TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Hello all,

I have tried many times to install the latest ATI drivers,7.9, with my ATI Radeon Diamond X1950 Pro AGP 512MB graphics card to no avail. There are always problems. The closest I've gotten ends up leaving my desktop with invisible icons on the screen. I came across a mention of that particular problem on the Diamond website but it had to do with not deactivating the on-board graphics which I know I have done. So I'm stuck.

Do "regular" ATI drivers work with Diamond products or not? My card worked fine for the last couple of months as is, but then one day it says Catalyst Control Center is not compatible with your driver version or whatever, but it was working fine without any alterations not too long ago, in fact, just a few days ago. So I've been pondering updating my driver and don't want to run into the problems I had the first times I tried.

Thanks.

ATI graphics drivers from the ATI/AMD website should work on any Radeon graphics card regardless of who built it. For example, I've bought Radeon cards built by Asus, Powercolor, Connect3D, Sapphire, and ATI itself and I've used the ATI website driver with no problems. Did you uninstall your old graphics driver before installing the new one? Uninstall the old graphics driver through Add and Remove Programs.

I guess I should always mention that first, yes I uninstalled the old drivers first. I just think maybe Diamond has to modify the software when you're using their cards because when you initially install their stuff the Diamond logo is everywhere, it isn't just the normal ATI stuff. And when you go to their (Diamond's) driver download area, they don't seem to have the most up-to-date drivers available, as if they have to first modify the newest drivers that ATI puts out before they will work properly with their hardware. I don't know, if you say they should work then I don't know what the problem is. I recently updated to what I believe is the latest driver Diamond lists on their site, 7.3 with Diamond logos on the install screens, and everything works fine now. But I still don't want to try and reinstall any straight from ATI until someone can really confirm their is no difference between the drivers ATI uses and Diamond drivers. Someone who has the same card and has actually installed 7.9 from ATI...

Some other Radeon makers like Asus have their own version of the ATI driver as well. Some just seem to use a straight ATI driver.

I have the Radion Sapphire 9600/256.It can be a pain.
But start uninstalling entries in add/remove.
Then doing the included cd installation.
Then go to ATI.com support.
Go through the steps of Locateing your card.
Then You should have 2 choices,Catalyst + drivers,or just drivers.
Read the details on how to install these.Then download to your desktop.
These will update what was on the cd.
Definite addition,
You also need Netframework 2.0
Listed in the Catalyst control about option.
Don't be surprised if add/remove shows no bytes and it's listed twice
in Sysdm.1 is AGP the other PCI.I leave both active.
Then do a DXdiag test.
p.s.Accept uncertified drivers if asked.

I'm assumeing you have XP.Please include this in posts.