New ATI 4850 4870 Drivers crashing SL
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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07-01-2008 15:06
Hello. Just a quick post to see if anyone else is having issues with the Hotfix ATI drivers for their lastest 4850 and 4870 cards? I just install mine...and now every time I load SL it crashes or I get a "video card not supported, please upgrade" message. Hmm. Here's more info on jira: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8014Please add your two sense if you are having this issue as well.
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Akira Shimada
Registered User
Join date: 12 Jul 2006
Posts: 2
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07-03-2008 14:28
Got the same problem but only with the release candidate version. Standard version works fine in ultra with installed ATI driver 8.6
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Seann Sands
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Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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which card do you have?
07-03-2008 16:33
Hi.
I've been taking with someone over on JIRA about this issue. I've also submitted a ticket. Since I posted last...I have figured out how use both clients *most* of the time. Sometimes I still get crashes. I always get the "video card unknown" error screen with both. Can you please reply back on this thread (and add your comments to the JIRA issue tracker) with more details...like what exactly your 4850 card is (mine is ASUS). I've noticed poor results on the ultra settings myself with this newer card (which should handle it fine). Is this true for you? Thanks.
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Akira Shimada
Registered User
Join date: 12 Jul 2006
Posts: 2
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07-04-2008 13:15
I've the 4850 made by Sapphire with 512 Mb, driver 8.6. The standard client work really well. I have the error message "video card not supported, please upgrade" only when I try the Release candidate client (windlight) it crashes just after the login session is done (login progress bar at 100%)
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The World is just what we make of it.
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Mader6000 Bade
Registered User
Join date: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 2
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Working with ATI Catalyst 8.7
07-27-2008 07:45
Hi it works with Catalyst 8.7 and Viewer 1.20.15 (92456). But Grafical disabled in advanced mode under Hardwareoptions AA (Antialising) and reduced TextureMemory to 432 MB. Install new viewer in new Directory! Ihave 2x Ati HD4870 in CrossfireX mode (Catalystdefault). Looks like that the default Texture Memory is set to 1024MB and one card has 512MB. Can any Confirm that? Thanks Mader6000 Bade
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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Please check out the JIRA thread on this...
07-27-2008 08:09
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Mader6000 Bade
Registered User
Join date: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 2
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Ok Next settings passed to start sl and using with AA
07-27-2008 08:11
First dont use in Game setting for Antialising! Disabled it!
Use Catalyst setting! Disable Programmsetting use and set Antialinsing to 4x and Narrow-tent filter! You can set the Texture Memory to 1024MB in Game it works now with grate grafic and 21 FPS Wide Camera - 59 FPS on narrow Camara zoomed too Ground.
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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Vista64+SL+ATI=not worth it...
08-01-2008 21:03
Just a FYI. I decided that SL+ATI+Vista64 just isn't worth all the hassles. I was still having very high number of crashes...and I think it's the fact I'm on Vista64 is the reason. Obviously, I'm not willing to downgrade and lose 4GB of memory (from my 8GB) to go back to 32bit just for SL. Hence, I pulled my ATI 4850 card temporarily and replaced my Nvida 8800GT because SL plays nicer with Nvida products on Vista (you guys really need to test more on ATI+Vista64). Let me know, if you fix SL to play nicely with Vista 64+ATI...and I'll put back my much faster 4850 card. Cheers.
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Peggy Paperdoll
A Brat
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 4,383
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08-01-2008 21:26
From: Seann Sands Just a FYI. I decided that SL+ATI+Vista64 just isn't worth all the hassles. I was still having very high number of crashes...and I think it's the fact I'm on Vista64 is the reason. Obviously, I'm not willing to downgrade and lose 4GB of memory (from my 8GB) to go back to 32bit just for SL. Hence, I pulled my ATI 4850 card temporarily and replaced my Nvida 8800GT because SL plays nicer with Nvida products on Vista (you guys really need to test more on ATI+Vista64). Let me know, if you fix SL to play nicely with Vista 64+ATI...and I'll put back my much faster 4850 card. Cheers. I would think that is an ATI problem, not SL. SL built the program around OpenGL. ATI is evidently not up to speed in that department..........and nVidia is. So the problem is not with SL, it's with the card manufacturer. This is not a new problem, by the way. ATI has for at least 2 years been behind the curve to nVidia. And what program really needs 8 gigs of RAM at the moment? Heck, what program do you know of that runs at 64 bits besides a very ferw business applications? I can run two clients on this Vista 32 bit plus GIMP, browse the internet, check email and stream live news from the internet.............and only use 2 gigs of my 3 gigs RAM. Some day 64 bit OS's will be the norm........but it ain't here yet. And since 64 bit OS's have been out for a couple years and no one is jumping on the band wagon I would say Vista 64 bit is a waste of money, effort and aggrevation.
