Radeon x850 XT PE -- glitchy?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I just picked up the VisionTek version of the Radeon X850 XT PE, and I’m getting shader and shadow glitches in AoE3 and BF2 that I never had with my old 6800 OC. Is this a Catalyst driver or a game issue, or (horror) the card itself? I’m using the very latest Catalyst drivers, BTW.

3Dmark 2005 seems to run just fine – no glitchy shadows at all. It’s really annoying in AoE3, especially.

BTW, is this considered a good card? I got a deal on it that I couldn’t pass up. It certainly benches higher than my old 6800 OC, but the visual glitches are making me second guess myself.

2

Just for curiousity’s sake, how much was it? As for the glitches, I’d check my other drivers (chipset, etc) and maybe uninstall, run driver cleaner (use it for Nvidia and ATi cleaning both), then reinstall the catalysts. Old crud does hang around and make a muck of things sometimes, as I’ve recently been reminded.

3

Also try the Omega Drivers: http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/win2k_xp.php They are repackaged and tweaked drivers.

I find them to be better all around than the general ATI releases.

– Xaroc

4

I have the 850XT, and I get the occasional screwy texture effect in BF2 also. The last few driver releases have been hit and miss for game fixes, so I find myself trying them out for a day or two then going back to 5.6, aka “the stable one.”

5

Omega drivers based on 5.10a gave me a +100 bump in 3Dmark 2005, but shadows and shader effects remain glitchy in AoE3 and BF2. Again, I don’t see any glitches in 3Dmark05, so I’m gonna assume the 5.10 Catalyst drivers are to blame. The card seems pretty cool and stable otherwise.

Any other ATi caveats I should be aware of? I had a 9800 Pro for quite awhile, and it was solid, but my GeForce Ti4400 and 6800OC were so much less “glitchy” and seamless, for which I guess I hafta thank nVidia’s unified drivers?

6

Then I would go back to the 5.6 based Omegas, they were pretty good for BF2 if I recall correctly.

– Xaroc

7

Moving from nv->ati or vice versa is tricky at best. If not done correctly, you can see, well, “weird” problems. The general procedure is something like:

  1. uninstall all drivers, change to stock VGA driver
  2. reboot in safe mode
  3. Slay a boychild in the forest and spread his blood over birch trees. ONLY birch trees. Eat his tongue. ONLY his tongue.
  4. run driver cleaner and delete all traces of the old drivers
  5. shutdown
  6. put in the new card
  7. Praise the black goat of the woods with a thousand young by screaming “Cthulhu Ia! Cthulhu ph’nglui mglw’nafh w’gah-nagl fhtagn! Ia!” and prancing around. You’ll feel stupid, that’s expected, just do it.
  8. startup windows, install the new drivers
  9. should be ok