ASUS Drivers vs. Catalyst?

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DedEmbryonicCe11

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 6, 2006
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I have an ASUS 4850 TOP on its way from Newegg. Knowing full well CDs generally contain worthless dated drivers I looked around and saw ASUS has their own drivers plus more software -> GamerOSD + SmartDoctor. I was a little intrigued by the GamerOSD because it has some simple FRAPS like abilities built in. These state they require the ASUS drivers to function. So never having been an ATI user in the past I need some input on what I would/gain lose going with the ASUS packages instead of the standard Catalyst drivers with CCC.
 
I used to have a asus 2600xt and it had problems (crashes+freezes) when I used ati catalyst drivers which was odd. When I started using the asus drivers i never had any problems. Just download the asus drivers. The GamerOSD + SmartDoctor.are useless. You can still use the asus drivers...which are the same as catalyst...to an extent.
 
I use ATI's standard drivers and Asus's GamerOSD and SmartDoctor with my 4850. Works fine for me and SmartDoctor controls the fan speed automatically to what you want.
 
Yeah, it's funny... People say that Smart Doctor is useless... I wish someone could explain why to me. I've tried the other programs out there, Riva, etc... If your GPU is locked, then why bother with an OC'ing program? I just want a good fan program and SD does that quite well.... I've never had any problems with it and it's quite easy to use and I don't have to edit my registry to do it either.

The other thing is... I suffered from the Atikmdag errors when I first built my buddy's system and I thought it might have been CCC or SD or any number of programs, but in the end... It was the OCZ RAM I bought which wasn't on the P5Q Pro's Vendor's list.

At any rate, that gave me a reason to test out some of these other programs and like I said... I like SD... Albeit, G'OSD sucks and is "truly" useless.
 
SmartDoctor 5.26 wouldn't run at all. Says "Can't find resource dll." but doesn't specify a filename so that was no help. And of course two days after I looked there's now a new version, 5.27, I'm about to try.
 
Always use the latest ATI drivers. The Asus ones are just repackages of older ATI drivers. The extra utilities seem rather pointless, but you could always give them a try. I wouldn't bother with SmartDoctor, though, especially not with ATI's built in overdrive now supporting manual fan control.
 
Monolith2013 said:
The other thing is... I suffered from the Atikmdag errors when I first built my buddy's system and I thought it might have been CCC or SD or any number of programs, but in the end... It was the OCZ RAM I bought which wasn't on the P5Q Pro's Vendor's list.
Click to expand...

Assuming you set vdimm and timings properly, it should not matter, ever, if the RAM is on the vendor supported list or not. If it does... the board in question is poorly designed, given just about every other board on the market will support a given set of RAM. It's much more likely the set you got was defective or damaged. Did you run Memtest on it overnight prior to replacing it?
 
I have ASUS drivers for my video card on my computer and I was messing with them and deleted some program that came with it and whenever I would load a game or minimize my computer would shut off. I had to reinstall the driver and update it and they work fine now. But I have noticed that I lost about 20 or so fps after upgrading to the new driver instead of the one that came with the CD.
 
Lytesson said:
I have ASUS drivers for my video card on my computer and I was messing with them and deleted some program that came with it and whenever I would load a game or minimize my computer would shut off. I had to reinstall the driver and update it and they work fine now. But I have noticed that I lost about 20 or so fps after upgrading to the new driver instead of the one that came with the CD.
Click to expand...

This should never be the case -- you've done something in the course of deleting things that's cased more damage than initially obvious, if I had to guess.
 
PC_User said:
I just use the latest ATI driver but not catalyst.
Click to expand...

Seeing as the ATI drivers are named Catalyst, I assume you are referring to the Catalyst Control Center (CCC). Any reason why you don't use CCC? I rather like it, works just fine.
 
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