Radeon owners: Post driver success here!

[jasontiller]

Hi, All,

 

Since it seems that many of the early bug reports are from Radeon owners, let's use this post to keep track of which Catalyst driver releases are the most successful. Hopefully, if we gather enough reports, we can piece together a picture of the best supported combinations.

 

To start off:

 

Graphics System

Gigabyte 9600XT 128MB

Catalyst 5.1

 

Problems

Frequent crashes, both CTD and lockups.

Sometimes starts in windows mode.

 

Overall Success: Poor

 

To make life easier, copy the "Graphics...Problems...Overall" form into your reply and use it to report your own experiences.

 

Thanks!

 

---Jason

[geldonyetich]

Sorry, I'm a bit under the weather right now so I'll cut to the chase:

 

ATI Radeon 9700 All-In-Wonder Pro.

 

Drivers 4.11 (KOTOR 1 optimal) do not work. Get as far as the first video sequence, then blackscren.

 

Upgraded to Drivers 5.2, got an error during driver installation process, but reboo indicated 5.2 were installed except for the ATI Control Center. seemed to work great.

 

I got as far as swapping back to T3 on the mining station (early enough I hope that doesn't spoil anything) and soon afterwards I start experiencing artifacts.

 

Seems my Video card has given up the ghost. Probably a total coincidence, all computer hardware burns out eventually, but looks like my video ram (?) has suffered permanent damage. Good thing I shelled out for that extended warrenty.

 

I wouldn't bothered to have mentioned that except if anybody else runs into this problem we may have an epidemic to consider.

[jasontiller]

Yo, geldonyetich,

 

Sorry, I'm a bit under the weather right now so I'll cut to the chase:

Hope you feel better, dude.

 

Upgraded to Drivers 5.2, seemed to work great.  Got as far as swapping back to T2 on the mining station (early enough I hope that doesn't spoil anything) and soon afterwards I start experiencing artifacts.

Hey, great news about the improved run with 5.2! I haven't d/l'ed them yet, so I'll give that a whirl tonight.

 

However, bummer about your card dying. How long have you had it? Honestly, I've never had the RAM on a video card of mine go bad.

 

Sounds like it is a good thing you got that warranty!

 

---Jason

[Mashiki]

Graphics: ATI 9600XT 128(Asus)

Cats: 5.2

 

Gameplay since driver upgrade: 5.5hrs - No crashes, I haven't seen any slowdowns either. I haven't had a chance to test expanded or large enviroments tho.

[Claws]

9800 Pro

Catalyst 5.1

 

No crashes, or any apparent bugs. The only problem I have is with the brightness. I set the brightnes slider to the desired level. But when I quit, my desktop stays at that brightness which is too bright, I have o go to advanced properties and then the color tab and that's when the desktop goes to the proper brightness level. When I start the game again, it goes back to being very dark, but the brightness slider stays where I left it.

[Barthok]

I am running 5.2 and I had zero problems until I got to Dantooine. The game now runs at about 1 frame every 2 seconds.... needless to say that is unplayable. I have turned off every graphic flare I can find and it still chugs... any ideas would be helpful

[Claws]

What are your PC specs?

[Arclam]

Aparently this game suffers the same problem that K1 does with the 4.12 and later cataylysts. Use the 4.11's, they did not have the frame problem in open areas like dantooine.

[Mashiki]

Arclam interesting. If your point holds then dropping the atioglxx.dll from the 4.11 in the Kotor2 directory should be a good fix for that. I haven't gotten far enough to test it out, I'll post an update when I get that far.

[Osiris]

how do I check which version of catalyst I am running?

 

and where can I look to find different versions?

 

edit: I found this in my properties: 6.14.10.6490 for the driver version. What version is that? I have been hearing numbers like 4.11 etc.

 

In any case, I have been having some stuttering during the speech, and seem to be getting a few more problems since I reached Telos. But I have quit for the night, so we'll see tomorrow. I used to have problems in KoTor1 after several hours of play as well.

[cArnYgE]

I was having some 'serious' stability issues with the Official Catalyst 4.12s It would CTD every 1-3

minutes, then open back up in that damn windowed mode. I updated to the Omega 5.1s and was still

getting the frequent CTDs.

