also removes fixes, lol. I mean seriously
this is something totalled by AMD driver team. First they even build the profiling following NVIDIA example which they can't seem to get straight
and after all the hard work they have done to actually display graphics / applications correctly they screw up on handling the data.

and on top of all that crap nothing else doesn't seem to work properly on CrossfireX systems (not to even mention EyeFinity + QFX) than CCC 11.6b.
So, this means even while you could get an 11.8 drivers to system you would have to use 2-3 months old files to actually utilize the hardware and
the display setups like EyeFinity wouldn't still work correctly. Funny thing about this is that we have fight this for past 16 months now and AMD still
can't get their stuff straight.

 

TwL

Thanks for clearing up your modding plans. You mentioned above your cleaning system - currently Genetix Cleaner v4.91. Please explain, in what sense it's different from Driver Sweeper and Driver Cleaner (updated to Win7 versions can be downloaded from their websites)?

I had some issues in the past, when updating Win 7 with SP1 after using these programs, but now according to their forums, new Driver Sweeper no longer removes ATI files supplied with OS, and the same is true for Driver Cleaner. Why AMD doesn't recommend to use ANY uninstaller except CCC own, when changing drivers?

So, how your Cleaner is different? Does it fully remove CCC 11.8 files and Registry entries from Win7 64-bit and Win Server 2008R2 desktops? Does it remove MS AMD drivers and files as well, thus making impossible future OS upgrades without OS Repair? Is it beneficial in general to remove MS generic AMD drivers before installing any new driver? Can their files affect each others work?

Also, do you think, Windows Server R2 64-bit may be missing some core OS files, required to fully use Radeon and FireGL drivers and CCC functionality compare to Win 7 64-bit? Any way to add such files to the server - its very convenient to use as a light and fast workstation, but some CCC and FireGL installs don't list it as a supported OS, and other do - do you know why?

Also, can you answer this question, since no-one else possibly knows that.

 

...ok; gtx 470 (superclocked) gpu clock: 625mhz/mem 1280MB@1674 mhz---My oced 5850: 850mhz/mem 1024MB@1200 mhz. (it's a slower gpu ok, but memory is more and well faster)
(didn't boder checking price diference between the two; maybe you'll wanna do that, dear Watson).

And about the oced cpu my ignorance and inexperience tell me that it doesnt really make that much diference being that a stock i7 doesn't seem to bottleneck that nvidia single card - even in graphical benchmarks like heaven unigine, oced cpu makes very little diference, as long as gpu isn't bottlenecked, as I heard.
Almost forgot... try making dinner on that gtx 470 after 10 mins playing a good game. You'll never wanna use your microwave ever again. And don't forget your ear plugs.

Please keep enlightening me, thank you.