Radeon Cards

[Bahumat]

My friend's got a Radeon gfx card, it seems to be throwing them out of daoc quite frequently, if they Alt+Tab to the desktop when playing the icons are sometimes not there.

Im guessing that updating the gfx drivers would sort this, my friend is not uber with pc's and they are in another country so its not like i can pop round and mess about with it.

Basically i want to write them a guide on what to do, however as im a Nvidia user i wont/dont know any difficulties they may experience.

So far i know there are problems with the latest Radeon drivers, i think im correct in assuming a 3rd party set of drivers called Omega are the answer (can you confirm this?). Also do Radeon cards need a Drive Removal software to be run before you upgrade?


To anyone who had this problem and solved it, can you advise me on some of the DONTS, if i can learn from your mistakes it will be much easier to make a fool proof guide so to speak.

 

[Vandrakken]

I use a Radeon 9800 pro and have problems. Mainly within the first 5 or 10 mins of loading the pc/game I get a black screen.. like the video card has been cut off totally. Means I have to reset and after that it works fine.

Some times daoc just totally closes and on occasion the pc will reset itself but every day without fail it will black screen me before I can use it properly.

Ideas I thought "might" cause this problem

a) The gfx card is getting too hot
b) The cpu is too hot (52c)
c) The gfx card is actually faulty
d) One of the memory banks has problems writing data
e) The drivers/Radeon Catalyst is crap.. period

 

[LordjOX]

Useing a Radeon 9800 PRO and it's a fucking joke gfx card. Drivers are total shit, only ones I found stable with daoc is 1.52 and 1.61 drivers. Try anything else at own risk. Other drivers made u crash to desktop w/o warning, VPU error blabla
And still I get some gfx bugs which I solve with ctrl+alt+del. And rarely a blank screen and forced reboot.
Seems daoc more optimized for nvidia, if that's his primary game tell him to swap asap.

 

[Naffets]

I had a 9800 pro for over 2 years, cracking card. Nothing wrong with it at all, still working at the moment and did me fine for daoc even when recording. edit: I've since moved onto a X1800XL

No need to slate ATi for something which evidentally isn't their problem. As far as i know daoc isn't "optimised" for either of the two card vendors. I'll stand by ATi until Nvidia produce better cards though.

 

[Bahumat]

Can anyone actually give me something useful please?

 

[Naffets]

There is a driver removal tool on the www.ati.com website, and its probably a good idea to get modified ati drivers, i.e Omega Drivers

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

That help?

 

[Bahumat]

There is a driver removal tool on the www.ati.com website, and its probably a good idea to get modified ati drivers, i.e Omega Drivers

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

That help?

yep, i was unsure if it was omega drivers but you have answered that!

1 thing contradicts itself,
REMINDERS:
A- If you have the normal ATI drivers installed, uninstall the ATI Control Panel or CCC BEFORE upgrading to these drivers, the Omega Drivers already have the CP integrated and another CP will cause conflicts or other problems.

B- There is no need to uninstall ANY previous drivers (ATI or OMEGA) when installing these, the new ones will overwrite any previous settings, but if you still want to uninstall them completely, is ok.

or is ATI Control Panel/CCC something different from the drivers itself?

 

[Naffets]

yep, i was unsure if it was omega drivers but you have answered that!

1 thing contradicts itself,
REMINDERS:
A- If you have the normal ATI drivers installed, uninstall the ATI Control Panel or CCC BEFORE upgrading to these drivers, the Omega Drivers already have the CP integrated and another CP will cause conflicts or other problems.

B- There is no need to uninstall ANY previous drivers (ATI or OMEGA) when installing these, the new ones will overwrite any previous settings, but if you still want to uninstall them completely, is ok.

or is ATI Control Panel/CCC something different from the drivers itself?

Ati control panel / ccc (catalyst control centre) is something completely different to the driver, this is what is used to configure the settings for performance/smartgart/quality etc. Omega drivers has optimisations which the standard control centre packages dont.

 

[Herjulf]

The SAD SAD thing atm is that for DR daoc to work somewhat properly with various RADEON CARDS.

you...must....DOWNGRADE your drivers.

CLICK HERE

Other games have overall improved as catalyst versions raised in version.
But the newer catalyst drivers dont like DAOC atm.

Sad truth.

 

[Bahumat]

The SAD SAD thing atm is that for DR daoc to work somewhat properly with various RADEON CARDS.

you...must....DOWNGRADE your drivers.

CLICK HERE

Other games have overall improved as catalyst versions raised in version.
But the newer catalyst drivers dont like DAOC atm.

Sad truth.

thanks for that

 

[WiZe^]

I got RADEON 9600, Before i got alot of game crashes in cata/DR Client, but when i installed Megadrivers - not a singel game crash

 

[Salvion]

Im borowing this thread as i have sort of same problem....
This is a new come with a PC Chillin firewall on and when im gonna connect for the first time to daoc i get a question to allow this prog to connect (as should be) as this is in middle logging in of daoc i have to alt-tab out to aswer it but as soon as i do that i just get daoc splashscreen and i can see windows taskbar with programs but i CANT press anything....at all so cant logg in as i cant grant daoc access...grrrr

Ive used latest ATI driver (6.3 cata) and it dident work, and is it really only possibility to run really old drivers as posted above?? thats sick imo

Im using a ATI X1800XT 250mb card

plz say that you can help me

 

[Darzil]

Firewall setup =>
https://faq.camelot-europe.com/cgi-.../std_adp.php?p_faqid=446&p_created=1013776179

Also, as the GOA/DAoC environment has changed, the patch server is no longer on 193.252.123.x subnet, and also TCP port 80 now needs to be unblocked to allow patching. Glastonbury is on another subnet, not sure of the IP range.

