ATI CARDS crashing, freezing, stuttering (SOLVED?)

[Aurelian]

I must really be bad with drivers.

In the attempt to switch driver to Catalyst 9.7, I uninstalled my previous driver (and removed all ATI software in general) from my machine.
Afterwards I downloaded the Catalyst 9.7 and ran the installation.

Now my machine's reverted to using the onboard card and won't run any games at all. For some reason it seems that,
a: I've somehow installed the driver wrongly or not at all (as said earlier I suck at driver-updating).
b: My machine won't find my ATI card and activate it.

Any help would be appreciated. Possibly treat this question as a "this guy is completely oblivious to what he's doing"-type.

Hope someone can pop some assistance.

[Autolycus]

Aurelian, did you use the Catalyst Hotfix driver download? The standard Catalyst driver download doesn't recognize some ATI cards like the HD 2xxx and HD 3xxx series. If you have one of those, first check your manufacturer's website for the equivalent hotfix driver. For example, my card is made by Sapphire, so I download the Hotfix driver from their site.

Good luck.

[rfachini]

I'm still getting freezing and now the stuttering is worse.

I uninstalled the video drivers though the hardware devices control panel. I rebooted and Windows found no ATI drivers. I then installed the ATI 9.7 catalyst drivers and rebooted again. Today I had two freezes. I also had stuttering of framerates and flickering objects. Yesterday I lost all system sound and had to reboot.

A strange thing is that when I do a dxdiag I always get 2/9/2008 for my driver date. Version 7.15. When I open Catalyst the driver version is 8.57 2008.1209.

pod, you might want to put more detail into the top post, like links for the 9.7 driver and the driver cleaner program. Also, I really don't understand what uninstall utility you are referring to. Do you mean the 9.7 Catalyst driver has a utility to uninstall the previous driver? Is it a separate program that goes to a folder somewhere or is it and option you get while installing 9.7? I don't remember seeing it.

[ogboot]

To correctly uninstall any software package you need to go to add/remove programs and find the ATi software there.

[pod]

when you launch the driver installation file you had downloaded, it asks you if you want to uninstall the previous drivers or install the newer ones.
choose uninstall to uninstall the previously installed drivers (use the standard option, not the custom, if you don't know what you are doing), then follow the rest of the instructions written on first post.
almost any driver installation package from ati has this function (at least all 9.x up, I'm not going to check for previous versions)


catalyst 9.7 dl links are up on the first post.
I will not be putting links to any driver cleaner program since is an advanced user tool and I don't want them to be used by people now knowing what they are doing.
Any advanced user willing to use them know how to grab one in few clicks.

[oweieie]

I get frequent freezes, I've even turned all graphics down to minimum and it hasn't fixed the problem, although it may not be quit as frequent. I've used driver 9.9 and a much earlier one, 9.3? and still have the freezes. It's clouds that do it. Mephits (dust, salt etc.) seem to be the absolute worst, having the highest frequency of cloud to freeze, but other cloud effects occasionally cause it too like obscuring mist, cloud kill and probably the arcane skeleton auras.

[pod]

have you an old nvidia card? these really didn't handled shaders very well...
otherwise, try following the steps on the first post.

[SLUFOOT]

I had same problem with whole screen flickering, it started after I installed 9-9_legacy_vista32-64_wdm. I tried everything to fix the problem nothing worked. So I uninstalled 9.9 and reinstalled 9-8_legacy_vista32-64_wdm and that fixed my problem has not flickered none since then and is running very smooth. I am running windows7 64 bit. And another thing I reinstalled Directx also.

[ogboot]

My issues have changed a little.
Since moving to 9.7 everything has mostly been fine. Pre last week's patch I didn't have any lockups at all.
Since patch, though, I will have a similar graphical lockup like I had been experiencing. However, instead of dropping to task manager and killing DDO, if I just hit CTL+Alt+Del to begin that process the game starts running again. It's like something else had it's focus or something. I'll have to do some alt-tab madness to get back in control of the game but after that everything seems to be fine.
So, it's not really a lockup but more like the worst stutter ever. I may disable my creative card and see if that helps, other than that anyone else have any ideas?