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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well..
08-01-2008 22:03
True...I'm sure ATI's drivers are the main problem...though, SL should test out it's software with both, since ATI is gaining some numbers with these newer 4800 series (Nvidia's stock dropped recently because it's new x260 cards aren't as fast and are twice expensive as ATI's 4780 cards). I've seen people switch from Nvidia (like me) because of the pure cost+speed of these ATI cards over Nvidia's. Sadly...I'm sure Vista32 or XP32 ATI's drivers are just fine with SL. It's the 64bit issue that the problem. And since I use a number of graphic design programs Photoshop, etc.) I need the 8Gb to load larger photos. Plus, there's been in the news lately (read: http://www.start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2618&Itemid=1), the increasing use of 64bit because of 32bit old 4Gb limit. Plus, it's really is faster than 32bit...I have most of my programs 64bit...and they always beat the 32bit versions of the same software. I'm just hoping ATI's 64bit drivers (and SL's Nvidia's bias) are solved soon. They need to realized it's only for the best...to be future prepared. Cheers. From: Peggy Paperdoll I would think that is an ATI problem, not SL. SL built the program around OpenGL. ATI is evidently not up to speed in that department..........and nVidia is. So the problem is not with SL, it's with the card manufacturer. This is not a new problem, by the way. ATI has for at least 2 years been behind the curve to nVidia.
And what program really needs 8 gigs of RAM at the moment? Heck, what program do you know of that runs at 64 bits besides a very ferw business applications? I can run two clients on this Vista 32 bit plus GIMP, browse the internet, check email and stream live news from the internet.............and only use 2 gigs of my 3 gigs RAM.
Some day 64 bit OS's will be the norm........but it ain't here yet. And since 64 bit OS's have been out for a couple years and no one is jumping on the band wagon I would say Vista 64 bit is a waste of money, effort and aggrevation.
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Peggy Paperdoll
A Brat
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 4,383
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08-01-2008 22:15
Well one day the pile may be reversed and ATI will be on top...........but that is not here yet. No one can tell who will be "the best" even 3 months from now. But you cannot fault SL or nVidia, or even ATI for problems arrising from any 64 bit operatiing system. I'm sure 64 bit will take over just as 32 bit took over from 16 bit about 10 years ago.........and though I wasn't even interested in stuff like that back then I bet the arguments were just as intense as they are now. I don't think LL is "in bed" with nVidia............but I do think ATI is in bed with DirectX. That is at the base of the problem, I think. Microsoft is king of the hill. DirectX is Microsoft..........and ATI is smooching passionately up there in Redman.  It'll change, but till then you have to deal with problems most don't. I hedged my bets.  I got a 64 bit processor.........but run 32 bit OS.
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Osgeld Barmy
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Join date: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 3,336
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08-01-2008 22:50
From: Peggy Paperdoll Well one day the pile may be reversed and ATI will be on top...........but that is not here yet. No one can tell who will be "the best" even 3 months from now. ati has ALWAYS had issues with software, they like to do it "their way" which was fine back when, everyone else who did it "their way" is long dead in the 3d market, 3dfx, matrox, nec ect ... the only reason ATI survived is becuase they have been doing it since way back in the day, im pretty sure ive still got a ati ISA card sitting around somewhere, they have always made THE top notch fastest video cards untill nvidia came in the scene, but that attitude has always caused problems tru the decades, and untill they "get over it" the situation will remain the same From: Peggy Paperdoll But you cannot fault SL or nVidia, or even ATI for problems arrising from any 64 bit operatiing system. I'm sure 64 bit will take over just as 32 bit took over from 16 bit about 10 years ago.........and though I wasn't even interested in stuff like that back then I bet the arguments were just as intense as they are now.
