AMD's ATI 10.3a Catalyst Driver Update @ [H]

Legoman- I don't understand that because clearly LCD rotation to Portrait mode is totally possible since Kyle has even been running that setup for a while now. Also- Bezel management is there as has been reviewed and used by many people now. Maybe you have an issue with your installation or something else about your setup, because those issues are NOT driver related if many people out there are using both features happily.
 
BFBC2 load times are still in the 50-60 second range, compared to the 20 second load time of the 285GTX. Also have some flashing white boxes on the screen. :(
 
Legoman- I don't understand that because clearly LCD rotation to Portrait mode is totally possible since Kyle has even been running that setup for a while now. Also- Bezel management is there as has been reviewed and used by many people now. Maybe you have an issue with your installation or something else about your setup, because those issues are NOT driver related if many people out there are using both features happily.

Both of the problems I'm experiencing are being experienced by numerous other people. Just because it works for Kyle doesn't mean it works for everyone.

Bezel management doesn't work on my setup because the EDID's of my monitors do not match. One of them lists itself as being 1cm larger than the other 2; hence no bezel management.

And there are plenty of other people out there who are unable to switch to portrait. The option is simply greyed out.
 
don't know if anyone has said this yet, but it's been documented before that these frame rates gains that "all of a sudden" appear in a driver are mostly a marketing strategy used to get one over on the other competitor. It's no coincidence that Fermi is coming and this is the driver update before it, eh?
 
Both of the problems I'm experiencing are being experienced by numerous other people. Just because it works for Kyle doesn't mean it works for everyone.

Bezel management doesn't work on my setup because the EDID's of my monitors do not match. One of them lists itself as being 1cm larger than the other 2; hence no bezel management.

And there are plenty of other people out there who are unable to switch to portrait. The option is simply greyed out.

Not sure if you tried this already, but in order to create my eyefinity portrait group, I had to rotate to portrait mode while still in extended mode. Once I had all the panels set to portrait, it allowed me to create a portrait eyefinity group.
 
It's a preview/beta driver, which nearly always have issues that are resolved in the final versions. Also, Borderlands seems to be so poorly coded it can barely handle saving it's own config settings, let alone handling minor driver issues. I wouldn't use it as an example for anything.

Oh it is far from just Borderlands. I fired up 10 different games and here are the results under the 10.3a driver:

don't work:
borderlands
dragon age origins
wolfenstein
mount & blade
Left4Dead
Need for speed shift
Neverwinter nights 2

do work:
sims 3
aion
anno 1404

Don't believe? The pics don't lie:
DAO1.jpg

wolf1.jpg

wolf2.jpg

nwn2_1.jpg

left4dead_1.jpg

left4dead_2.jpg



I had a sneaking suspicion about what was causing all the graphical corruption...
And when I turned off CrossfireX - the games started working again!
10.3a - WORST CrossfireX support EVAH!

Sure it'll work, if you're content with having half your video cards useless!
But if you want to use CrossfireX, you're FUBAR in most games.
Considering how much I spent on BOTH my ATI video cards, 50% good is just not good enough.
Sorry ATI, this driver is FAIL.
 
Might be worth uninstalling, running driversweeper and reinstalling, just to make sure you got a good install because I'm seeing lots of people that are having no trouble with these drivers.

I'll try to get this installed tonight and see how they run- I'll let y'all know if I run into problems.
 
Dragon Age, borderlands, and need for speed shift work perfect for me. Not sure whats going on with you guys
 
With HD 5970 in BFBC2, 10.3a is crashing to desktop while trying to load the game. Played perfectly fine before.
 
Might be worth uninstalling, running driversweeper and reinstalling, just to make sure you got a good install because I'm seeing lots of people that are having no trouble with these drivers.

I'll try to get this installed tonight and see how they run- I'll let y'all know if I run into problems.

Tried that. And while 10.2 was working fine for a bit I now suspect my gfx card may be dying at a very inopportune time. Going through and redoing driver sweeper and all DirectX files to make sure. Also trying different pcie slots hoping my 4890 isn't on the way out :(
 
I only ran AvP tonight with these "new" drivers. They installed fine and even "remembered" my EyeFinity. I uninstalled and also ran drivercleaner in safe mode.

I cannot see any advantage at all over the 10.3 beta preview I was using previously.

I even had some wierd lag issues in AvP that I've not had before?

No problems with:
EyeFinity
Bezel Management
PowerSaving
or Crossfire.

I don't quite understand ATI yet..........it seems like for every step they take forward, they seem to step in some shit as well.
 
