Problems with the latest ATi drivers for my card

Hullo. I finally decided to try Second Life, and... I can't get it to work. :\

When I initially downloaded and executed the client, it ran correctly, the splash window/login screen/whatever it is came up, and a small popup notice appeared saying that I didn't have the latest drivers for my graphics card, and I should probably update them for best performance.

I like to keep my graphics card drivers up-to-date, and didn't realize ATi had come out with new ones, so I went to their site and downloaded the driver set, uninstalling the old ones first, as recommended by ATi.

The driver set I got is bundled with the 'Catalyst Control Center Package', and includes display and WMD drivers, etc. It's version 1.2.2172.2074 of the package, running on .NET 1.1.4322.2032. This version of the package was released 12/21/05.

My graphics card is a Radeon 9250.

When I'd finished this, I tried to run Second Life again.

Here's the message I got:

'Your video card appears to be a GDI Generic, which Second Life does not support.'

Then it went on to list requirements. 32 MB of video card memory or more, multitexture support, ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 2 or better. My card has 128 MB of memory, and I'm told it's superior to a G3.

Anyhow, of course I clicked 'Try anyway?' and then it said it couldn't run because my drivers were out-of-date or unsupported.

This is actually worse than what it was before, where it would run (or at least got to the title screen) and tell me I might want new drivers. Now it doesn't even get that far.

I'd rather not revert to the older drivers, and I'm not even sure where to find them even if I wanted to. Not that it'd be too hard if I looked, I suppose. Might even have them on my machine tucked away somewhere, but I'd have to look; I've got a bit of clutter around where they'd be.

I'm somewhat disappointed and slightly frustrated at the moment. Any thoughts?

SL has issues with ATI cards because of ATI's non-standard way of implementing OpenGL. Alot of people found that the optimized Omega drivers work best in getting their ATI cards working in SL.

go into preferences, if possible.... I think its in the Graphics Tab but not sure, and check the detect graphics at next log in.

I can't even get that far. ;p It doesn't go to login screen, though as I said, it did *before* I updated the driver.

Incidentally, apparently the video driver version that bundle uses is 6.14.10.6587. I might give the Omega drivers a try, I've seen them mentioned in other threads as well, though it'd be nice not to have to use third-party drivers since I've never had any problems with Radeon's drivers, otherwise. Can always try using both, I suppose.

Not gonna try that quite yet, though.

On the same download page ( https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27 ) is the catalyst uninstaller..

Download and run that, to clean up all previous driver version, then reinstall the driver.

Try that and see how it work, as it sounds like you got some DLL problem, which the uninstaller should take care of.

People mention things that might help in settings, which I can't get to.

Probably there's a way to access the settings file manually? Hunting for it now.

[Edit:] Er, actually, I doubt that'd do much good, since that's what I did earlier: I uninstalled the old version, and did a clean install. ^^;

[Edit:] Oh, and my Catalyst version is 5.13. The control center/bundle itself has the 1.x version number.

I upgraded to the Omega drivers a couple of months ago and have had much better performance in SL with them. www.omegadrivers.net (I have a Radeon 9600).

P2

Did you ditch the old ATI driver and Catalyst altogether, or leave 'em around?

The Omega drivers did help a bit in SL, but unfortunately screwed up things for other games! Something wrong with textures that I couldn't resolve, everything shimmered in UT2004.

In my case, the Omega drives more than fixed everything, and my system's performing a fair deal better in general. I'm not much of a gamer, anyways, so.

I like the Omega interface better, too. It's a lot slicker, better integration, more control.

I have a Radeon Xpress 200M in my comp, would the problems between SL and ATI cards be my cause for the extremely low fps.. at no more than 4 fps with no one around. Others have told me it is most likely the gcard, and that it'd be best to start posting questions on this in several forums. I've tryed the newer versions of Windows drivers for it, no go so I uninstalled those and tryed the Cata. pack from ATI, no go and completely removed, and then tryed those Omega Drivers, still no go.
Anyone have any ideas.. I'm quite sure it's something else, as I've run other games that require alot more out of it during other multiplayer games.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I usually hang around 2.5 fps which is basically.. unplayable unless you want to sit in one place all the time.. which is getting... rather boring as heck.

Running:
Compaq Presario V2300 CTO Notebook PC

WinXP
AMD Turion 64
Radeon Xpress 200M (12
512 RAM

Venbred, did u find a solution? i have the Radeon Xpress 200M (12 also..sound like we have the same problem..around 2fps
I updated the driver, no love - I installed the omega drivers, no love

I have a Toshiba L25-S121 notebook
1.6 ghz Celeron
768 megs Ram
ATI Radeon Xpress 200m (12

i get 2 fps with all settings turned down or off ..draw at 64

The Omega 'drivers' are not third party as such... they are wholly based on the ATI Catalyst drivers. The Omega stuff mainly optimises the Catalyst settings, it does not replace tham.

For example at http://www.omegadrivers.net it variously states:

v2.6.87
Based on the Catalyst 5.12 Official drivers.
Don't bother ATI about these drivers as they are unsupported by them!

...it also optionally installs the ATI Tray Tools for you.

SL runs fine for me (ignoring the fact that SL is still have texture loading problems at the moment in any case) on my 256Mb 9600XT using the Omega drivers.

Sadly, no Cabo. I've yet to have found a solution, have posted on several hardware forums and and basically have got nothing new from that. As of now, still running at very low fps with everything at a bare minimal. Which I'm sure you agree Cabo, SL is basically unplayable at that fps rate. I'll be sure to message you directly Cabo if I do happen to find a solution to it, but until then, we cursed to do the robot dance. lol

And Pale, thanks for the insight, I had just figured the Omega's were just a third party driver set.

=^.^=

this notebook is brand new...so i decided to exchange it for a non celeron one...

Mobile AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz Processor
768 megs ram
and the same ATI Radeon Xpress 200m (12 video card

this notebook is a little better but not much...can hit 3 fps but not consistently lol
luckily i have my pc which gets 20+fps and 10fps in crowded blingy clubs ..
but i really like to play sl in my recliner...hopefully something will happen hehe

also, ive noticed if i move around, my fps will go up slightly, but stop and they go back down...whats up with that ?

Eh, I'm sure if my Desktop was not so out of date hardware wise it'd run it well. But yeah, the fps is absolutely random for me, highest I've had it was 3.5 fps.
Anyone happen to know who I could ask to possibly get a driver made up for it to make my card compatible?

I wonder if i went on up to 1 gig ram if it would make a difference?
i have 768 meg now...with 128 going to vid card..leaves me with 640 megs.

If i went to 1 gig..would leave me 896 megs afte rthe vid card takes its 128.

Anyone think that would make a substantial improvement in my fps ?

More memory will always help but I doubt you are going to see a huge improvement. The ATI 200 is pretty low power graphics and the use of shared memory is a massive performance hit. System memory is a gazzillion times slower than dedicated video ram no matter how much of it you have.