new ati radeon drivers are great!

[blue&whiteman]

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21573

check that out if you have a radeon gpu and have not already.

these new drivers gave my radeon 7000 new life with ghost recon. I already had the game settings set as low as they could go and it was still a bit choppy. now with the new drivers there are so many more controls in the ati displays app. you can tweak your cards 2D and 3D. you can even tweak how the card works with each individual game. with my card tweaked to fastest performance in this new sw ghost recon is not choppy at all now and plays very smooth.

get this if your card is supported. trust me!

 

[cb911]

hhmmm... some people saying bad things about those drives on versiontracker...

ATi doesn't list the 9600 (used in new PBs) so i guess that means that those cards are just fine? i don't have anything to worry about then.

 

[blue&whiteman]

hhmmm... some people saying bad things about those drives on versiontracker...

ATi doesn't list the 9600 (used in new PBs) so i guess that means that those cards are just fine? i don't have anything to worry about then.

many of the people that had issues were caused because they installed the sw on an unsupported card.

any experience I have had since updating has been good.

 

[neoelectronaut]

Considering I have an eMac and my card isn't listed...should I insall?

 

[blue&whiteman]

Considering I have an eMac and my card isn't listed...should I insall?

no! why would you even think of it when your model isn't listed?

 

[Makosuke]

Actually, ATI was a bit misleading with the documentation; it does not support most (any?) BTO cards, specifically the 9800 that is available with the G5s. This is frustrating, as there are a heap of software options avaialble with the aftermarket 9800 that are certainly supported by the BTO 9800, but we have no tools to turn on.

That said, it says specifically in the documentation that it can install alongside built-in cards, even if it doesn't support them. All that happens is that when you open the control panel, it gives you the info for your card and says it's "unsupported" -- not meaning that you've broken the driver for your card (which a lot of people on VT seem to be mistakenly thinking), but that the control panel utility can't adjust any of the paramenters for your card. The driver is still there and functioning properly.

So, installing it on an unsupported machine is worthless, but shouldn't hurt. I tried it out in the vain hope that ATI decided to let us 9800 BTO fools turn on some of the features we paid for, but no dice. Computer still works fine, though.

(Oh, and in another boneheaded move from ATI, there's no uninstaller).

 

[crazzyeddie]

Ok... heres the deal with this ATI Displays thing.

If you BOUGHT an ATI card (not got one with your Mac) then you can use this to tweak the graphical settings for your games. It will enable FSAA, AF, portrait displays, and more, depending on what card you have. If you have a 9800 BTO (Ordered with your G5) then you CAN use this. There is a hack posted here.
If you have ANY other video card that was not bought from ATI after you bought your computer, this is essentially useless. However, I am trying to find out of the hack above could be applied to other cards, which would make many many many people happy.

 

[MacQuest]

Considering I have an eMac and my card isn't listed...should I insall?

 

[blue&whiteman]

Ok... heres the deal with this ATI Displays thing.

If you BOUGHT an ATI card (not got one with your Mac) then you can use this to tweak the graphical settings for your games. It will enable FSAA, AF, portrait displays, and more, depending on what card you have. If you have a 9800 BTO (Ordered with your G5) then you CAN use this. There is a hack posted here.
If you have ANY other video card that was not bought from ATI after you bought your computer, this is essentially useless. However, I am trying to find out of the hack above could be applied to other cards, which would make many many many people happy.

exactly right. I bought my radeon 7000 retail.

if you game and have one of the retail models listed below then I highly recommend upgrading to it. if not DO NOT.

# RADEON 9800 Pro
# RADEON 9000 Pro
# RADEON 8500
# RADEON 7000
# RADEON (AGP & PCI)

for the record. many people think oem and retail cards are the same as long as its the same model. I have read in many places and been told by many comp. techs that oem video cards often use slower memory and a slower gpu.

apple used the 9000 in the MDD G4's I think but I don't think they were pro versions.

best thing to do if you want to upgrade video and are buying a power mac is just buy it with whatever the stock card is then upgrade with a retail boxed card. the video card upgrades apple offers are sure to be oem. apple and any computer company try to cut costs any way they can. its just survival.

once apple did upgrade their stock video to the faster retail cards though. it was in the blue and white G3's. the rev. A version of these towers had a rage 128 that had a 75mhz gpu and 90 mhz memory. the rev. B model that came out about 3-4 months after came with the full power retail, version of the rage 128 and had a 100mhz gpu and 100mhz memory. just thought I would share..

 

[ExoticFish]

hhmmm... some people saying bad things about those drives on versiontracker...

ATi doesn't list the 9600 (used in new PBs) so i guess that means that those cards are just fine? i don't have anything to worry about then.

ATI never releases drivers for their mobile chips, they are always rolled into a OS X update (10.3.3 added new drivers).

 

[Makosuke]

If you have a 9800 BTO (Ordered with your G5) then you CAN use this. There is a hack posted here.

Ooh... nice. I hate to be the first, but even though I don't even play games on my 9800, I'm interested to see if this works. Since it only patches the ATI control panel, there shouldn't really be any risk, anyway. I suppose I'll jump later today.

Say, does anybody know how to uninstall the ATI 4.2 update, or at least what it installs so it could be manually removed? Is it just the preference pane, or is there more to it?

The OEM 9800 is a sad situation; on one hand, we don't seem to be having the DVD player stuttering problems of retail 9800s. On the other, we get none of the manual features that our cards are quite capable of (yes, the BTOs are the full chipset), and by most accounts they're considerably louder than the retail cards (I don't know about louder, but the thing sure does whine). Oh, well, at least it's fast.