heh yea, with windows any major change is a BIG pain in the ... and theres always arguments for the old and the new, but MS always manage to bungle it the first few times (and vista is try #2, awesome job there right?) ive been tru the 8-16-32 bit changes, most computer dorks (like me) usually jump on the next bit gen OS, as long as it doesnt contain the words Mirco and soft they bungled dos 4 (8-16 bit) the bungled but fixed windows 95, they made the change from doswin to NT about as smooth as a kick to the teeth, and recently with xp and vista the 64 bit change is going according to plan From: Peggy Paperdoll I don't think LL is "in bed" with nVidia............but I do think ATI is in bed with DirectX. That is at the base of the problem, I think. Microsoft is king of the hill. DirectX is Microsoft..........and ATI is smooching passionately up there in Redman.  they are not in bed with nvidia, nvidia just supports the open standard better, back to ati's "my way" attitude... you will run into all sorts of screwball help threads on any game-program thats open gl, theres always a large margin of issues ATI on the other hand is in bed with directX, but only on this newest generation of cards (xbox360 = ati) but they are in lots of other systems too, that DO run soley off of open GL, nintendo's last 2 systems are fully open GL and run ati cards BUT on those type of systems the core developers kit has been optimised to deal with whatever issues there might be, pc's do not have this luxury, thats where nvidia wins, they support what everyone else supports on the pc, windows is not the only OS out there and personally as a (hobbiest) modern game designer it makes no since for anyone who does not have a contract over their head to even deal with directX, open GL is free to develop for, always improving tru the community AND it runs on just about anything, i can make a open GL program and run it on windows, mac, linux, psp, ds, some mobile phones, pda's ect ect ect why would anyone pay to be limited to JUST windows From: Peggy Paperdoll It'll change, but till then you have to deal with problems most don't. I hedged my bets.  I got a 64 bit processor.........but run 32 bit OS. there is absolutely ZERO reason to use a 64 bit os on a home machine at this point and time, there is no performance gain, and 99.9999% of the time your software is in 32 bit anyway, which actually slows things down by adding a layer of emulation
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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War of Words
08-02-2008 08:07
Well, I didn't mean to start an ATI vs Nvidia war here...just trying to put the word out that ATI+Vista64+SL doesn't really work. And see if anyone had ideas how to solve it. Btw, there are a couple of posts it seems already about this issue (search on Vista64). Please add your voice to the JIRA bug report. And to those of you out there who can't seem to understand why anyone would install an 64bit OS now...just ask anyone who works with large photo programs or CAD software...that 4+ Gb of memory really does help...and I can personally state that you can get many 64bit programs today (see start64.com for a list) that truly out-paces any 32bit program of the same design. 64bit is still a bit of the bleeding edge; but don't they say this of SL? Cheers.
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Dandare Daniels
Registered User
Join date: 1 Mar 2007
Posts: 16
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It's not just Vista64...
08-23-2008 19:45
Hi! Since I own a ATI 4850 Card. I'm in the group off affected people, where the sl client crashes immediately, or after some minutes. And this happen with my Vista 32 installation, Seann. I also opened a jira issue here: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8717I've been experianced that SL seems to run much slower with ATI, compared to NVIDIA two month ago, when playing SL with a ATI 3870 Card, and made comparisons with another PC, running SL on a NVIDIA 8800 card. Truly, in general there's a better OpenGL support & performance with NVIDIA Cards. That's a fact since years. The 48xx cards with the newest Drivers (8.  "just" support 105 OpenGL Extenstions of 226 total. May check out this free Tool and compare it against a Nvidia Card http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/?from-gpu-caps-viewerLet's despite the slight advantage of NVIDIA Cards overall OpenGL gaming performance... It's mostly just a few more frames, or say maybe up to a maximum of 5-15% performance gain in any games released during the last couple years. I run a lot of new Game titles here on my PC and they ALL work allmost PERFECT on this hardware - allways with MAXED OUT graphic features like shadows, dynamic lightning, 8x AA and other eycatching things. Even Crysis runs very smoothy on HIGH settings, with 1280* screen resolution. BUT unfortunately SL never performed very well on this, and my prior system while using ATI Hardware (3870 card). It's the most significant performance drop i experianced in a Game/Application, just cuz it's based on a OpenGL architecture, ever. Why happen, that this Application does work so poor on ATI cards? Isn't there something to optimize, to bypass, maybe? The ATI 48xx Series is the most valuable performance(per)cent graphic adaptor u can get on the market today, and i'm not willing to get a 2 generation older (and much poor power efficiency!) card like an nvidia 8800 just to run SL in a good manner on my system, while ANY OTHER Game or App perform perfect *sight*. Well, back to the problem. I've been installing the latest Viewer 1.20.15.92456, the latest RC Viewer, and even the BETA Viewer - all with the same result: Immediate, or 1-2 minutes delayed crash. The BETA Viewer even crashed during startup (not reaching the login screen at all!) I use the 8.8 ATI Driver right now, and probably downgrade to 8.7 follow Marders (Workaround) later. But there's definatly an OpenGL Issue inside the 8.7 Driver, that you can visually see, when starting the default OpenGL Demo (HDR + DoF + Radial Blur) in the GPU Caps Viewer. It stutter's horrible, while it doesn't with the 8.8 Driver. This could reflect, that ATI is currently working on the OpenGL issues at all (hopefully). When will LL release a new Viewer btw? It's been a while..at least 6 weeks ago orso?
