Finally Got my ATI 8500

[The PIT]

God these drivers are crap. Under win2k only the orginal drivers dated september will work. If you remove all traces of Norton i.e norton protect norton antivirus norton personnel firewall newer ones work. Re-enable them after a succesful reboot and it error after error unable to update registry modsysn error norton protect couldn't start on drives rundll error etc. What crap at least the old ones work once you got around the 60hz only balls up.
Omegas latest don't work either and I get an error that the drivers are not for win2k after instatallion and reboot???

Win98 I can get later drivers to install however the the lastest recommended from ATi crash on when trying to go into display. The lastest leaked drivers install but then get stuck at 60hz and won't budge and also insist on installing two display monitors???

In both cases I've uninstalled the drivers first removed all traces from the registry and removed all inf files with ati invovled and still no go.

So I'm thinking of removeing Norton completly from win2k to see if later drivers install and run and then re-install norton and see what happens. If that works great. if it doesn't I've got a spare hard disk which I'll install a clean win2k and see what happens. If the same occurs I'll probably dump the card.
98 I'll probably do the same and see what happens.
Off to rage3d to see what I can find there.

[flyawaydog]

I am in the process of installing a fresh copy of windows 2000 as well. on a new hard disk. I will let you know what happens here. I have no problem in W2k that are similar to you. I also do not use norton protect or anything except the antivirus stuff.

[The PIT]

I've got some solutions to the refresh problem which I'll try out tonight.
If I can't fix win2k I ain't to bothered as I don't use it for gaming. One day I'll have to fix it no doubt but it's very tiring working on computers at work and at home.

I WANT TO RELAX ARRRRGHHHH!!!!!

[DentyCracker]

Slightly OT

Norton Utilities are for Win9X only. Not only that the only parts of NU that should be installed are ndd32 and sd32. Did I mention that this is under win9X only? NU has no place in NT based OSes. Just don't do it. You'll save yourself a lot of heartbreak/overwork

[GT98]

I've been using Norton SystemWorks with both Win2000 and WinXP without any problem with the reguard in installing ATI drivers for my Radeon 8500.


Scott

[The PIT]

They work fine with the old drivers but not the new. They also worked fine under any other video card. The solution is probably to uninstall them and re-install them and see what happens.
I also had problems under 95 so it's not a issue of operating systems more like a combo of software and hardware and poor driver implimentation.
Come on Matrox dilver us a card.

[jackzod]

The Pit

I use win98se, the best drivers I found (without the refresh bug) are the 9005, I have no problem at all with Norton Anti-Virus with these drivers. I don't use Norton protect tough. If you play any Q3 engine base game (RTCW ) I suggest you those drivers since you gonna have a nice boost in performance with those compared to those beta on ATI website.

The 9008 drivers have the refresh bug (theres a fix, but its a pain in the ass). I didn't tried the 9012. Somebody even suggested that with these drivers you would have to reinstall The OS to see a real improvement....

Keep in mind , these are dev drivers, not really intended for the public, now if ATI could remove their hands from their ass and release some OFFICIAL drivers worth talkin about...

As for the WinXP drivers or 2K, I don't use them but for XP the 6011 seems to be not bad, as for the refresh bug, theres a fix for that (a little util) you can find on rage3d.com , on the forum there you can find a lot of info on those drivers and bug fixes too.

Hope it helps

jackzod

[The PIT]

Well windoze 98 seems to be solved. Hunting through rage3d forums I found someone who had discovered that Ati be default turn off windoze plug and play for monitors. I found this key in the registry and turned it back on again and I can reset the display refresh rates. Theres one or two oddities like 90hz refresh doesn't work you just get 85hz.
Re-installed nortons anti virus 2002 and so far there hasn't been any complaints about low memory etc. Fingers crossed.
Next stage win2k but I'll leave that to this weekend. I think it's remove Norton 2002 system works and see what happens if that fails uninstall Nortons personnel firewall as well.
Just noted on the windoze update page that they want me to install the orginal drivers. No thanks.

[jackzod]

Nice to see it works now enjoy it !

BTW which drivers are you usin ?

[The PIT]

Good question the realese date is 9/1/2002 so I think it's the 9012 version. The device manager says d700-02011082200.
I've tried so many versions I've lost track a little.
3dmark 2001 now works with the 32bit Z Buffer. I now get 8129 marks at 1024*768 beating the other score by 1000 points.

[flyawaydog]

I am ashamed of myself for talking abut ATI in this forum. Well disturbed is a beter word, but i searched the tech support of Ati's sie and it looks as though windows 2k is the only os that they cant make work with multiple resolutions. I guess I am going to try out XP pro and see if that helps. I hate to install the bloatware. I have a feeling am going to be headed back into the windows 9x (moreso 95) zone of uninstalling all the crap Microsoft thinks is going to make me want to use their stuff. I remember installing windows 95. It took days to turn off and delete the useless files and links.

Windows 2000 was good while it lasted.. the only reason I wont go back to 98se is the 4GB file limitation and the hreadaches FAT creates for editing video, not to mention memory managment. i am sure i have forgotten several ther headaches. sigh.

Yes matrox release to us a card so I can return my ATI Radeon.

[The PIT]

At least I've got my solution from rage3d before the forums went down. I can't say thanks at the moment.
Yes come on Matrox. I'm surprised they haven't done it already a day after I bought the Radeon. It normaly happens like that.

[PeTe]

Rage3d-forums are great resource, any Radeon owner should visit it regurally. Btw, there was a test done by anandtech that used Unreal 2-engine and Radeon 8500 came first even when they used the OLD xx86 drivers. Ti500 could beat radeon only in the 1600x1200x32 resolution by 1 fps or something like that. But radeon was faster in the lower res ( funny, usually its the other way around ).

The new 6014-6018 drivers might have made a BIG difference, atleast if you think how much the nature test has got better in 3DMark ( yeah, i know that its just a synth. bench, but still nature test is a good way to GUESS what the performance in the future MIGHT be. ).

Sure would like to get my hands on that U2-Test, anyone ?

PeTe

[The PIT]

Well this weekend it's get the latest drivers onto win2k I hope. Got the colours looking a bit better. Display getting a bit like my old G550 but not as good.

[Indiana]

The Pit, there are (finally) new leaked Win2k drivers out: 5.13.6018. Didn't really test them, but up to now no problems.
They have added a nice extra function to their DualDisplay that resembles Matrox' DVDMax feature: In the Overlay-tab you can find a new item "Theater mode". check this and you'll get any overlay that you have playing in a window on your first screen zoomed fullscreen to the TVOut. Works great here for most stuff, however there's a slight bug (well it wouldn't be ATI if there were not at least one little bug...): The aspect ratio is lost for DivX files which have the top and bottom black borders cut.