ATI X850XT / X1950PRO problems

[yukka]

Hi all.

I have recently upgraded my PC to a am2 socket motherboard, Athlon 64 4000, 2gb dual channel ram and a Radeon x1950pro graphics card.

The games i play mostly are Counterstrike Source and Warhammer Dawn of War.


My X850XT PE was causing me some problems. It seemed to lag in games (3 or 4 short pauses per second constantly) and when i alt+tabbed into windows, it acted as if I had just installed windows but forgotten the video drivers - the windows were heavy and screen updates were slow meaning scrolling down a webpage while alt_tabbed out of a game is very slow.

Now I have changed to a X1950pro and i still have the slow desktop when i alt_tab out during a game.

My friend also commented that Dawn of war (plays better on nvidia according to the splash screen during startup) looked alot better on his nvidia 6600gt anyway, nothing to do with frame rate but just generally looks better with nicer colors and blending. This is with mine at 16xAF and 6xAA.


So...

This leads me to wonder... When did the Radeon desktop stuff get bad and if anyone has a driver that works well in desktop while games are running, i would like to know. Im using the latest omega driver but the newest ati official one gave me corruption in windows (missing icons, webpages not showing correctly etc).

Could any of this be linked to a power supply issue> I have bought a 450w power supply recently but would that make windows performance drop like that?

This may well be my last ati card if these problems are actually common.

 

[AlbertLionheart]

If you didn't do it at the time, make sure you have removed the old drivers and card management software if any.

 

[yukka]

the first time i tried installing the x1950 pro, i just uninstalled using control panel.

second time, i used driver cleaner to remove all traces of anything ati.

neither of these things fixed the corruption using the latest radeon drivers but the omega drivers worked sufficiently.


does anyone else have the desktop problem i have been experiencing when alt_tabbed out of games?

 

[mailpup]

You might have something else going on. Have you checked your Task Manager to see what other processes might be using system resources? On one of my PCs, I'm using a Radeon 1900XTX with an old AMD Athlon FX-55 (see PC #2 in my profile) and I don't experience what you are describing at all. The graphic drivers are straight from ATI although they are older Catalyst 7.5. I've played DoW, DoW Dark Crusade and CS:S (though not online multiplayer) very smoothly with just about everything on high settings.

Edit: I seldom alt-tab out of games intentionally but I don't recall any problems at all when I've done it accidentally.

 

[yukka]

yeah the problems with dawn of war might be connected to the "plays better on nvidia" thing. The card has 512mb of ram, ive got 2gb dual channel 800mhz ddr2, a athlon 4000xp running on a nforce 3 agp mobo.

Ive updated the bios to the latest version, ive installed the latest drivers from the manufacturers website (replacing the newest nforce 3 ones i was using before) and still the same problems.

the entire pc is new now apart from the audigy 2 soundcard and the dvd drives.

Counterstrike Source looks amazing on my pc with 16Xas and 6Xaa and all settings maxed out. I can also alt+tab without issue.

Dawn of War now dissappears if i alt+tab and move a window anywhere, and battlefield 2 also has the weighty slow windows.

 

[AlbertLionheart]

I am not usually involved in sorting out gaming issues, so perhaps I should shut up - but this shows that it is the game software that is the problem and not the platform. Either stay away from alt-tab or maybe there are game patches available?