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Robot Poultry
Registered User
Join date: 23 Jun 2006
Posts: 208
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08-24-2008 00:33
From: Osgeld Barmy there is absolutely ZERO reason to use a 64 bit os on a home machine at this point and time, there is no performance gain, and 99.9999% of the time your software is in 32 bit anyway, which actually slows things down by adding a layer of emulation The processor is capable of running 32 bit code natively when running in 64 bit mode, so there is no emulation required. Even when taking thunking into consideration, the performance hit just isn't there. This has been shown in (old) benchmarks of Windows XP x64 and early benchmarks of Vista x64. Indeed, in some cases (mainly applications that do lots of math, such as graphic design apps, 3D modeling apps, and games), when compiled to run 64 bit native (which we're seeing more and more these days, primarily due to the memory addressing advantages), tend to have a slight performance advantage (although not terribly noticeable, when viewed in terms of the real world) over their 32 bit counterparts. Photoshop, for instance, while currently a 32 bit application, will be made available in a 64 bit version beginning with CS4 in order to leverage the >2GB per process memory addressing. So while there's no good reason to use a 64 bit OS on a home computer, there's also no good reason not to (unless you're running 16 bit applications, in which case you'll want to stick with 32 bit OS's). Especially since the drivers are there for almost anything that runs under 32 bit Vista, you're left with a "why not?" instead of "why?" situation.
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Sark Hunt
Registered User
Join date: 1 Nov 2006
Posts: 20
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08-26-2008 10:35
Looks like its the new 8.8 drivers Vista 64 & 32 I use sl on v64 for a while with no issues apart from gfx driver updates this happened on 8.4 as well
All my machines have ati cards all different 4870 2900 1950 1900 and they all crash with 8.8 logs in starts to render 30 seconds later poof crash all do the same thing
installed 8.7 again all fine
looks like we have to wait for a fix again
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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Use Card Maker's drivers...not ATI direct ones.
08-26-2008 11:00
Hi, For those not reading the JIRA report on this issue (go vote on it...maybe lindens will actually help with this)...it seems that it's best to use the driver directly from card makers websites...not ATI. Just a tip...worth a try. 
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Zephyr Vox
Registered User
Join date: 1 Apr 2005
Posts: 5
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08-27-2008 21:57
Just to add my voice to this thread, I've had SL crash on Vista x64 + 4870 on the 8.6 and 8.7 drivers. However, the 8.8 drivers seem to work perfectly. I put more technical details about the crash in /111/b0/271238/1.html#post2126188 If anyone's willing to fire up a debugger, we can compare notes.
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Ferdo Cooperstone
Registered User
Join date: 9 Sep 2008
Posts: 1
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09-15-2008 06:42
From: Mader6000 Bade First dont use in Game setting for Antialising! Disabled it!
Use Catalyst setting! Disable Programmsetting use and set Antialinsing to 4x and Narrow-tent filter! You can set the Texture Memory to 1024MB in Game it works now with grate grafic and 21 FPS Wide Camera - 59 FPS on narrow Camara zoomed too Ground. THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!! You save me  Now it work SL with grafhic card Sapphire ATI radeon HD 4850.and Catalyst v.8.8 
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Seann Sands
Registered User
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 49
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Use 8.9 Beta drivers
09-15-2008 07:49
Hi. Just a quick note that I've been able to use the new 8.9 Beta drivers with SL for the last week...and it's by far the best solution for Vista64. They seemed to added the correct OpenGL extensions SL needed. Still not the best framerates...but, maybe the final 8.9 will fixt that. Also make sure you turn off DWM...google that (basically turns off the pretty Vista GUI) I saw a speed up after that....Check the JIRA ticket for the download link... 
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Sark Hunt
Registered User
Join date: 1 Nov 2006
Posts: 20
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09-19-2008 09:26
From: Sark Hunt Looks like its the new 8.8 drivers Vista 64 & 32 I use sl on v64 for a while with no issues apart from gfx driver updates this happened on 8.4 as well
All my machines have ati cards all different 4870 2900 1950 1900 and they all crash with 8.8 logs in starts to render 30 seconds later poof crash all do the same thing
installed 8.7 again all fine
looks like we have to wait for a fix again Full release of 8.9 v32 and v64 all now working for me \o/
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Dandare Daniels
Registered User
Join date: 1 Mar 2007
Posts: 16
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09-19-2008 23:49
From: Sark Hunt Full release of 8.9 v32 and v64 all now working for me \o/ I'm also using the 8.9 Drivers now, but the latest RC 1) does perfom even worse 2) crashed without a warning after just 10 minutes. Using the latest released Viewer now, that 1) perform better (not perfect), but mostly crash due the commonly known "OUT OF MEMORY" bug (memory leak) after some time. As announced in the ATI 8.9 drivers release notes, that was "phase 1" of openGL 3.0. So we need to wait another month..and another, and another - depends on how many "phases" ATI sliced this implementation  )
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