ATI Video Drivers Ver 5.7

[RAB]

Was updateing my vid drivers and noticed a little piece of info in the release notes that might interest the C4 crowd.

Performance Improvements
Enhancements to our driver's internal memory management bring significant benefits to 64MB and 128MB framebuffer configurations in Catalyst™ 5.7.

The resulting performance gains are most apparent in high resolution, everything on modes, when running applications that use a significant amount of graphics memory. Examples include:

5-15% gains in 3DMark05 on some products
20-60% gain in Far Cry Regulator across multiple settings
25-60% gains in Half-Life 2 at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF
40-60% gains in UT2004 at 1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF
50-100% improvement in Comanche4 at 1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF
50-200% gains in certain ShaderMark tests at high resolution

If anybody out there hasnt updated there ATI drivers lately you might want to consider doing so now. Even a 1/4 of that improvment just might keep you alive in the servers a little longer. But then again I've updated mine. Might just be better for me if everybody else ignores this. See ya in the servers.

[nakulak]

lost 2 premium ati cards this year cause ati likes to use crappy little fans on their cards, in stead of halfway decent ones. the fix (buying a 20 dollar fan ) is simple (if your card isn't fried yet) , but I'm pissed and not gonna buy any more ati cards for a while. (the only way to improve 50-100% of the performance of a card that's laying in the trash can is to nail it to a tree in the backyard and use it for target practice LOL)

[RAB]

Which ATI cards did you have Nak. I have a 9500Pro and a 9800XT. I replaced the fan on the 9500 along time ago. But hell the 9800XT has a copper heatsink top and bottomthat covers **** near the whole card. I've run ATI on all my machines and never had one burn up. I ran the 9500 for the better part of a year before i upgraded the fan on it. But to be honest the only reason why I did that was because the new one had blue LED lights that matched my case. lol

[nakulak]

one was a 9800pro w/128 and the other was a 97 or 9800 series with 256 - sorry, don't remember the exact model#'s. I actually lost 3, but the last one had help lol and wasn't the fault of the fan. I did get 3 yrs out of the 9800 but was extremely bummed when the fault was the stinking $2 fan.

[RAB]

The fan on the 9800Pro is pretty much the same setup as the 9500 and 9700. They made some rather impressive changes to the XT version. Under the sticker on the top is a copper heatsink. Covers the ram on top and bottom sides. Never had any problems from this one and its getting to be around 2 years old now. And I'm sure you can tell by the pics here that yes its time for a cammera upgrade. lol My last work phone tok better pics then this one does.

[nakulak]

looks like they upgraded to a 10 or 15 dollar fan, but after getting burned I'm going elsewhere for the time being (course there's prolly no real difference between the cards anyway). don't spill your beer on that thing while you're putting it back. actually I've been strapping exta fans to my cpus for a while so they might overheat on fan failure, but not burn up, but just didnt think to do it to video card (put one in the rack server tho).

[RAB]

LOL Well theres a slight difference in the clock speeds on the core and the memory. If you use the ATI try tools to overclock a Pro card you can get the clocks speeds about the same as the stock settings for the XT. I guess it just depends on your idea of a real difference.

[nakulak]

what I meant to say was that there's probably not much real difference between the nvidia vs ati cards that are in the same class. I gave up overclocking a long time ago though cause I never felt it was worth burning out the machine, having a crashy machine, or having a machine that I couldn't depend on to get a modest, if any, performance gain ( I don't think I ever got anything more than 8% overclocking anything, ever. I don't know if that's changed or not, but after melting machines that weren't even overclocked it just ended up seeming impractical to me.

[RAB]

I know what ya mean there. I'm not much into overclocking myself. I played around a little bit with the vid card but not for long. I would rather buy good equipment from the start rather than save a few dollars on parts and have to OC to get any performance from it. You end up saving money in the long run buying the better parts. You might save 50 bucks on a cheaper video card at first. But if you burn it up while OCing it your out the cost of the card and the replacement. I'd rather spend a little more one time the a little less several times. LOL