[pod]

I've not experienced problems anymore, so I really can't help you on this...
maybe try checking for recently installed programs...

[ogboot]

I've not experienced problems anymore, so I really can't help you on this...
maybe try checking for recently installed programs...

Win7, less than a month fresh. haven't installed *anything* except the new patch.

[Jastron]

I'm having client freezes as well. Windows 7 RTM with all patches on Windows Update, an ATI 5870 with CCC 9.10, and a Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium card with latest drivers from Creative. System is high end, Intel Core i7 920 with 6 GB RAM, and I am very experienced with hardware and drivers.

The game will totally freeze upon occasion, sometimes 1-5 times an hour, but it always recovers from 5 seconds to a minute later. While frozen, the screen doesn't change at all not even mouse pointer, and the CPU usage drops down to almost nothing..I can still hear voice chat but if my PTT was not pressed when the crash occurred, nobody can hear me, if it was, they can until I release it or so they say. When the game recovers, everything happens at once...the players and monsters move hundreds or thousands of feet, all spells go off at once, and all my party chat I was sending while frozen, gets sent in one shot.

I have the HDMI audio device disabled in device manager already, and it made no change. I also tried turning off DX10 in DDO.

I'm not sure the 9.7 drivers will work with my 5870 and thus have not attempted that downgrade yet. I'll try the suggestions by Turbine earlier in the thread and work back from there if it solves it. Unsure what else to do.

[pod]

try this:
enter in game, option menu, troubleshoot. set max fps to something like 100ish.
someone said the turbine engine have problems handling too many fps, and your system seems to be able to reach quite high spikes on that.
all the crashes occour while in dungeon?
my system (nothing great, q6600@3400Mhz, HD4870, 4gb ddr2 system ram) reach spikes of 250/270fps while in dungeon, your should set for about 320.
try this and tell me if it makes any difference

[Jastron]

Thanks Pod, but I already tried that, had it to 57 max framerate as Turbine suggested.

I can un-freeze it by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then going back to the game, but in those 5-10 seconds I have to hope my char isn't near death and nobody needs healing from me

It's very strange. Although software audio didn't help, I haven't actually tried to swap out my sound card yet.

[crazyturtle]

might truly be with ATI drivers, except that am on pure Nvidia laptop. Sometimes get the blackout fullscreen startup issue, just go through turbine dnld mgr again and comes up. sometimes have to go through 2 or 3 times. only slightly annoying, but do-able. Big prob is the "Storehouse" floor. am at total impasse. No tiles to click, move or glowing?? can jump around room etc. get on floor and in certain areas(not consistent) have the almost squat hop thing going on. spent hours last nite in room and forums to no luck. Server Argon. How many Newbies(like myself) have these kind of probs and get frustrated and quit?

Sounds too much like programmers at Turbine need to get THEIR glitches solved, not ATI or Nvidia. have found more than few in game chat and forums havin issues. Just the simple fact that so many have to roll back More than one or two versions of video drivers says that Turbine is wayyyyy behind. How many months between Catalyst versions? 8 months for two vers.?

Reminds me of early times of Pool of Radiance. Wait 6 months to year for bugfixes? Hope they get figured out soon

Funny not real probs on WOW? most searches there show drivers old, not too new, lmao.

[Legotyler]

Hey guys, I'm trying to help my little brother get DDO up and running on his MSI GX610 (which has a mobility HD2600 in it). We've tried the 9.3 and 9.9 catalyst drivers with the same freezing problem you've all had. He's tried installing the 9.7 drivers, but as someone above mentioned the catalyst drivers don't like the HD 2xxx series.

Anyways, Autolycus mentioned finding hotfix drivers from your manufacturer for the 9.7 drivers. All MSI has is the 8.4 drivers (which we're gonna trying just to see), but I was curious if any other MSI peeps know where to get the 9.7 for the HD2600, or how they've gotten things to work.

