Using Catalyst Drivers with FireGL 8800?

CaseMillennium · Sep 20, 2002, 05:13 AM

Hi everyone,

has anyone successfully used the normal radeon (catalyst) drivers with the FireGL 8800? Since it seems to work the other way around, I wonder if I could use the normal drivers to improve gameperformance (and maybe fix some problems).

Any ideas?

Case

Armand Karlsen · Sep 20, 2002, 05:17 AM

Ditto. I have a FireGL 8800, wouldl like to use Radoen 8500 128MB drivers with it.

lil bastard · Sep 20, 2002, 09:45 PM

It cant hurt to try. The worst that will happen is it doesnt work and you will have to load the standard vga driver and install your regular drivers.

CaseMillennium · Sep 21, 2002, 03:39 AM

I already did this, and it didn´t work. I thought, maybe someone had made them work.

The reason I ask, is mainly because there seems to be a big bug in the FireGL drivers causing really bad performance on AMD Athlons on Via-Boards in OpenGL, especially in Maya. I first thought, there might be something wrong with the installation, however after running 3D Mark 2001 SE and getting 7192 (which is not really that great but is a normal performance compared to Radeon 8500 cards, which mostly are between 7000 and 8100 in the result database), I really thing it is a driver bug. So I thought, maybe the normal radeon drivers will work better. But sadly they don´t seem to work at all.

Case

Spankmaster C · Sep 21, 2002, 09:53 AM

wait a minute...

a fire-gl card only has open-gl support right? how are you able to run 3dmark then?

CaseMillennium · Sep 21, 2002, 03:52 PM

No, the FireGL 8800 has both, DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL Support. DirectX doesn´t quite reach the speed of a Radeon 8800, but it works well (I got 7190 3DMarks on an AMD Athlon 1.4 Ghz, 512 MB, Via KT266 at 1024x768, 32 bit, no AA. Regarding the result database on madonion, the Radeon 8500 reaches from 7000 to 8200, so the 7190 I get seem to be ok).

However, there really seems to be a heavy bug in the FireGL Drivers making the card a lot slower than an Radeon 8500 in Maya on AMD Athlon Systems. I already contacted support about this, hopefully they can fix this soon.

Case

Uriel · Sep 21, 2002, 07:43 PM

does the driver not install or does it not work properly after installation?
perhaps you just need to add a device id in the inf..?
the 8800, what is it clocked to?

badboyc · Sep 21, 2002, 07:56 PM

DX8.1 on this card can be summed up very easily in one word... CRAP!

My friend bought one of these cards but couldn't use it because he was using Win98 at the time so be bought it round to me when I had WinXP installed on my system. My Radeon 64mb VIVO kicked its ass at DX. I couldn't get Deus EX running on the card, and it beat my card by about 300 in 3DMark2001.

CaseMillennium · Sep 22, 2002, 03:33 AM

The drivers won´t install using the setup programm. However, when you install the drivers by hand, everything is copied but the system starts in VGA-Mode. I will try to modify the inf-File, but I don´t think this will work.

The FireGL 8800 is clocked to 250/290 although I can get 300/300 without any artifacts (I didn´t test it higher since the cooler looks a bit small to me).

@badboy: Which driver version did you use? The old drivers only supported 32 bit which could cause problems in games, but the new drivers also support 256 and 16k. Certainly, the drivers aren´t optimized for games, that´s why a Radeon 8500 will still be faster, but the difference isn´t that huge.

Case

Armand Karlsen · Sep 22, 2002, 06:44 AM

Which 8800 drivers are supposed to support 8-bit colour? The specs page on ati.com says "there is no support for 8-bit video modes".

BTW: my 8800's default clock is 275/300, not 250/290. I can get to 295/304 before 3DMark/Windows crashes.

CaseMillennium · Sep 22, 2002, 10:09 AM

I am using the 3036 Drivers with Windows 2000 and can switch to 32 Bit, 16 Bit and 256 Colors. However, I guess if your card is default clocked to 275/290 you might have an OEM-Version. 250/290 is the official setting used on the retail version. However, it works stable with 275/300, so I really wonder why it isn´t the default (there are absolutely no artifacts or anything and 3D Marks runs great).

