How Good are the DNA-Drivers for ATI Cards?

dark_requiem asks: "I've been digging around online to find some way to pump a bit more power out of my Radeon 9800 for Half-Life2, and I ran across DNA-Drivers. According to the developer, these are hacked versions of the official Catalyst drivers, optimized for speed and image quality. I've been trying to find a good review of the performance of these drivers, but haven't found much. Has anyone tried these before? Are they stable? What kind of performance advantage do they offer?"

Comments

Get an NVidia

[afd8856]

Much better Linux support, less problems in high-end application such as XSI, better OpenGL drivers,much larger user base, better suport from open source application (I've been a "fan" of ATI until I really started to use Nvidia cards. I don't want to go back. )

Re:Get an NVidia

[j.bellone]

That's funny, because ATi's drivers are one of the main reasons why a lot of people's Half-Life 2 games are failing right now. Driverheaven.net has information on the problem. nVIDIA's drivers are probably the best video drivers you'll ever find, and their support for Linux is nearly as good as the Windows. ATi's has recently gotten better.

Re:Get an NVidia

[afd8856]

I presume that at one point the submiter might use XSI. You may not know it, but XSI is included in the HL2 SDK (abeit a limited version of XSI called Experience). Valve used XSI in making HL2 and are including it in the SDK so that gamers can create their own models.

• Check out the Half Life modding forum on xsibase
• Softimage Half-Life 2 page
• SDK Release Announcement
  Valve has released the Source Software Development Kit (SDK) Tools via Steam. A precursor to the release of the full SDK, which will be released shortly after Half-Life 2 is made available, the Source SDK Tools release offers a comprehensive toolset for starting production on Source-based MODs, including Hammer, XSI EXP for Half-Life 2, compiling tools, the Source Model Viewer, documentation on programming, modeling, building materials, and more. For more information, please visit http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/.
• And this is just one of the many users having problems with Ati boards and drivers

I know what I'm talking about

A more commonly used hacked driver

[CNERD]

http://www.omegadrivers.net

Tested

[Phluxed]

I've tried Stock ATI, Omega and DNA on my 9800Pro @XT Speeds, and my Mobility 9600 Pro. For HL2 with the DNA drivers I can honestly say I did notice a difference. It was enough for me to go from 1280x1024 2xAA 8xAF to 1280x1024 4xAA 16AF and keep a framerate above the 30 barrier. The omega drivers also gave a similar performence boost, but not quite as much.

benchmark yourself

[Examancer2]

Its not that hard to set up your own comparison. System configurations of reviewers will differ from yours so a direct comparison may not be possible. Just load a few benchmarking utils (3DMark, Quake3 timedemo, FPS counter+game of choice) load the catalyst drivers, not the scores, load the cracked drivers, and see if your scores go up. Not that complicated.

Re:Tweaked to run faster....?

[krymsin01]

Some people would rather have better quality. The only game that I tend to play is tetris, but I can understand the mentality involved. What you are saying is basicaly the same thing as asking a movie buff why they want to go see a movie at an IMAX theatre when they could see the same movie on a portable display with monophonic sound.

Agree - these are NOT new Drivers

[@madeus]

I have tried endlessly to explain to fsckwit forum kids that these are not magical new binaries, and won't give performance gains above and beyond what you can get with the ordinary drivers and a small amount of clue.

There are plenty of tools avalible (including free GPL'd tools) to modify the large array of avalible registry settings through simple point-n-click interfaces. Most of them will tell you what the options do too.

Of course the normal ATI control panel provide the most useful set of options (balanced with simplicity), but the tragically 1337 kids who install these don't usually understand the options avalaible in the default drivers, because they never RTFM.

Re:Tweaked to run faster....?

[n3k5]

i've got a P3/700, with 256, and i think it's a Radeon 8500? Whatever the highest end PCI Radeon was. Q3 doesn't even play at 800x600 let alone anything new.

hmm, maybe you've misconfigured something or bad luck with your particular card, but the requirements of Q3 are even much lower. when i played it, i did so at a 350MHz P2 with 196MB RAM and an ancient matrox G400, and it ran perfectly. the details weren't maxed out of course, but quite okay, same with the resolution. sure, new games won't run on your box, but Q3 should.

Re:Omega Drivers

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"why were four of my rendering pipelines disabled by default on my 9800se?"

Usually because they are defective. I've tried to softmod several 9800SEs and usually end up with severe rendering artifacts. I'd say that only about 15% softmod without any rendering problems.

Remember, too, that enabling the extra four pipelines increases the power draw. The default heatsink definately can't handle the extra power and will cause stability issues.

That's why the 4 pipelines are disabled in the 9800SE.

"why is my SB Live severely limited when using the creative drivers, and only reveals its true potential with the KX project drivers"

Primarily because the Creative drivers blow. Remember that the Omega drivers are basically just the ATI drivers with a few extra components.

They let you softmod, overclock, and install on mobile hardware. And you get the cool RadLinker tool. I don't think that ATI's default drivers should let you softmod or overclock because doing either can cause damage to your card if it is done improperly. I do wish that the ATI drivers would install on mobile cards and I wish that they included a way to tie profiles to applications (like NVIDIA's drivers do).