Thanks for the help!

[Jastron]

Hey Lego,

I finally resolved the freezing issue where DDO will freeze for 5-60 seconds then resume, while the PC keeps running fine.
Although I'm not certain what actually fixed it, yesterday I found that it had nothing to do with my video drivers or video card as I didn't touch settings there.

Here are all the tasks I performed as one of them fixed it, and since it is good I'm not eager to go back and try and make the problem occur again. LOL

I reinstalled my Creative audio drivers, first by installing the Windows Update ones, then the 17.6 one from Creative topped off by the 17.7 one after another reboot. Perviously I had just put in the 17.7 driver, but Creative suggested to put BOTH .6 and .7 in. Maybe .7 was not complete.

I then installed the Intel matrix storage drivers, as I had never installed those. I'm running on an Intel 80GB SSD.

I then went into the BIOS, and some folks online said to disable the Intel CPU C1E/CState support, as that could do this as the processor transitions power states.

So I disabled the C1E (enhanced halt) and C-State tech, and also SpeedStep technology, and since then, never had a freeze.

Your mileage may vary, but I suggest that you take a look at your sound and storage drivers and BIOS settings as well as the video drivers.

[crazyturtle]

Hey Lego,

I finally resolved the freezing issue where DDO will freeze for 5-60 seconds then resume, while the PC keeps running fine.
Although I'm not certain what actually fixed it, yesterday I found that it had nothing to do with my video drivers or video card as I didn't touch settings there.

Here are all the tasks I performed as one of them fixed it, and since it is good I'm not eager to go back and try and make the problem occur again. LOL
.........

So I disabled the C1E (enhanced halt) and C-State tech, and also SpeedStep technology, and since then, never had a freeze.

Your mileage may vary, but I suggest that you take a look at your sound and storage drivers and BIOS settings as well as the video drivers.

No doubt u want to do ALL that again. Just a hint, and my next comment may not get swallowed as easily, but most of that sounds like the SSE4 command structures as compared to the older SSE3 command calls. Remember while back when they were debugging the RC for DX10? el numero uno problemo? not quite the bios/speedstep functions but on the righteous paths! those same issues were part of the headaches that were created by the DX10 upgrades. Another one of those wait for everything else to phase out until enough repetition of occurrences prevailed to see what actually was problem. Similar to AMD's headaches when finding out they had built in bugs with new chips. Seems someone forgot to upgrade the die. Well, think similar here. My problem was very interesting i found out. (yes have gotten past hanging up in "Village Storehouse"!)

This is the part where i feel old. Since ancient runic times formerly known as Cobalt, Fortran, and Pascal, I had learned to run tracers looping debuggers back and forth, hence getting a call to arms everytime i found old subs called that no longer existed or had since been merged to other lines. nowadays there are mucho bettero ways of tricking programs into revealing what they are actually doing. ok, I cheated. I had Norton put a virus tag on something and boy did it surprise me totally. Every time it was called, i got that annoying familiar pop up to allow. Shock and awe was the following little item. A function call of DX10 into ... INTO .... a DX9.b/c environment.Old structures that didn't like the newer style of lingo. I said do what???Sorta like tryin to understand Charlie Brown's teacher . the party of Uno no habla de Lingo of the gringo de Dos. one was responding in greekness to an unsympathetic Dean. Just wasn't gonna go well. Then tried to figure out why two different versions of DX was trying to operate the same draw instruction sets. guess what? Ok, since your already bored enough, I'll tell you.