Case

Armand Karlsen · Sep 22, 2002, 05:34 PM

I'm running Win2k SP2 with the 3036 drivers and i CAN'T switch to 8-bit colour...

CaseMillennium · Sep 23, 2002, 08:51 AM

Funny thing, but you are right. I have tried it on a fresh Win2k Installation and it also gives me only 16 Bit and 32 Bit. However, on my Win2k Server Installation I can also choose 256 colors. Maybe Powerstrip modifies something or I have another tool installed somewhere (I think I should clean my system up a little....)

Case

Armand Karlsen · Sep 23, 2002, 04:11 PM

Was that fresh installation Win2k Workstation? Win2k Server may allow 8-bit.

CaseMillennium · Sep 23, 2002, 04:35 PM

Yes, it was a fresh install. However, the 8Bit thing doesn´t seem to have anything to do with the Serverversion, since I tried it on another installation and there it didn´t work, It must be caused by something else, some another programm mostlikely. I will try to figure out, what this was.

Case

Sep 20, 2002, 05:13 AM	#1	Advertisement (Guests Only) Login or Register to remove this ad
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	Using Catalyst Drivers with FireGL 8800? Hi everyone, has anyone successfully used the normal radeon (catalyst) drivers with the FireGL 8800? Since it seems to work the other way around, I wonder if I could use the normal drivers to improve gameperformance (and maybe fix some problems). Any ideas? Case

Sep 20, 2002, 09:45 PM	#3
lil bastard Radeon R520 Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Boca Raton FL Posts: 556	It cant hurt to try. The worst that will happen is it doesnt work and you will have to load the standard vga driver and install your regular drivers. __________________ Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z \| i5-2500k \| 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 \| 256GB Samsung 830 SSD\| Samsung F3 1TB \| Antec Truepower 650w \| Dell 2405FPW PVA \| Dell 2007FP IPS \| MSI N460GTX Hawk Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 \| i5-2400 \| 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 \| 60GB OCZ Vertex Plus SSD - SRT \| WD Black 1TB \| Antec Earthwatts 500w \| Vizio 42" 1080P \| Sapphire HD7850 OC \| ATI Theater 650 Pro Intel DH67BL \| i3-2100 \| 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 \| 1x2TB WD EARS \| 4x2TB Samsung F4EG \| Antec Earthwatts 380w \| Headless Lenovo x230t Tablet PC \| i5-3320M \| 8GB DDR3-1600 \| Samsung 256GB 830SSD \| www.ItsJustWhatever.com

Sep 21, 2002, 09:53 AM	#5
Spankmaster C Sweden Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 864	wait a minute... a fire-gl card only has open-gl support right? how are you able to run 3dmark then? __________________ Athlon 1.2 GHz @ 1.4 GHz ASUS A7A266 rev. 1.03 512 MB DDR RAM 155 MHz Club3D Radeon 8500 Creative Soundblaster Live! Platinum Cambridge Soundworks DTT2200 5.1 Speakers Windows XP Professional SP1

Sep 21, 2002, 07:43 PM	#7
Uriel Unbiased Geek Join Date: Feb 2001 Posts: 4,829	does the driver not install or does it not work properly after installation? perhaps you just need to add a device id in the inf..? the 8800, what is it clocked to? __________________ lol

Sep 21, 2002, 07:56 PM	#8
badboyc Radeon R300 Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: London, England Posts: 150	DX8.1 on this card can be summed up very easily in one word... CRAP! My friend bought one of these cards but couldn't use it because he was using Win98 at the time so be bought it round to me when I had WinXP installed on my system. My Radeon 64mb VIVO kicked its ass at DX. I couldn't get Deus EX running on the card, and it beat my card by about 300 in 3DMark2001. __________________ when a problem comes along... you must frag it!

Sep 20, 2002, 05:17 AM	#2
Armand Karlsen Radeon R200 Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: London, UK Posts: 55	Ditto. I have a FireGL 8800, wouldl like to use Radoen 8500 128MB drivers with it.