Well I just installed these after an uinstall of 10.2

Have to say I am very dissapointed as I had high hopes for these 10.3 drivers and their "profile switching" feature. I am in eyefinity mode all the time and was hoping for a seemless solution to hotkey between eyefinity and extended profiles. However with these drivers I can't even manually setup all 3 monitors in extended mode! My LCD with the DP adaptor keeps on reverting to device name "default digital display" with a max of 1920x1080 instead of 1920x1200 when I enable the third monitor as extended. The windows unplug device sound also goes off. In addition when I set the third LCD to exended the screen goes blank for a second then returns then the CCC box dissapears - highly annoying. When you click on CCC again I notice the tray icon disappears and takes a few seconds to reload (this is something I have always noticed - since 9.11).

And for the first time I also had serveral windows explorer crashes while trying to get extended mode working. I know these drivers are beta but I understand they are basically the final 10.3s without MS sign off and that's why AMD has publicly announced them.

I've been waiting for 5 months but now have pretty much accepted that I will be in eyefinity mode all of the time. I've gotten used to it but having the extended option would be very handy.

Also I don't have bezel management as an option. I guess that's because I'm running a 24" / 26" / 24" configuration? The resolutions are all the same but I'm thinking the size difference disables it?

Again as many have commented ati make great cards but their software falls short. If nvidia ends up offering a single card eyefinity solution I will be very tempted to switch purely for the improved software.
 
BUG IN DIRT 2:

These 10.3a drivers have caused flickering on the outdoor cliff faces of the Ounila Valley track while driving with the Dallenback Special from the in car camera angle.

I have attached some screenshots:
https://sites.google.com/a/leithalw..._game2010-03-1815-32-39-46.png?attredirects=0
https://sites.google.com/a/leithalw..._game2010-03-1815-32-39-46.png?attredirects=0
https://sites.google.com/a/leithalw..._game2010-03-1815-32-38-22.png?attredirects=0
https://sites.google.com/a/leithalw..._game2010-03-1815-32-28-94.png?attredirects=0

So their 30% performance boost was from taking some sort of shortcut with the shadow algorithm?

EDIT:
This was on Windows 7 x64 with a XFX Black Edition 5850
All settings on DX11 maxed out with 16x AF and 4x AA
And no 3D overrides or Catalyst AI in CCC
 
Last edited:
With HD 5970 in BFBC2, 10.3a is crashing to desktop while trying to load the game. Played perfectly fine before.

You have to restart that particular mission. Somehow it craps out if you reload where you left of with the previous driver.
 
I've got them running now with my 2x5750 with not a single issue whatsoever. I rand 3dMark Vantage with no issues, performance wasn't much different, but a few points higher. Dirt 2 ran beautifully however with nearly 20% performance increase! I don't understand why so many people have so many issues with these drivers, but I didn't even have to uninstall my previous driver- just ran the installer right over it, not a hitch. Now, I don't have an eyefinity setup, so I can't say anything about the bezel or other multi-monitor issues, but even with Crossfire, I've seen no trouble.
 
These drivers seem just as good as the 10.3 previews, ie: great. I feel terrible for people with all the odd, random problems. I've never had a driver issue with my 5870 since version 9.12->now fortunately. Best graphics card to date and keeps getting better.
 
BFBC2 is still buggy as expected, instantly GSOD'ed when I turned all the control panel options up (AA AF AI etc)
 
I have a mobile HD 3650 and the CCC doesn't seem to update. Still stuck at
Catalyst™ Version 09.11
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0302.2233.40412

Anyone else having this problem?

Drivers seem to update fine.
Driver Packaging Version 8.712-100302b-096986C-ATI
Catalyst™ Version 09.11
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1010
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0735
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.9704
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0302.2233.40412
 
For crying out loud, bezel compensation is STILL reliant on crappy EDID data straight from the monitor. Exactly which genius thought that was a good idea?
 
I got to say that the loading times in BFBC2 still are long but it felt a bit faster but not by much 5 to 10 seconds.

Dragon age origins looked smoother.

Did get some BSOD which was rather annoying.

on my X3 [email protected] 5870 ocz ddr3 1600mhz PEB Gigabyte ma790fxt ud5p
 
tried them last night - q2q @ 3.3 and 4850 - load times for bfbc2 are still terrible, apperance wise they seem fine and no stability problems yet.

Cant say ive noticed any bump in FPS yet but im overly pushing my card.
 
Agreed no measureable increase in framerate even in games like Dirt2 where it was supposed to be massive
 
I had HUGE improvements with dirt2 after the 10.3a install. Ran the benchmark before and after, also played bfbc2 for about 3 hours without a single issue.

before

avg 51.0 fps
min 42.7 fps

after

avg 59.8 fps 14.7% increase
min 52.5 fps 18.7% increase

Not quite 20% bump for my 5850, but i'm not complaining. Why does everyone uninstall and run driver cleaner each time they update ati drivers? Even ati themselves say to just install over the previous. Seems like everyone with issues does this.
 