Darzil

 

[Salvion]

Tnx for fast responce Darzil but firewall isent a reall problem here as the game is patched and fine!! BUT its some gfx prob that prevent me from logging in to the game....have no idea what to do really.

 

[Chronictank]

IceQ radeon 9800 Pro also,
absolutely brilliant card to be honest never had any problems with it at all,
im running Catalyst 5.2 atm on it but usually go for the Omega equivalent, havent upgraded for yonks on my older system so might be a place to start as Herjulf said

Daoc doesnt seem to like the newer drivers for some reason but most other games run a bit better, shame there isnt a way to hotswap between them

 

[Thegreatest]

I'm using a Radeon 9800Pro card as well and never had problems with it in any game...I'm always using the newest drivers, so it's Catalyst 6.3 for me atm. DAoC did never crash because of graphic problems so far, all other games are running fine as well. I'm just using ATI Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst Control Center, Ati Tray Tools uses way less resources than the catalyst control center and you can configure a lot more compared to control center...

 

[Darzil]

Tnx for fast responce Darzil but firewall isent a reall problem here as the game is patched and fine!! BUT its some gfx prob that prevent me from logging in to the game....have no idea what to do really.

There are three places it needs access -

Patcher
Login
Game

It's the game one which often has problems, and it sounds like what you describe, as it can be hard to alt tab out and hit ok for the firewall. Check your firewall log and see if it's blocking anything, then open it manually if it is. As well as TCP ports, you have to open UDP - works if you don't, but will zone VERY slowly.

If you get past the Connecting to Server message and to connected, it's not TCP being blocked. If it takes ages to zone in, it could be UDP being blocked.

Darzil

 

[Kuhan]

IceQ radeon 9800 Pro also,
absolutely brilliant card to be honest never had any problems with it at all,
im running Catalyst 5.2 atm on it but usually go for the Omega equivalent, havent upgraded for yonks on my older system so might be a place to start as Herjulf said


same

 

[Salvion]

Well at the same time i got the tip here to check the fire wall my brother told me to do that also, so i did and it was actually 1 part of the problem, so when i gave the Game.dll manuel permission to log on it worked and i got in game, tho when im finished loadig the game jumps back to windows and minimize daoc, it still running so no problem just anoying.

Well tnx for all fast responces!!

 

[Kaun_IA]

i have a ati x800pro.

uber card, no prbs at all.... now

took some time to find perfect drivers to work correctly.

 

[Cadiva]

I have an ATI 9600 card, using the latest Catalyst drivers, and haven't had any problems with DR or DAoC in general.

I've always used ATI and never had a problem with any of them when playing DAoC, EverQuest, EQ2, Shadowbane, World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies.

Only game I've ever had issues with (crash to desktop) was Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and apparently there was a recognised problem with ATI 9200 cards, which is what I had in at the time.
Haven't gone back and tried to play it since I got the 9600 so can't say if that would solve it, but I suspect it would.

 

[Darzil]

Only game I've ever had issues with (crash to desktop) was Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and apparently there was a recognised problem with ATI 9200 cards, which is what I had in at the time.
Haven't gone back and tried to play it since I got the 9600 so can't say if that would solve it, but I suspect it would.

Both that and the sequel crash for me whenever anything happens in the background - so if the AV starts downloading and says so, for example. You get used to saving regularly.

Darzil

 

[Cadiva]

Both that and the sequel crash for me whenever anything happens in the background - so if the AV starts downloading and says so, for example. You get used to saving regularly.

Darzil

Ahhh, never thought of that perhaps being a cause of it, just knew that Bioware had said there was a prob with the 9200 series of cards.
Will have to go back and give it another go, it was an excellent game.

As a PS to the other, I don't know how relevant it is but my PC isn't that uber, i have an AMD XP1500 CPU, 1g of RAM, my 9600 ATI card (256mg one iirc) and an Audigy Soundblaster 2 card (although that's new, was using onboard sound from the MSI mainboard).

When playing DAoC I tend to only either be reading stuff on t'intertron or chatting via Miranda, sometimes running Napster or WinAmp and I've never had any problems gaming.

 

[Phalanx]

Just to add to this, ATI cards as such might be fine but the ATI Catalyst drivers on other hand are of extremely poor quality. When programming Direct 3D on top of the Catalyst drivers I've come across a bunch of just ridiculous bugs and faults I have no idea how the developers have managed to squeeze in. Some of these driver releases are nothing short of unfinished development versions.

It might be the case that these drivers work splendid on certain systems, but the fact that they are responsible for ridiculously slow performance and instability on some systems proves they are utter crap. The performance I get in DAoC (and other games that use the so called D3D legacy mode/fixed pipeline mode, for those who know these things) with my Radeon 9600 Pro is the equivalent of what I get with my previous card, a two generations older GeForce 2 series card.

While the Omega driver series usually performs better than ATI's own drivers, you should be aware that these aren't written from scratch with hardware documents in hand, they are just the original Catalyst release with some tweaks, fixes and modifications, and may very well display the same problems you might have had with the original Catalyst.

My opinion is that if you want a stable high performing graphics card that works fine on all configurations, you should buy NVidia.

 

[Battleboobs]

im using a Radeon x850 Platinum with newest omega drivers and no problems whatsoever