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Thread ID: 52374 2004-12-17 07:53:00 Drivers: Omega VS Catalyst Overdrive_5000 (4950) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
304611 2004-12-17 07:53:00 Hi people, just was wondering what everyones opinions are on this matter, which is better for frame rates Omega or Catalyst. I have a Radeon 9600XT currently using catalyst 4.11. I havent tried the omega drivers b4, so any views/coments are welcomed. :) Overdrive_5000 (4950)
304612 2004-12-17 11:33:00 Definitely the Onega drivers, the guy who designed them is a genius to put it bluntly. I've used the Omega set ever since I was told about them.

They are very stable and allow for a bit more tweaking than the standard Catalyst drivers.

cheers

chiefnz
chiefnz (545)
304613 2004-12-17 11:38:00 I tried them once but didn't notice much difference apart from the tweaks - if you just want to overclock get ATiTool - very good :) HadO (796)
304614 2004-12-17 12:29:00 I'd recommend the Omega drivers over the official ATI release any day.

The last few releases of the Omega drivers have incorporated a program called Radlinker which allows you to fully tweak the drivers and create custom settings per game.
Creating custom settings is as simple as right clicking on your games .exe file and chossing "custom settings". From there you can overclock your card and set specific OpenGL / DirectX settings for the game.

From release 4.11 onwards, ATI included a driver function called "AI" which gave the drivers specfic optimisations depending on the game. Having this feature enabled gave you a few extra FPS without any noticable decrease in quality.

The AI feature is only enabled though if you installed the driver version that included the Catalyst Control Center (CCC). The CCC, whilst giving you access to such functions as AI, and a pretty, skinable interface, is a resource hog, that uses so much memory it defeats the whole purpose of trying to gain a few FPS with AI.

This is where the Omega drivers come to play, they allow you to enable the AI feature through the Radlinker interface. This gives you all the benefits of the CCC without any of it's downfalls.
b1naryb0y (3)
304615 2004-12-18 08:27:00 there is actually a new version of the drivers out now, Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.97 (Catalyst 4.12 Beta) Prescott (11)
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