Simviation Forums

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB and I recently installed the latest, Catalyst 3.7 drivers.

Hmmm... ATI sucks?  :P

I read somewhere that you have too delete the old driver first and then install the new one and reboot the computer. Can't recall where I read it though  ::). I know this is going out of house but www.flightsim.com has a tutorial just for setting up the ATI Radeon 9800 with FS2004. Once you get in the website go to the main menu and it is under FS2004 Forums. I did it for mine and it seemed to make a big improvement. I have not updated the driver yet, not sure if I need to since the computer is about a week old.

Steve

yep thts the problem...ATI sucks...i dunno ATI's a bit wierd...its sorta like gmax...everyones got a different story...lol...its like a weed-smokin-drunk jackass of a politician...its really hard to know wuts happenin

Gotta' say that I had FAR more problems with TWO different Nvidea based 256 Meg AGP cards that I tried before quitting trying anymore and just getting the new Radeon 9600 pro 128 agp.  (see old posts)

The problems that the Nvidea cards have been having and those that the ATI cards have been having ...if you look back thru the posts in the various forums... seem to be about equal.

Seems like neither is completely perfect with FS2004 yet.... but the fixes keep coming.  And a lot seems to depend on the age of the card in either case.... and also with the OTHER hardware of the system.

best,

..................john

I really have to have a good laugh at this one. There is a saying if it is not broken don't fix it. I maintain if your driver is working ok, don't change it.

How often some of the new drivers are worse than the older ones. So why chage your drivers at all if they work fine? Changing new drivers takes up more space as each one is getting bigger and bigger.

What is it with many computer owners with the need to update to every new driver when the old one is working just fine? Sure there are some cases where you just have to update, but if there is no need why bother? Why update because it's new.

All the drivers cliam with each version to often run faster and optimise your graphics cards? But there is ony so much you can push the hardware and no new driver after awhile will not make any improvments.

Updated drivers are only for the latest features in the latest graphics cards, so if your using an older graphics card then these new drivers won't help improve things, and in some cases make your graphics card run slower.

Well I never said the old drivers were working fine.

I just dumped an ATI card for causeing me to many problems.but i think i know what your problem is look in c:/ after you uninstall the driver you have now and if theres a file in c:/drive that says ATI deleat it out and then install the driver you want but be shure you have uninstalled the display driver and control panel driver.and deleate that ATI file if there is one in drive c:/ before you install another driver.try that it should work and dont forget to reinstall your control panel driver that comes with the display driver as well.

I think you may try the following:

go in device manager, delete the entry for your graphics card. Reboot. The system will detect 'new hardware', choose to manually select the graphical card from a list (instead of letting Windows search for a driver). Select manually the 'standard VGA driver'. Reboot again.
This way you are back to 256 colors, 800x640 pixels.

Now, you can install the drivers you want.

Even before upgrading to newer drivers: first revert back to standard VGA. It says in the readme that this is required, not only for ATI, also for nVidia. I know, I have both.

BTW: ATI runs fine, as long as you stick to proper installation procedures (not given faulty coded drivers, that is). RTFM

This is my procedure for Graphics Card driver upgrade:
Download but don't install the upgrade.
Uninstall the old driver and related utility file.
Reboot to the Safe mode.
Use Driver Cleaner to remove all driver remants from the system.
Reboot normally.  System will load generic drivers and look pretty weird.
Install new drivers and reboot.  Make setting changes as desired.