Beta Cats

For those of you, like me, with ATi video cards capable of playing Doom 3 (sorry Rage owners), you might want to check out these beta 4.9 Catalyst drivers. Supposedly they will improve your performance while playing Doom 3 as ATi wants to fix up some stuff after NVidia's new card kicked theirs swiftly in the buttocks. I haven't tested them myself, but I've heard speed improvements range anywhere from 1 to 5 fps, though I haven't heard any info from people with an XT800 yet. Thanks Shacknews.

Fp! Good find Cyb!

Most people report improvements with these drivers, some report badness (crashes etc).

Personally, I was experiencing crashes every few minutes with older drivers. The latest non-beta driver on ATI's site fixed it. I'm pretty happy with current performance, reckon I'll wait a bit until jumping to spanking new betas.

(Radeon 9800Pro 128Mb here)

I installed them last night in preparation for today when I get home from work. If they crash, I'll roll back the driver. If they work, they'll be staying on my system for quite some time.

I'm hoping they'll get my Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb running nicely with Doom3.

Meh, I'll wait for the non-beta version to arrive. I'm sure they'll rush their ass off on that as well :P

udderdude said:

Meh, I'll wait for the non-beta version to arrive. I'm sure they'll rush their ass off on that as well :P

Note that they haven't released Cat 4.8 final yet, so final 4.9 would be another month away.

4.8 will also supposedly have some speed improvements for doom3, but 4.9 is the release that will focus on it

the beta cats make my doom go slower :(

They aren't really made for R3xx owners.

I was getting constant crashes and then I got 4.8 and everything works great.

Shadowfox said:

They aren't really made for R3xx owners.

Oh.

Anyone else running a 9600xt? Yeah I know it's a more budgetty card, but it was still $200 a few weeks ago and I was hoping I could get better performance on it. I also have an athlon xp 2500 and 512 of ram. It runs ok at low detail and at 640x480, but tends to get wicked jerky whenever a monster pops up or something. Think of Quake 1 on a 486. When I get home I'll have to try a few console hacks or something to see if i can get it running better.

RethcirSJD said:

all that stuff

actually, to me that sounds like your system resources are being taken up by other processes. do you have a spyware scanner/remover? if not, get one! i would recomend Ad-Aware

if it isn't spyware and ******* taking up the juice, you might want to consider turning off any antivirus scanner you may have while you play.

my system specs are close to yours, and i can run D3 on high detail at 800x600 with incredibly steady frame rate.

just read this,

i also have a x800 pro card so ill test them now and let you know the results.

:)

Heh, I didn't quite check all the details so I'll ask now - are the beta drivers okay for a 9600xt?

i've got 9800pro... my timedemo went from 35fps to 37.5fps... slightly better... :P

If you're running a 9500 Pro or 9600 series card, you shouldn't be having any real performance issues at 800x600, high quality with the CATALYST 4.7 drivers - given your machine is optimized the rest of your box is up to spec.

If you complain that that resolution seems awfully low, just try it. You might be surprised by how good it really does look.

Also, if you have the option, try playing on a TV-out. It really looks fabulous in 800x600 on a TV. I played all the way up to the primary comms center last night on a TV and I'll have to say it's one of the more memorable gaming experiences I've had.

Wrong account aux

Well I defragged last night and also I turned off VSync (which I had heard was good to turn on, but I think it was sapping some framerate). Now it's much steadier, but still not perfect. I'll have to run an adaware on it. Maybe my network sharing thing is being a problem, as well.