 

As soon as I added the "last chance GFX fix" to the swkotor2.ini, that is mentioned in the readme file,

all my problems simply dissapeared. The game has been running for hours now (4-5 hours straight)...

not even a stutter.

 

Here is the info, in case you don't know what I am talking about:

 

____________________________________

 

Edit your

[Earthworm48]

Well I've been experimenting with both KOTORs. On 4.2 we ATI users get the full range of effects inc Light bloom. This is missing in later versions. However, with 4.2, the game hangs after movies (not in game cutscenes). Later drivers don't offer that much of a performance increase over the latest for no. 2 (they do for one) but with the later drivers on both ames the light bloom effect is missing.

 

I think theres a link here showing bloom effect missing on the sabers but its not very profound here, when the effect is in the game during play you will notice a difference. (Its in Stoffe's post)

 

http://swforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html...=nvidia%20bloom

 

Whats really needed is Obsidian to contact ATI requesting the next catalysts to enable the full range of effects again for KOTOR 1 and 2 and sort out the performance issues. Its NOT the game that has the trouble it is the catalyst drivers.

[snowcat]

Radeon 9800 Pro

 

Using 5.1 and 5.2 - game locks up every few minutes, sometimes when loading a game

 

Using 4.11 - no issues. I am still on the Peargus section.

 

I am have set my game for 4x anti-aliasing and 2x antitropic filtering in 1024x768 mode.

[cArnYgE]

Earthworm48,

 

I can confirm this, I just tried it with the 4.2 opengl driver in the kotor2 directory. It worked like a charm.

Everything seems stable and now I get the the vertex effects, too. I also tried it with the 4.11s but they didn't

work at *all*, the game was rendered totally unplayable. The picture would flash in and out, almost like a strobing effect.

This would happen if *any* of the advanced options were turned on: soft shadows, v-sync, or Vertex Frame Effects.

 

That the 4.2s work fine and everything after that doesn't.... Now I'm pissed at ATI for having it stay broken

for so long, and then breaking it *again* when they finally DO fix it.

 

I didn't even get the hanging from the cutscenes, they all played perfectly. In fact the game works better with the 4.2

opengl driver, then it did with the 5.1s even while the vertex buffer was disabled.

[hapklaar]

Seems my Video card has given up the ghost.  Probably a total coincidence, all computer hardware burns out eventually, but looks like my video ram (?) has suffered permanent damage.  Good thing I shelled out for that extended warrenty.

 

I wouldn't bothered to have mentioned that except if anybody else runs into this problem we may have an epidemic to consider.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

After running SWKOTOR2 for 1 minute my 9700 PRO also gave up. All it does now is display artifacts and vertical purple stripes accross my screen. In dos mode I see a pattern of stripes on my screen (

[Unabomber]

Driver version: 4.12

 

Positive: Decent frame rates, with good details.

 

Negatives: When starting up the game, it runs in a windowed mode, but if I switch the resolution and / or refresh rate from the Graphics menu, it goes back to full screen.

 

Also, sometimes when playing movies, it attempts to play in a smashed windowed mode as well.

[vesselle]

edit: I found this in my properties: 6.14.10.6490 for the driver version. What version is that? I have been hearing numbers like 4.11 etc.

 

very simple system.

the first number ("4") is the last digit of the year they were released. 2004 in this example.

the second number is the month they were released in. in your example of 4.11, they were released Nov 2004.

 

back to my gameplay experience...

 

Cat 4.10

BBA Radeon 9600XT, 128 mb

 

all settings are maxed and the game runs spiffy. :D

 

 

V***V

[Belisarius]

I have an ATI 600XT 256Meg video card and I run Windows Media Center Edition. I started the game with recommended and supposedly SUPPORTED Catalyst 5.1 drivers installed and had many problems. By the middle of Peragus the game was virtually unplayable at any settings due to video based crashes. I then spent an hour removing any trace of ATI drivers or anything I could find to delete that was ATI. I then downloaded and installed the 5.2 catalyst drivers(6.14.10.6512) for Windows MCE.

 

The game is now much more stable now and there was only a couple of crashes that were video based and I think one was from going to my desktop mid game.

