Vista - ATI Driver and Vista x64 Problems

Hi guys, here is my problem, I and several other guys who have an ATI Radeon 4870 X2 card and running the 64 bit Vista are having issues when running this game. Maybe I should have put this in the gaming section, but I believe it might be a driver incompatibility error and not the game error. While playing Call of Duty 5 I get this lag spike every five seconds while playing. When I had Windows XP 32 bit installed on this same computer the game ran fine. Other people running this game with different video cards and Vista 64 do not have any problems. I uninstalled and reinstalled Vista twice and I am still the same problem. Again, other people are having the same problem. I don't know if it is the 64 bit ATI drivers or the 64 bit Vista. All drivers and DirectX are updated. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Core i7 965
Asus P6T Deluxe
Corsair XM3 DDR3 1600 - 6 gigs
ATI Radeon Sapphire 4870X2
Western Digital Raptor Drives - 2 / 75 gigs in Raid 0
Silvertone 1000 Watt PSU

Try running another game to see if you still have issues. And Which drivers are you using? You may need to try other drivers.

Let me know.

Nice system BTW. I'm jealous

i have the same issue, but only when online and respawning, i didnt really notice it at first until i played it with a few friends on a custom server.
i dont see it as a problem, but its not that noticable, in responce to your issue of lag spikes all the time, the solution is to run your hard drives in a non raid environment, raid is designed for 4+ hard drives in a server, or solid state drives.

Actually, MrNeeds my is doing the same thing as yours, it is only online, which you would think it would be a server issue, but it does not do it in Windows XP, that's why I believe it is a driver issue. It only happens in this game. My other game Call of Duty 4 just crashes, which does not happen in Windows XP. Thanks again for any help.

Have you tried switching drivers?

I downloaded the 8.11 drivers from ATI, uninstalled the 8.12 drivers and tried installing the 8.11 drivers, which totally screwed up my computer to the point that I had to use system restore to get it to work properly again. I am not sure what happened to the 8.11 drivers, but they didn't install even though the installer said installation completed. So, I restarted my computer and I get an error message telling me that I did not have any video card drivers. The ATI Catalyst Control Center showed up on my program list, but it wouldn't start either. So, I tried to re-installed them again and nothing happened. So, I tried to uninstall the 8.11 drivers and the CCC, but the removal program couldn't find them even though I could see the folders with programs in them. So, I just system restored to get rid of the registry entries (I hope) and deleted the program files. Re-installed the 8.12 drivers and it works just the same, laggy. I am not sure why the 8.11 drivers didn't work. That is another mystery.

To uninstall ATI's drivers do this

1- Go to Control Panel
2- Programs and Features
3- Click on Catalyst Install Manager
4- Click Next
5- Choose Uninstall Manager
6- Choose Custom and click next
7- Choose items to uninstall and click next.



Additional steps "before rebooting":

8- Go to either your "C" drive or Program Files and delete the "ATI" folder containing the current drivers. Do Not Delete any other folder! The current driver set will look something like image:



9- Reboot and cancel any driver installs
10- Install new drivers.

I've had no problems using this procedure to removing any ATI drivers under Vista or Vista x64, and in fact the additional steps aren't necessary, just something I like to do.

I will also add that I don't use 3rd party driver removers like "Drive Cleaner" as I feel they do more harm than good. My opinion.

Good luck

hmm, not quite true. Essentially RAID is designed to allow multiple HDD's (2+) to act as one drive. The use of RAID arrays aren't limited to just servers and RAID was around before SSD's.

Obviously more HDD's in an array is optimal and even better if they are SSD

just trying to get the point across that raid is useless in a home system unless you plan on using it as a server, plus raid is virtually impossible to back up if your system fails unless you have another raid system in your house

First I would like to say thanks for taking time out to help sygnus21, I do appreciate it.
As for the uninstaller, I couldn't even get to the screen, which gave me the option to delete the drivers even though both times I tried installing the Catalyst Control Center I got the message saying it was installed. I would click on the icon and nothing would happen, except for the error message telling me over and over again that I did not have any graphics drivers installed, even though the installer said it was installed. Since I couldn't uninstall it I had to use system restore, which is part of Vista, to reset the computer back to where it was before I installed the drivers, even back to when the original drivers were install and everything works the same as it did before I tried the new (old) drivers. But, system restore will leave the program folder on the hard drive without out any of the registry's to connect it to Vista. I don't use second party uninstallers either, Vista's system restore works just fine if I can't uninstall something. Unfortunately, I still have the same old lag problem as before. I will try to install the older drivers again later this weekend, after I download them from another website, although these were direct from ATI, maybe something got corrupted on the download. Again, thanks for your time Sygnus21.

As for the raid, it is a proven fact that two hard drives, especially Raptor drives, in Raid 0 are faster than any single hard drive out there and when you are gaming speed is everything. As for the the information on a raid system, I believe it is the same information that is on a single hard drive. I have Windows Home Server, which is not raid capable, and it backs up all my information from both of my computers. I have an XP machine and a Vista machine and both have Raid 0 hard drives and I have had to use the Windows Home Server back-up before and I was able to use all of the backed-up files on a single drive machine. Also, all my information can be seen, accessed and used through Windows Home Server from my wife's computer, which is a single drive XP machine too. So, it is just my guess that information on Raid systems and regular hard drives are the same, but it is just a guess.