Graphics ati card /or catalyst problem!

well this is something that has been bothering me for quite some time but never got round to solving it:
- this is my first ati gfx card (9800XT) so i cant really speak from experience, but whenever i format (too often ) and windows is booting up, at first it will take no time whatsoever to boot...sweeet!

- now as soon as i install drivers for the video card, it will not only take longer to boot up (that black screen with blue loading bar and colourfull xp logo) but it will also send my monitor a video of signal after that loading screen, before it gets to the login screen...now it aint a biggie but tis annoying who it seems to work better without any drivers at all...now i might just be an ati gfx card/driver n00b, but it seems to have done this consistently with about 4 different versions of detonator's...i have tried cat 4.06,4.11, now on detonators 4.8....or am i missing something here?

basically has anyone else found the same or similiar scenario with their radeon???

cheers for any clues...

o yeah, btw, system specs in sig, and it was a saphire r9800pro, with a r360 core so i flashed it using the hercules 9800xt bios....

 

I get kinda the same thing...bootup seems to take a while even after being optimised with Bootvis, and theres a really long period of time where both of my monitors are just blank between the loading and login screens. Probably around 20secs. It was a lot less with the Omega 5.6 drivers but thought i should update for the sake of being...well, up to date. Whole system 'feels' slower with the Omega 5.7s as well...

 

well now the pc just freeze's up every once in a bit so back to format for me and maybe older drivers...do the latest drivers work well for other people?

note: could be updated *inf driver's too, but i would have thought intel's drivers are pretty rock solid??

 

i use the lastest on my 9800pro flashed to xt and i am running good. Probly the best ones since 4.12 for me.

 

so you dont get the whole monitor going into standby before it even get's into windoze???

 

My montior turns its self off and right back on.

 

Lots of talk in this thread about version 4.x and latest drivers.... My catalyst version is 5.8. Are you all using older drivers, or am I using the wrong one? I went to the ATi website, clicked on drivers, WinXP, Radeon, and the only option I had was for 5.8.

 

now back on old *inf drivers and latest version of catalyst, which is 5.8 and all seems good (touch wood) no random crashing or anything!

now i installed bootViz to check out what is going on at boottime, and it told me that it takes 30sec (roughly) for my gfx card driver to load during which time i imagine it goes into standby mode (the monitor that is)...would this mean that my cpu can just not process it quickly enough?

 

Had similar issues with mine, moving to 9800pro from 9500NP, and again going to X800XT PE from the 9800....
Not sure how I fixed it, but think it's an issue with some of the newer drivers....

 

ah, so in theory there is a way of stopping the monitor being put into standby and coming back...if you (or anyone else) has any clues or rembers how its done please enlighten me, as my searches have turned up naught!

cheers anyway!

 

Hi Felix...

I had EXACTLY the same issue after flashing my pro into an XT...
I couldnt be bothered to fix the issue, but I think it relates to the drivers still hanging onto the the fact it WAS a pro....
- It might be something in the gfx BIOS you've flashed to.. After all, though you have the r360 chip, it's not exactly the same as an XT..

I'll have to check, but I think I managed to hack the 4.12 drivers so I'm running the XT driver path (and get the 300ish 3dmark increase) without getting that pause.... (and on the original Sapphire 9800pro BIOS)

I'll have a go at hacking them at work now... will get back to you later!

 

nice one mate....maybe it was that then....having only had matrox and nvidia cards in the past, i seem to recall hearing good things about ati drivers, so i was a bit suprised when this happened...now that i now its due to my own fault/fun (flashing the gfx card) i might just have to live with it...o well....

 

Hi... Back again...
I've sorted out the 4.12 driver file, so that you can run the XT driver, while using the original 9800pro BIOS...
It's only a tiny .INF file, so I could email it to you if ya like...?

- Just to check though, have you completely removed all traces of the ATI driver files since flashing to XT?
I found that even the 'ATI software remover' didnt get rid of the files that Windows caches....
- Just run a search within 'Windows\system32' for anything starting in ati...
'ati2mtag.sys' for example - delete them all!

Give me a shout if you want that file and instructions:
simonbriers*at*hotmail.com

 

so hang on by running this driver i would stop the delay in the load as even though it has the 360chip and xt bios, as with the standard driver that came from ati (catalyst 5.8) doesnt quite know what to do with my card?

or is it that i reflash my gfx card with the 9800pro bios and then just trick windoze into thinking its an xt anyway??

cheers for all your help!

 

OK... I'm not 100% sure it will fix the delay issue....
- Sorry - should've made that more clear -
If you want to wait, i'll check my setup tonight, but I definately got rid of the problem!

- I had too many probs with my flash to XT.. It ended up lowering my overclock because of the ram timings - the opposite effect than I wanted!
I just found this way of getting the performance boost without that $hite..

- You might be better off looking at something like the Omega modded drivers... I think they can softmod a pro into an XT, in exactly the same way i'm suggesting, just that at least those are well-known and supported etc....

I'll be posting a guide here on how to mod your own drivers (for what it's worth) Might be handy for some, especially as 3dmark seems to see them as standard Cats!

 

Could it be the smart gart testing the card? I know that it does some testing which makes the screen go blank after you install the drivers for the first time, and when you change the AGP settings.
Also if you've got the Control Centre installed, then it fills up around 70MB of memory with 'something', which might be the cause of longer load times.

 

I also found 4.12 drivers were the best for my old 9800xt. Actually found that COD seemed to like it more than anything else.