The Uploads from Turbine werent compatible. WERE NOT. As i chose to use the quick play feature while grabbing file from peer to peer simultaneously, there appeared a little Grinch. A "Bugs Bunny" class Gremlin. Imagine my heart dropping when I decided to completely remove all DDO and restart the download. After grabbing the HI-Res version on straight download from DDO.com, no peer, no goofin around letting Turbine manager run and pick its versions from the ethereal, There it was. The magic 20 sided die rolling around then my answer hit me like the wrench thrown to the engine. When DDO started first talking,i had left it running noisy, just a Linux trick from old, and there was the original calls for DX 9... B. So the original Kernal was written that far back. ok. Prob was the DDO screen was saying it was calling DX9c... hmmmmm....Made me LOOK!! ( ok was Tron'd to a thumb drive just for giggles)

Deal was, soon after went to modern server(and NOT where downloads originate) to grab updates. And therein lied the solution. When to patch a patch. unfortunately I didn't track all the original install versions of all the files. (there be a reason I got out of debuggin code in 1992! did I mention I'm feelin old with this one?) I did however trace this new fresh complete install. Bingo. From the way that my original loaded from multiple sources, not all had the same patches. the danger of p2p. nice idea in principle. apparently fixed a boat load of issues that have seen on forums.

Bottom Line....

Turbine needs to fix upstream patches to its core software. like the server storing the files for download. Beancounters say better to let everyone share the giving of bandwidth to keep costs down. We spend enough on our servers as it is, right?

How long has it been since you did a fresh install of DDO? Really, you would assume that Microsoft can keep updating Windows forever and NOT have wipe your hard drive clean and .... Get my point?

Try it, you might like it, GREEN EGGS AND HAM

Just a curios newb

[Legotyler]

Hey Lego,

I finally resolved the freezing issue where DDO will freeze for 5-60 seconds then resume, while the PC keeps running fine.
Although I'm not certain what actually fixed it, yesterday I found that it had nothing to do with my video drivers or video card as I didn't touch settings there.

Thanks for the advice Jastron, but the problem you're getting is different. His screen doesn't just lock up, he can move around, but nothing changed on his screen for a min or two until it crashes to the desktop. (This is the kind of error Pod and many other with ATI cards have been reporting). I just figured that my little brother is probably not the only one using an MSI laptop and was hoping someone knew where to find a 9.7 driver version that would run (as the one Pod so generously found doesn't like the 2xxx and 3xxx cards).

[pod]

about the 2000 and 3000 series, that's the only thing I found while googling around:

ATI Catalyst v9.8
AMD has moved a number of DX9 ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators products to a legacy driver support structure. This change impacts Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux distributions. AMD has moved to a legacy software support structure for these graphics accelerator products in an effort to better focus development resources on future products.

The following products have been moved to the legacy software support structure (including Mobile and All-in-Wonder Variants):

ATI Radeon 9500 Series
ATI Radeon 9550 Series
ATI Radeon 9600 Series
ATI Radeon 9700 Series
ATI Radeon 9800 Series
ATI Radeon X300 Series
ATI Radeon X550 Series
ATI Radeon X600 Series
ATI Radeon X700 Series
ATI Radeon X800 Series
ATI Radeon X850 Series
ATI Radeon X1050 Series
ATI Radeon X1300 Series
ATI Radeon X1550 Series
ATI Radeon X1600 Series
ATI Radeon X1650 Series
ATI Radeon X1800 Series
ATI Radeon X1900 Series
ATI Radeon Xpress Series
ATI Radeon X1200 Series
ATI Radeon X1250 Series
ATI Radeon X2100 Series


AMD may periodically provide Windows XP and Windows Vista driver updates (for the products listed above) for critical fixes only. No new features will be provided in future driver updates. The Linux ATI Catalyst™ driver will only be supported in Linux distributions prior to February 2009 for the legacy products listed above.

Any customers using a combination of a ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series, or ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series product with any of the legacy products listed above in a single PC system must use the ATI Catalyst 9.3 or earlier driver. All future ATI Catalyst™ releases made available past the ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 release will not include support for the legacy products listed above or any of the features associated with those legacy products.

afaik, the normal catalyst 9.7 drivers are compatible with all 2000 and 3000 series cards, as long as they are not agp (which requires the agp hotfix version) or mobility versions (for which you need to mod the drivers yourself)