New viewer and ATI forcing me to stop playing

well i have been having loads of trouble with ATI and SL lately, the ATI driver of the version 7.5 and above making me have a nice Frame Per Second rate of 0.5 which means SL is completly unplayable. until the lastest viewer, i managed by reverting to the 7.4 version of ATI drivers which worked more or less. but with the last viewer it stopped to work and i started to have bugs i saw in other softwares the 3D system completly messing up. so i am forced to update my ATI graphic card driver to v8.3 and guess what?

my FPS is down to 0.3 and not moving. thank You lindens because going as it goes i migth be forced by YOU to stop playing SL or do you buy me a new computer?

You are not alone. Regrettably, the Lindens are not reading the forums, so you're stuck with us

If you haven't already tried it, you might try reverting to the previous viewer. Look at this blog posting, about a third of the way through it there are links to the 1.19.0.5 viewer:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/03/the-new-viewer-a-well-oiled-machine/

You can actually run any previous viewer if you add " -channel old" to the Target line in the desktop shortcut you use to run SL. (actually, the word 'old' can be any word, lol).
.

Thanks Azumi ..I was having lots of SL crash with the actual viewer and with your tips (-channel old)', I' m able to acces to SL with any old viewer ... I have install the 1.18.5, 1.18.4 and 1.18.3 to be sure to acces to the grid anytime ..lol Great feeling to (re)discover the viewer I liked.
Definitely my best choice is the 1.18.5, the last viewer released just before the SL WindLight/Havok/Server Big Bang.
(my computer is not so bad but really don't like the officiel windlight viewer : AMD 2.2Ghz, 1Gig Ram, ATI RADEON X 1650Pro with 512 mb)

doesnt help at all for my FPS as i have the issue since SL v 1.16 sent dozens of ticket and LL is telling me it is my firewall ( which is disabled for the test and did nto change at all ) which is responsible. in other words seems they cant take their fingers out of their *** and work

perhaps you are using a router that can be recognize as a firewall .. I 've already heard something about that

Im having the same problem, The new Catalyst drivers make it completely unplayable.

Even the previous viewer is unplayable for me, luckily I still had the 6.5 Catalyst drivers.....
The new viewer actually works well with them. I do not understand why the new ATI drivers make SL totally useless with unplayable frame rates

I'm still using way old ATI drivers and haven't had any problems in months....ATI X600 card. I have become wary of updating the drivers just because everybody always tells me "update, update!" I have an FPS between 15 and 20, which I'm fine with, on a WLAN connection and with 2GB RAM.

Edit: I never installed the Catalyst programme itself, ONLY the drivers-that helped, too.

mmm well i will see to get the old drivers if i can .. all i can tell is i used 7.4 drivers until now because 7.5 and above were not working and i had warned LL since then today i am on 8.3 because with the new viewer a bug reported by ATI about 3 d graphic with 7.x drivers appeared so i updated. no other choice.

to think that catalyst drivers versions are nummered as follow
year.month.version means that 7.5 is the version of the driver from may 2007 we are in april 2008 and the bug is still on SL



anyway if you use 6.5 drivers can you tell me if you play other online game and if you have troubles ? especially WOW or SWG, because my issue also is that only SL is messing up with the new drivers every other software work fine.

I'll have to check the version on my other comp, this one here has an NVidia card, but I think they were the May 2007 drivers, and they've been fine. As I said, I only use the drivers, because the Catalyst programme itself wasn't working for me. I don't play anything else online at the moment tho.

I had to give up on ATI, i bought an Nvidia 8800 and no more problems :\

Hi,

The funny thing is i'm using an old gforce 5600 and having no problems or crashes (at least not any more than usual Sorry to hear you are all having so many problems,i hope ll will start reading these things and get this all worked out so everyone can have an enjoyable experience!!

Why should LL do ATI`s work for them this is down too Ati and there poor drivers not LL go to Ati`s forums and see how quick they respond LOL.

If you buy a cheap card you get what you pay for in the end we nearly always find buying cheaper is a false economy.

I know its a harsh reality but its true im sorry about that.

The standard Catalyst drivers have never worked well for me (I have an old Radeon 9600 pro).

Try the Omega Drivers, available at http://omegadrivers.net.

P2

Ok, but what if you have Vista 64 bit? There's no omega out yet...
And does anyone have confirmation that omega really solves the problem?

Is there any news on what features in catalyst 7.5 cause the problem? something that can be disabled maybe?

Thanks,
Amber

Try turning the catalyst AI off.

OK ..I just read a great tip on SLEX forum .... in hardware options, instead of cutting half of the memory texture ... double it and that helps a lot ! I mean if you have a 512 mb graphic card, set it to 1024 and not only at 256 ... Run that with the Nicholas viewer that have a windlight patch (Eye Candy version) and try it !! It seems working for me !
(i have an ati x1650 pro 512 mb with AMD 3200+ 1GB ram)