 

So the recommended 5.1 catalyst drivers are virtually worthless for KOTOR2 with my system. The 5.2 seem pretty good and I will update when I finally get to play some more.

[vesselle]

So the recommended 5.1 catalyst drivers are virtually worthless for KOTOR2 with my system.  The 5.2 seem pretty good and I will update when I finally get to play some more.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

the 5.1's got tons of bug reports from lotsa different games.

 

V***V

[Darth333]

Running the game with Cat 4.11

ATI Radeon 9800 PRO, 128 mb

AMD Athlon 64 3400+

1GB DDR Ram

 

No issues so far

[cold]

Im running on Omega Drivers using cat 5.1, game ran decent, lockups usually every 10 minutes on loading screens, so i just saved often. Just landed on dantoonie(dunno if i spelled right =P) anyways i ran to 1fps playing after my first chat, and the screen lags everywhere, making it unplayable, gonna try to uninstall everything and install , gonna remove ati files and install cat 5.2 only, see what happens.

 

btw , im running amd 3000+ with ati 9700nonpro cracked to pro, had cooling problems but installed a big ass heatsink,cooler on it, 512 pc3200 ram, so its not a hardware issue, this game doesnt use much poiwer anyways

 

edit 10 minutes later:

 

Uninstalled ATI Omega Drivers using Cat 5.1

Used Driver Cleaner 3 to clean all files afterwords

Restarted pc

Installed Cat 5.2 directly from ATI site

Restarted PC

Loaded KOTOR2 on same map

Light lag in the beginning now runs smooth, turned graphics way back up, works great

 

Just install 5.2, everything should be fine

 

Edit again 2 minutes later: Works fine until u try to do something like look at ur map, once i go back from looking at map it starts lagging again for a few minutes, this is kinda crappy =(

[Iyanden]

i'm running on a radeon igp 345m, and it doesn't work. i did the system check and i'm failing for openGL 1.4 compatability (?). anyone know what drivers i can get for it to work?

 

the odd thing is, i ran kotor i with this comp and it worked fine...

[Osiris]

 

edit: I found this in my properties: 6.14.10.6490 for the driver version. What version is that? I have been hearing numbers like 4.11 etc.

 

very simple system.

the first number ("4") is the last digit of the year they were released. 2004 in this example.

the second number is the month they were released in. in your example of 4.11, they were released Nov 2004.

 

back to my gameplay experience...

 

Cat 4.10

BBA Radeon 9600XT, 128 mb

 

all settings are maxed and the game runs spiffy. :D

 

 

V***V

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

yeah but mine had 4 numbers. am I looking in the right place? and where can I find older versions?

 

I'm going to attempt to run the game again. Like I said, it was good throughout most of the mining station. But it seemed to be acting up a little on telos.

[Darth Somethingorother]

i'm running on a radeon igp 345m, and it doesn't work.  i did the system check and i'm failing for openGL 1.4 compatability (?).  anyone know what drivers i can get for it to work?

 

the odd thing is, i ran kotor i with this comp and it worked fine...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yep, I got the same problem, with the same card.... wouldn't happen to be crashing just as you get to the ebon hawk after the first cutscene would you? Not that I can help, it just feels better to know I'm not alone Anyway, I've searched a lot over the past year for OGL 1.4.0, but I can't find anywhere to download it... sorry. I doubt that's the problem though. Have you got windows Xp Sp2?

[ddragon64]

Sapphire ATI 9800pro 128mb

Cat 5.1

 

Thought I was safe from all the problems of the Kotor2 world but I'm not. Everthing was running beautifully until I got to Dantoonie and then the game took a dive(a bad one too, head first).

 

I was playing with everything cranked and 2x AA and 4x AF, now everything is off and/or on low and its barely playable. Indoors seem to be fine but as soon as I hit the plains all hell breaks loose. It seems to only be in the area to the west of Krooda where the cave is and at the landing platform with the Ebon Hawk. The area to the west of Krooda loosened up a little after I killed the kinwrath, obviously. But it was so bad that I would hold forward down for like 2 seconds and by the time the game caught up it showed me half way across the map.

 

I'm going to try the 5.2 and see if that helps out any, since its about the only thing I can do. :cool:

 

Dragon