Vista - ATI CCC problems

Hello Vista world,

Like many other users I see on this forum, which I think is great by the way, I am new to the game of Vista and find that i have much to learn. I have a question regarding Graohics cards for someone to answer. I am running an ATI (POwerColor) 4850 and the local company that built the computer for me claims that the ATI Catalyst Control Centre will not run properly with Vista x64 systems. The card itself is running fine, but I began qustioning them on this when I found no control centre installed. The CCC apparently causes the card to crash quite often, so they suggested I only install the driver and not the CCC the next time I update. Makes me a little nervous to install the 8.12 driver now!!

Does anyone know if there is any merit to this, or am I being strung along?

I would question their expertise as this has ABSOLUTELY NO MERRIT!!! In a word... Bu..sh.t.

As you can see from the image posted, there are drivers with CCC for the 4800 series cards which includes the 4850, 4870 and 4870x2



You can go right here Drivers & Software and get the Drivers with the Catalyst Control Center. And for the record, I have a Visiontek 4850 on a Vista 64 machine using the latest catalyst drivers with the Catalyst Control Center and it works just fine. If you have any questions or concerns go here - CATALYST Drivers - Rage3D Discussion Area

Sorry for my tone, I just hate when "experts" make stuff up.

Thanks Sygnus,

I kind of had those same thoughts on the matter myself, and I have been to the ATI site and have seen the driver updates for the x64, but as I said earlier, I am a novice user and the thought of having my new card crash on me steady unfortunately scared me away from trying. Your confirmation of my hunch will persuade me to install the newest driver with CCC.

Thanks

When you run the install program, it offers the choice of running the CCC or not, so you need have no fear. The CCC is not really required, unless you have knowledge of how to manipulate advanced graphical options, and are using graphic intensive programs. If, on the otherhand, you choose to run the CCC, using the defaults, I doubt you will notice any difference, other than more memory overload, You can try it. It is easier enough to isolate it, after install, by unticking it in the Msconfig startup section.
Fwiw, It did, in fact, give me some small problems in Vista64,when I experimented with some of the default settings.

Any piece of software is prone to being problematic, however as one who actually use CCC, it is no more problematic on Vista 64 then it is on XP or Vista 32.

I use Vista x64 and have the Radeon 4850 with CCC installed and my video crashes twice every 30 min. I uninstalled CCC and just ran with the drivers, and the card works flawlesly. CCC will probably crash your video display driver if you have x64. Alot of people have had this problem. I have a ticket with ATI now about it.

You wouldn't happen to be getting this - "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" would you?

I used to get that quite often pre 8.12 and now it seems to have been fixed for me with 8.12. I haven't had it once since.

Well this particular issue pops up on both ATI & Nvidia cards and seems to particularly like Vista. I posted about it here “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered” - Rage3D Discussion Area shortly after the release of SP1 for Vista.

Seems that neither Microsoft, ATI, nor Nvidia has found a definitive fix for this issue; Microsoft even put out a patch about a year ago (which was incorporated in SP1) to try fix this issue, but it still occurs a little too frequently.

Though this error can definitely be caused by overheating and high overclocks on the video card, I think the frequency at which the error occurs, and the fact that in can occur on non-overclocked cards might also indicate that it has something to do with the way the video drivers are with working Microsoft’s TDR model in vista. But something else to think about though - with today’s video cards putting out more and more heat, it could also indicate inadequate cooling by solutions by the manufactures (my opinion).

However, with each subsequent driver release from both ATI & Nvidia, the problem seems to have lessened considerably from initial reports. I know my problem went away with both a new card, still ATI, and newer drivers, so…

Hopefully Microsoft, ATI, and Nvidia can continue to improve things here. Obviously users can help by adequately cooling their case, and watching the OC speeds on their cards.

Just my two cents.

Yeah, I have a radeon HD3450 and it would happen with no overclocking, a minute or two after boot up, no stress on it from gaming. Just whenever it wanted. But, like I said, I haven't had it happen since 8.12 and it's been over a month I believe.