Odd flickering issue mystery

[Jza]

OK I'll try to provide as much info here as I can think of right now to see if anyone else can figure this out...

I just got a free Radeon X800PRO to replace an FX5900XT in my old system. I like to play 2 games, QuakeLive and Company of Heroes. Company of Heroes for some reason will flicker badly ONLY after I have played QuakeLive or loaded up old Quake 3 Arena. The problem never occurs any other time. All I have to do is open Catalyst Control Center and mess with any setting and I guess it sorta resets itself as the flickering stops. I'm using the most current driver suite offered by AMDs site for this old thing:

Driver Packaging Version 8.593.100.2-090721a-085695C-ATI
Catalyst™ Version 09.3
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 6.14.10.6925
2D Driver File Path System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{C1856B4B-70F7-47B8-ACB1-6E4D785D0A15}/0000
Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0647
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.8544
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2009.0721.1107.18080
AIW/VIVO WDM Driver Version 6.14.10.6238
AIW/VIVO WDM SP Driver Version 6.14.10.6238

The only other issue I've noticed with this card, is that 3DMark2001SE will crash if I try to run GPU-Z during its run. I run a clean startup so the chances for conflicting software is low. I tried altering a few settings under 3D controls in the CCC, but the problem seems to remain no matter what I change.

Any ideas what could cause such an oddity?

 

[Jza]

Messing around a little bit, looks like vsync issue. I usually keep vsync off for FPS games, but seems like vsync wants to stay off and is causing tearing in CoH. I could use "ALWAYS ON" override in the drivers for vsync, but that would mess up 3D games where I want Vsync off. There is a setting for "always on unless app specifies" which works for letting the FPS games disable vsync. However it stays off when it's time for CoH it seems. So I wonder if this is the fault of the driver, the FPS applications? I'm guessing it's the drivers fault.

 

[Jza]

Well looks like Refreshforce 1.10 which has worked for many an nvidia card doesn't like my ATI card. I've pinpointed this as the issue.

Can anyone point me to the best way to force particular refresh rates for particular resolutions?

Also I'm having issues getting Catalyst Control Center to install/open correctly. I uninstalled the ATI driver suite while troubleshooting and now it won't install clean again. Been through the whole thing of safe mode, driver cleaner utility, etc, nothing.

 

[LuminaryJanitor]

ATI Tray Tools is the answer to both your problems. Allows you to force refresh rates depending on resolution, but also does everything CCC does (last time I checked, at least), and more.

Re your second post, it also allows you to create profiles for different games, so you can force VSync for CoH, and only CoH (though I thought CCC had this too...).