The continued ATI issues...

I know this has been discussed before... regarding the problems with ATI's current Radeon drivers and SL - but since some time has passed, and the game is going live very soon, I was wondering where things stood as far as fixing these problems. I'd particularly be curious to hear from the developers / Lindens on this. Are there any plans to fix these compatibility problems with the current Catalyst 3.4 drivers or is it a matter of waiting for ATI to fix the problems with a future driver update?

I can live with using Catalyst 3.1 to make SL playable for the time being, but it would be nice to be able to use the latest driver with my card (9700 Pro)....for many reasons (like for other games and such).

I also notice a marked difference in the image quality between in-game snapshots taken by Nvidia users and those that I've taken with my ATI. The shading and lighting is so much nicer from the Nvidias. Now, I know that the Radeon I have is on par technology-wise... so it would be great to be able to see that kind of quality on my screen too.

Thanks in advance for any input on this. And please don't take this another whining ATI user... I'm not trying to pressure - I know these issues are complicated. I'm just curious about where things are at now..

I hope I havent been missing anything, I wonder if switching to Nvidia would be like my first pair of eyeglasses... Curently Im running 2 ATI systems, one is a Dell laptop with a Mobility Radeon 9k, the other is a Gateway desktop, with an ATI Radeon 7500. The laptop runs SL practically perfictly, IMO, however, I spilled water on it and it fried (im sending it in ASAP). On my other system SL is relitively playable, however the longer I play, textures start to degrade(start turning black, eventually corrupting), and the drop shadow thing (thats supposed to make you focus somewhere else onscreen by making a sort of shadow on the floor) eventually turns black. Luckily SL is still playable on my Gateway... Im using 3.1 drivers on both computers, and have tryed the new ones on my Gateway with no change.

I have the exact same vid card as chris, and Notice the problems with it as well. It makes things like jetball and other events almost undoable to participate in. Any plans on a resolution?

Second Life certainly stresses graphics drivers a lot harder than other currently shipping games. We do a tremendous amount of switching textures in and out of the graphics card as they arrive off the network. Since most other games don't work this hard to manage textures, they don't uncover the same driver bugs we do. We're working closely with ATI to both get driver bugs fixed and find workarounds for problems.

An update from our latest round of discussions with ATI:

* There was a bug in ATI's drivers that caused the UI to flicker different colors on Radeon 9500/9700. This was fixed in Catalyst 3.2 and higher.

* There is a different bug in ATI's drivers that causes images in the world to become corrupted after running for a while on Radeon 8500, 9000, 9500, and 9700. This bug was apparently introduced into Catalyst 3.2 and still exists in the released drivers.

* So if you're on a 9500/9700 you're in a bit of a bind. I recommend Catalyst 3.1 right now.

* The reason graphics look better on nVidia is because we have to turn off hardware lighting on ATI to work around yet another ATI driver bug. If we turn on hardware lighting, the sky and land frequently flash solid red.

The corrupted image problem is fixed in ATI's internal beta drivers for the 9500 and 9700, but still exists for 8500 and 9000. They are working on it now. (Thanks, Jeff!)

The sky/land flashing red is also fixed in the latest ATI internal beta drivers, but we still need to detect the "right" driver version and turn the better lighting back on.

We're working with ATI on a method to get more up-to-date drivers out to Second Life users. I can't say more right now.

James Linden

James - Thank you very much for the update on the ATI situation and explaining things a bit. That's exactly the kind of post I was hoping for.

I'm glad to know that there is progress being made (in particular the corruption and hardware lighting problems) with the beta drivers. And I'm using the 9700 so if things work well on that I'll be a happy camper.

Looking forward to the new driver release!

Anyone using a ATI RADEON™ 9800?
Any known issues with this card?


fen-

Not to start any riots or anything, but I was a big ATI fan for a long time, back during my EverQuest days. Unfortunately, EQ had a lot of the same type of issues, and I must say ATI was very helpful, but the list of bugs seemed never ending. This was also before the "Catalyst" series, when their driver releases were few and far between. I still like their cards, but i've been a happy owner of a lot of nVidia GF3 cards ever since leaving ATI.

I've got the ATL radeon 9700, and the only game I play is SL. I bought it for SL within the last month.
Is the solution to the problems that are consistently arrising, going to be erradicated soon or should I return the ATI and pick up an INVIDIA card? I know it's not LL responsibility to tell me which card to get but I would just like an expert opinion so I can buy my membership being confident that I am getting the best game for my money.
I would like feedback from anybody who has advice...
Thanks
Crow

Like everyone else I've had alot of problems with the Catalyst 3.4 drivers. I recently downloaded the 3.1 and everything has been working perfectly ever since.