Sep 21, 2002, 03:39 AM	#4
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	I already did this, and it didn´t work. I thought, maybe someone had made them work. The reason I ask, is mainly because there seems to be a big bug in the FireGL drivers causing really bad performance on AMD Athlons on Via-Boards in OpenGL, especially in Maya. I first thought, there might be something wrong with the installation, however after running 3D Mark 2001 SE and getting 7192 (which is not really that great but is a normal performance compared to Radeon 8500 cards, which mostly are between 7000 and 8100 in the result database), I really thing it is a driver bug. So I thought, maybe the normal radeon drivers will work better. But sadly they don´t seem to work at all. Case

Sep 21, 2002, 03:52 PM	#6
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	No, the FireGL 8800 has both, DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL Support. DirectX doesn´t quite reach the speed of a Radeon 8800, but it works well (I got 7190 3DMarks on an AMD Athlon 1.4 Ghz, 512 MB, Via KT266 at 1024x768, 32 bit, no AA. Regarding the result database on madonion, the Radeon 8500 reaches from 7000 to 8200, so the 7190 I get seem to be ok). However, there really seems to be a heavy bug in the FireGL Drivers making the card a lot slower than an Radeon 8500 in Maya on AMD Athlon Systems. I already contacted support about this, hopefully they can fix this soon. Case

Sep 22, 2002, 03:33 AM	#9
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	The drivers won´t install using the setup programm. However, when you install the drivers by hand, everything is copied but the system starts in VGA-Mode. I will try to modify the inf-File, but I don´t think this will work. The FireGL 8800 is clocked to 250/290 although I can get 300/300 without any artifacts (I didn´t test it higher since the cooler looks a bit small to me). @badboy: Which driver version did you use? The old drivers only supported 32 bit which could cause problems in games, but the new drivers also support 256 and 16k. Certainly, the drivers aren´t optimized for games, that´s why a Radeon 8500 will still be faster, but the difference isn´t that huge. Case

Sep 22, 2002, 06:44 AM	#10
Armand Karlsen Radeon R200 Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: London, UK Posts: 55	Which 8800 drivers are supposed to support 8-bit colour? The specs page on ati.com says "there is no support for 8-bit video modes". BTW: my 8800's default clock is 275/300, not 250/290. I can get to 295/304 before 3DMark/Windows crashes. Last edited by Armand Karlsen : Sep 22, 2002 at 07:35 AM.

Sep 22, 2002, 10:09 AM	#11
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	I am using the 3036 Drivers with Windows 2000 and can switch to 32 Bit, 16 Bit and 256 Colors. However, I guess if your card is default clocked to 275/290 you might have an OEM-Version. 250/290 is the official setting used on the retail version. However, it works stable with 275/300, so I really wonder why it isn´t the default (there are absolutely no artifacts or anything and 3D Marks runs great). Case

Sep 22, 2002, 05:34 PM	#12
Armand Karlsen Radeon R200 Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: London, UK Posts: 55	I'm running Win2k SP2 with the 3036 drivers and i CAN'T switch to 8-bit colour...

Sep 23, 2002, 08:51 AM	#13
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	Funny thing, but you are right. I have tried it on a fresh Win2k Installation and it also gives me only 16 Bit and 32 Bit. However, on my Win2k Server Installation I can also choose 256 colors. Maybe Powerstrip modifies something or I have another tool installed somewhere (I think I should clean my system up a little....) Case

Sep 23, 2002, 04:11 PM	#14
Armand Karlsen Radeon R200 Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: London, UK Posts: 55	Was that fresh installation Win2k Workstation? Win2k Server may allow 8-bit.

Sep 23, 2002, 04:35 PM	#15
CaseMillennium Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 11	Yes, it was a fresh install. However, the 8Bit thing doesn´t seem to have anything to do with the Serverversion, since I tried it on another installation and there it didn´t work, It must be caused by something else, some another programm mostlikely. I will try to figure out, what this was. Case

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