• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Omega or DNA Drivers?

Which driver do you use?

  • Omega

    Votes: 26 42.6%

  • DNA

    Votes: 1 1.6%

  • Catalyst

    Votes: 34 55.7%
  • Total voters
    61
SPARTAN VI

SPARTAN VI

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Jun 12, 2004
Messages
9,089
I've always wanted to know which driver performs better under certain circumstances. Or which driver is overall better.

I've used both Omegas and DNA drivers in the past, and haven't noticed a difference in performance. Although the Omega Drivers are more convenient since you don't have to install them over the original catalyst drivers, like DNA.

Anyhow, I've been sticking to DNA for the time being. I've been told that OpenGL is Omega's forte, but I really can't tell. :confused:

Thoughts?
 
DNA steals stuff from other custom driver writers so steer clear. He is one cheating SOB in the driver world. Just do a search on here for DNA and StEALING and you will find plenty of stuff.
 
I really liked the beta 4.12s. My XT PE died before I had a chance to check out the officials. My new XT will be here Tuesday and I'll be giving them a run then.

I do HATE the CCC, though.
 
CCC seems to use a lot of memory for no reason at all. It needs to be slimmed down before people will see an advantge to useing it besides powerstrip or ATI Tray tools.
 
Wow, more people running Omega than the Catalysts here, who would have thought.
Personally I was forced to use the Omega drivers, because for some reason the Catalysts don't work on my card (Club3D 9600Pro 128 mb).
But now that I'm using them, I have to say I quite like some of the extra features. I use the overclocking feature and I made some Radlinker shortcuts to force AA/AF on old games and things.
The only thing I don't like about Omega is that I can't get all driver updates, some versions are skipped... And I have to wait a few weeks longer to get an update. But that doesn't really matter anymore, I haven't run into any bugs, and the performance seems to be pretty much stabilized now.
 
I always happily installed the lates Omega's whenever available, nice performance boost. That is until I noticed some minor graphic glitches in games like Half Life 2 and Far Cry. Extra frames per second yes, but at what cost? You have to ask yourself how the Omega's are able to offer extra performance. ATI would include the performance enhancements if it didnt sacrifice image quality in the official Cat's.
 
excuse me for being ignorant, but how long have second party ATi drivers been available?

also, would it be practical to change them on my system? will i notice much of a performace boost? specks in sig
 
I used Omegas but the driver dude behind them seems to go for that performance boost for the newer cards, twice now his lastest release has caused my windows xp with a 9800 pro to crash and end up in a windows loading loop.

I use the official ATI drivers right now, with CCC for the first time to see what the whole idea behind it was.
 
Yea Omega has been lacking on the IQ lately and trying to boost fps for doom 3 players and HL2 lovebirds. I think hes going to focus on IQ with the new 5.x set of catalysts.
 
Ok, I was a little bored, but I was testing the DNA 3.6.5.1 drivers against the Catalyst 5.1's for the sake of trying and relearned MS Excel (for my Statistics class).

Anyhow, I ran 9 tests, using 3 sets. One using Catalyst 5.1's, one using the DNA 3.6.5.1 on default driver settings, then another using the DNA drivers on the "Source" settings. Each set had three tests, here are my findings:

hl2fpschart.jpg


The Catalyst Drivers initially outperformed the DNA drivers on its default settings, but then I switched to the "Source" settings and noted a slight boost.

However, I also took down some observations in image quality. To see if I noticed anything fishy or if I could spot what DNA sacrificed to deliver "better image quality." So I spotted these lines in the water where it touches the wall. Odd, if it weren't for the lines, I might've stuck with the DNA drivers.

Here:
hl2bench.jpg


**The image was scaled in photoshop down to 800x600 and saved as a 30% quality JPEG. In other words, yes it may look like crap, but that's not the representative IQ.

Can anyone tell me if those black lines are normally there? Probably not? :confused:
 
I think those lines are part of the algorithm used to render the water. I've seen it both on my Radeon with Omega drivers, and on my brothers GeForce 6800 with the latest official drivers.
 
Scali said:
I think those lines are part of the algorithm used to render the water. I've seen it both on my Radeon with Omega drivers, and on my brothers GeForce 6800 with the latest official drivers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they're normally there alright. I went back to Catalyst 5.1's and they're there. Wonder why I didn't notice them before.

Forgot to mention my specs:

P4 3.0E GHz (Prescott)
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
Mushkin 512mb DDR400 PC3200
WindowsXP Professional
 
I installed the newest Omega's one time back when I was using a 9700 about 18 months ago and immediately had serious problems. Never tried them again since.... Once bitten twice shy.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
Wonder why I didn't notice them before.
Click to expand...

Simple, you weren't looking for them. Humans have very selective perception, you know :)
 
Back in the bad old days of crappy CAT's and pre-cat ATi drivers, Omega was a godsend. More recently, when I picked up an Acer TM3200 laptop I was disapointed to find ATi refused to support the mobile Radeons, since Acer's Radeon drivers just flat out suck. Omega does though, giving me the features (w/o the bloat) and stability of the latest CATs. They allow me to use Powerplay so I can toggle the GPU/Mem from 100/100 to full speed under battery power. They even let me overclock and set a max stable speed at boot.

My desktop systems use Cats however. No reason to bogart Omega's bandwidth if it isn't needed.

BTW his drivers are beggarware (no ads, just a polite request for assistance) and well worth the $20 I donated. Consider it.
 
molochi said:
Back in the bad old days of crappy CAT's and pre-cat ATi drivers, Omega was a godsend. More recently, when I picked up an Acer TM3200 laptop I was disapointed to find ATi refused to support the mobile Radeons, since Acer's Radeon drivers just flat out suck. Omega does though, giving me the features (w/o the bloat) and stability of the latest CATs. They allow me to use Powerplay so I can toggle the GPU/Mem from 100/100 to full speed under battery power. They even let me overclock and set a max stable speed at boot.

My desktop systems use Cats however. No reason to bogart Omega's bandwidth if it isn't needed.

BTW his drivers are beggarware (no ads, just a polite request for assistance) and well worth the $20 I donated. Consider it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I downloaded the Catalyst drivers specifically made for Radeon 7000 IGP's, and it didn't detect "the correct hardware." I'll try using Omega drivers for that.
 
Whos the one who voted DNA? These scummy drivers dont even deserve to be on this list!
 
minc3d said:
Whos the one who voted DNA? These scummy drivers dont even deserve to be on this list!
Click to expand...

Haha. Wasn't me, but this time through I noticed a "Special Thanks" to those who 'helped' with the creation. Does that change how you feel at all? :p
 
minc3d said:
DNA steals stuff from other custom driver writers so steer clear. He is one cheating SOB in the driver world. Just do a search on here for DNA and StEALING and you will find plenty of stuff.
Click to expand...

QFT :) I like the omegas because when I had my 9800XT..they were and still is I think da bomb :) If only they spent more time for my ultra now :) o welps its an ati thing :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top