ATI deserves an award...

[lindberg]

...for making the worst drivers! It's absolutely incredible how they can make drivers this bad. The hardware is absolutely ok and I am very satified with the performance of my 8500LE but the drivers are so unstable.
They have not so long ago released new catalyst drivers (malmsteen would probably think they released they fury ), and now I atleast got rid of the random reboots I had before.

But there is still a lot of work to do. Trying to get a deacent benchmark with 3D-Mark 2001SE only result in crashing to the desktop. And this is kinda interesting, this only occurs after a fresh reboot while the system is still clean. After this compulsory crash it will work just fine to run 3D-Mark again without crashing

I could perhaps accept this if it wouldn't be for the fps, when I compared the first run with the second I have about 160-170fps in the first while I have around 155 fps the second run. This indicates that I would have had a much better score the first time

But I don't think 3D-Mark score is such a big deal, I think it is a great test to check the system stability with. And the first-run-crashes shows them self in games as well, being thrown out of them sometimes. E.g I only need to set the detail level to high in need for speed hot pursuit 2 to lock the game when a level is loaded.

If only matrox still would have a competitive affordable graphics card. 8500LE with tv-out is in my opinion the most price-worth substitute for my G400 and I got the performance boost I longed for. Hey, it's even faster than the parhelia.

[Marshmallowman]

Did you clean out your old video drivers...ATI is very picky about that.

My cheap ass 8500(HIS) is very stable do you have a via motherboard?

[lindberg]

I hate the clean-out-old-driver-before-installing-new procedure. I really do. This way I must reboot the machine alteast one extra time just to see a 256 color login screen big as the monitor display, with all registry tweaks gone and other settings.

I am so sick and tired of waiting for windows to boot, when messing with drivers all that it results in is hours of waiting for windows, in one way or another.

And yes, I have a VIA based mobo. KT400 to be precise, but I won't blame via for this and I will not speak of the 4-in-1 driver released every second day. Hence, last time I installed windows I skipped the whole 4-in-1 thing and I didn't suffer from it, nor have I gained anything now when I installed the 4-in-1 for the new mobo.

[Topha]

Try This

Those drivers work fine for me, he tweaks them a little and puts the best part from all ATI drivers in one. Those also give you more desktop resolutions to choose from, as well as higher frequency rates under win2k/XP

[The PIT]

Work fine for me apart from dumbfart which fubars everything up so I just a manuel update to leave this crud off. Go to rage3d forums and theres a guide on how to do a fresh install of the drivers.

[Gurm]

1. You MUST MUST MUST do a "clean install" of the drivers. Rage3D has a guide, and I wrote a VERY inclusive guide to doing a clean install under Win2k/WinXP that is posted in the forums at Driver Heaven.

2. You NEED the latency patch for your VIA chipset. It is available at Sudhian (formerly VIA Hardware) or directly from the author's website:

http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/

This is a REQUIRED patch. It will eliminate 90+% of hangs, crashes, etc.

I use a SiS chipset, and experience NO problems with ANY of the ATI drivers released in the past 9 months. Not even the experimental ones.

- Gurm

[Electric Amish]

Since my recent change to ATI I have yet to have a driver problem. I'm running a VIA chipset and never had a problem.

amish

[The PIT]

You can also try Omega drivers as well which can found over at driverheaven. Some users have had a lot less problems with these even with smartgart (dumbfart).

[Gurm]

Listen to what I posted above.

Virtually ALL people with VIA chipsets have problems. The latency patch fixes those problems.

- Gurm

[The PIT]

Gurm you should know my viewpoint on Via. Via = Shit.
I never had to use Georges patches but I do know people have had too. People have found Omega drivers and Cyborg drivers more reliable as well at times.

[lindberg]

Gurm, you are so absolutely right. I removed all ati stuff as described in the rage3d forum and voilà, now it's stable enough to finnish 3D-Mark 2001SE at the first run after reboot!
This is really spooky
Didn't install the latency patch though since it said on the site that it didn't suppport KT400, and I don't think I'll try that "dangerous_beta", doesn't sound to good.

But it's still not hard to get 3D-Mark to jump to desktop on the first run, I just have to bump up the FSB a few MHz and there we go again.

But as I suspected the score was much better on the first fresh run of 3D-Mark. Now it was 300p higher than I got before at default speeds.

[Gurm]

Heh.

Again, give Omega a try if you haven't already. I'd advise to use the Plutoniums, but Cyborg isn't actively producing those anymore.

George will eventually sort out the KT400. Give him some time.

- Gurm

[lindberg]

Uh oh, Radeon has to be a woman. I mean it all makes sense. The human demo is a woman, rachel, so my guess is that radeon is to. Because the darn card over-reacts to everything and is so over-sensitive!
It was sooo easy to get it unstable again, just had to update the 4-in-1 drivers (or whatever ghey name they're called now) and it won't finnish a fresh reboot 3D-Mark.
This is ridiculous, really it is. Is this all it needs to become unstable? Wouldn't have updated to via4.45 unless they'd bragged about how much better the KT400 would perform, just like when clocking it a few tiny MHz, cannot finnish 3D-Mark at first run after reboot. On the second try it will though, but the more times I run 3D-Mark without reboot the poorer the score will be
...The omega page is kinda ghey, nor can I go to the ati section there, just get a banner popup , just take a look at this...
And I couldn't find a newer release than 28-sep over at driverheaven
But thanx anyway all, it sure has helped. And now I realise that the card is of female gender as well

[Novdid]

It's probably not your Radeon that's messing up your system. It's probably a combination of things. Maybe your CPU is to hot? Maybe you have a weak PSU? Maybe your Windows install is so messed up, you need to format and reinstall everything?

And that link works perfectly OK! just scroll down a tinsy bit and click on the download link.

[The PIT]

Basically don't use the 4 in 1's as they're buggy as shit. All I used were the drivers for agp and used microsoft drivers for anything else. If you do find a set that doesn't break the system stick to them as later sets tend to introduce more bugs.