Here is what concerns me about these drivers 8-9 out of the 11 games with claimed

performance increases have an in game benchmarking tool, over at legitreviews the one

game that didn’t score well was Batman:AA is it because it was the only game that

doesn’t have a built-in benchmark tool? Now I know [H]ardOCP doesn’t use canned

benchmarks and will get to the truth of the matter but it really does have me asking

questions about drivers cheats in days of old, is it still being practiced today?
 
Here is what concerns me about these drivers 8-9 out of the 11 games with claimed

performance increases have an in game benchmarking tool, over at legitreviews the one

game that didn’t score well was Batman:AA is it because it was the only game that

doesn’t have a built-in benchmark tool? Now I know [H]ardOCP doesn’t use canned

benchmarks and will get to the truth of the matter but it really does have me asking

questions about drivers cheats in days of old, is it still being practiced today?

I thought the same thing yesterday when I saw the nvidia drivers. Their improvements are HAWX and Crysis. Hawx wasn't even a 'good' game when it was released so why give a crap about it now? ..because it's a multi-monitor show-off title that's appearing in benchmarks all over. Crysis also has never been about gaming it's a dull shooter at best and a glorified tech demo at worst. Stop pouring resources into these old benchmark games. Nobody cares!
 
I thought the same thing yesterday when I saw the nvidia drivers. Their improvements are HAWX and Crysis. Hawx wasn't even a 'good' game when it was released so why give a crap about it now? ..because it's a multi-monitor show-off title that's appearing in benchmarks all over. Crysis also has never been about gaming it's a dull shooter at best and a glorified tech demo at worst. Stop pouring resources into these old benchmark games. Nobody cares!

re Crysis: pretty much all review sites still benchmark with it..
 
My Average frames went from 62.0 to 73.7 with 10.3a from the 10.3 leaked beta. I think that shows their approximately 20% increase to be a legit number, and it looks darn sweet.
 
These drivers seem just as good as the 10.3 previews, ie: great. I feel terrible for people with all the odd, random problems. I've never had a driver issue with my 5870 since version 9.12->now fortunately. Best graphics card to date and keeps getting better.

I feel the same as you. I've had my 5870 since launch and I've pretty much upgraded to every driver release and hot fix available and not had any issues with my card or CCC.

Not quite 20% bump for my 5850, but i'm not complaining. Why does everyone uninstall and run driver cleaner each time they update ati drivers? Even ati themselves say to just install over the previous. Seems like everyone with issues does this.

I used to run driver cleaner before installing new drivers on all my setups be it ATi or Nvidia but ever since I read that AMD recommends just installing over your old drivers, I've been doing it that way and still haven't had any issues.

This is from a fresh format and I started with cat 10.1 and I've installed over every release with another and I've had no issues. I always make sure that the drivers install to the same folder because some of them install to c:\amd\ati and some install to c:\ati.

 
These drivers were supposed to allow brightness and color correction of each individual monitor in an EyeFinity group.

Anybody know how to make that happen?

I tried displays>color>color correction and brightness, etc.....but could not isolate the individual monitors, all I could do was adjust the group as a whole......I just need to adjust the center monitor a bit....anybody?
 
ATI certainly does have a ways to go..

I still have a corrupt mouse cursor on my 2nd monitor, the only solution seems to be Windows Magnifier. Pretty ridiculous problem to be having in 2010, you can't even get a mouse cursor in Windows right ATI? Really? I sincerely regret my 5850 purchase. Fuck you ATI.
 
10.3a are great. No problems at all, back to 1Ghz / 1300 Mhz OC. Played AC2 and BF BC2 both ran very smooth.
 
The more I use the 10.3a's the worse they seem. I cannot stable run my clocks as high as with the 10.2's. I got my first ever GSOD in Dirt2 as well with 10.3a's
 
Just want to report that Im getting great results with these drivers and Dirt 2. I can now play the game in DX11 mode with max details and solid 60fps. Before these drivers DX11 was a jerky mess.
 
More testing. Borderlands, BFBC2, LFD2, Bioshock 2 and Just Cause 2 demo all ran without any issues. So far so good for me with these drivers. :)
 
Using a 4850 Crossfire, the frame rate is more stable in brief testing with Crysis. The min FPS is far better; many less downward spikes. The avg and max fps is about the same as 10.2.
 
high!!! ljbade.
Ok lets see if my glitch is the same as yours.Sometimes when i go through water, the game gets real slow for about 10-15 seconds.Than it`s ok untill i hit water again,then it slows down again.After that it`s fine for the night. Has happend two times!!!Same as yours ljbade???
 
plhdarts:
No your issue does not seem to be related to my issue which was a graphical glitch rather than a performance issue.

Are you using DX11 mode? Tesselation is used with the water to create the ripples, but your 5870 should easily handle it (my 5850 does).

I wonder how we report these issues to ATI engineers?
 
These Drivers accually fixed my GSOD problems, and ACCUALLY let me overclock my video card again without GSOD right away.

Whatever they did. I don't think im going to switch drivers for awhile lol
 
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