Catalyst 7.8 has AGP issues for some systems

Just a heads up based on chatter I have seen on various forums on the internet - people with video cards that use the PCIE-to-AGP converter and some older native AGP ATI cards are having problems with the new drivers. I suspect (but can't confirm) that if you 'mix-and-match' the newer drivers DLLs with the older SMARTGART DLLs, you will have a more stable system, but the easiest route is just to revert to the older version until the issues are taken care of.

If you are having issues, make sure to let AMD/ATI know.

There is a good ongoing message thread about this driver release here.

Posted by Aaron Tiensivu in Microsoft, Server, Vista, Windows OS, XP at 09:59 | Comments (27) | Trackbacks (0)

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my brand new x1950 pro agp will not take these drivers..... hopefully there will be an update.

#1 disgruntled ati user on 2007-08-17 23:38 (Reply)

Same here. x1950 pro AGP = smartgart turns everything off, blank desktop icons.

I am really disappointed in ATI's quality assurance, because clearly, there hasn't been any done.

#2 another disgruntled ati user on 2007-08-21 20:45 (Reply)

i have a sapphire x1650 pro agp 521mb, all is fine on catalyst 7.7, 7.8 gives me missing icons etc until i reboot, then i get no agp apeture in dxdiag... 7.9-8.1 direct3d doest work, 8.1 hotfix through to 8.3 causes blue screens at exact points in certain games(no randomness to them, so cant really be hardware as ive tested everything lol) now the thing is, is after about a month of ball aching with ati customer care and sapphire customer care, ati told me they are releasing cat 8.4 and this will address "similar issues", when i asked what those issues are i was told they are unable to disclose the info at this time.. pah! personally, everthing driverwise by ati since amd took them over has been total and utter crap and i will be starting a massive blog that ill be showing to some legal reps, enough is enough... 6 drivers that dont work on a card that ive had from brand new for only 5 months.

#2.1 KrAsH (Homepage) on 2008-03-27 08:20 (Reply)

X1950 XTX user here with exactly the same problems that you guys have with the 7.8's smartgart turning everything off and blank deskktop icons,in fact most icons disappear period and can't right click either.....

#3 Another disgruntled ATI user on 2007-08-24 11:51 (Reply)

VisionTek X1950 Pro XGE AGP also only VGA mode under Cat 7.8; working at 7.7.

#4 Nathaniel K. Smith on 2007-08-27 13:38 (Reply)

Still no updates as of yet. Very disappointing ATI. You were fine before AMD bought you.

#5 thefirstdisgruntled ati user again on 2007-08-28 06:49 (Reply)

ASUS A9250 (ATI Radeon)
128MB DDR
AGP 8x

Worked well for the first 2 or so weeks then began to freeze especially when I play games (thats what I bought it for anyways). After reinstalling it, drivers, etc, same problem, eventually took it out. Now I'm running on integrated graphics chip (SiS).

#6 Marq L on 2007-08-28 12:53 (Reply)

My gecube agp x1950pro also is not compatible with this driver set. Tested on windows xp. Missing icons, weird windows. Did not test it in games, cause I quickly uninstalled them and went back to 7.7 which seem to work well.

#7 Creed on 2007-08-29 04:58 (Reply)

Same problems here with HISx1950pro AGP. I thought my card had failed as the driver was installed as part of a fresh format and so sent my card back which has cost me money

not amused ATI

#8 kipman725 (Homepage) on 2007-08-29 16:10 (Reply)

I haven't been able to use any driver they have released since the 7.4's, everything since then has been totally broken on my system..

They need to get their sh*t together, there is no way they even tested these drivers, smartgart was completely broken, the control center crashed every time I tried to open it, the refresh rate was all screwy and caused every thing to move in slow motion, even on the desktop, not to mention icons would disappear, etc, etc, it was just horrible, whoever was in charge of quality assurance should be fired, and quickly...

I can forgive one bad driver release, but four in a row, its time for heads to roll... (Yes, the problems above happened on every driver release since 7.4, thats 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, and 7.8.. Plenty of time to have noticed, and fixed these problems..)

#9 Smoke on 2007-08-30 02:36 (Reply)

same here with gecube x1950pro. i wish i ran across this sooner. wasted whole night doing install uninstall game... runing 7.6 driver only now (no ccc). all seem well. i don't have a decent current gen game to test. but, at least i am not getting 8 bit 640x480 desktop / missing icons. i was a huge ati fan till now.

#10 slow on 2007-08-30 19:17 (Reply)

I think AMD is trying to drive them into the ground or something. Notice how the main ati.com page just goes to amd and its more difficult to find the ati pages you need......

#11 Anonymous on 2007-09-05 13:57 (Reply)

I have the exact same problems. My HIS x1950 Pro AGP 512mb cannot run with AGP read or write on and DXDIAG shows that AGP texture acceleration is disabled. I will try going back to an older driver.

#12 DropZone on 2007-09-06 13:08 (Reply)

x1950 AGP on XP

Exactly same problem.

#13 Anonymous on 2007-09-08 17:04 (Reply)

I have the HIS version of the x1950 as well. its the sweetest agp card, too bad about this driver bullcrap

#14 Anonymous on 2007-09-09 11:45 (Reply)

Exact same issues here on a Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP. Missing icons etc and on a reboot goes to 4 bit colour and can't be changed!

#15 Keith on 2007-09-10 16:07 (Reply)

ATI has released the 7.9's. On my HIS x1950 Pro the drivers will install ok but the CCC still has issues. It won't start at all when I click on it. I am getting better game performance but miss the ease of control with the CCC for my multiple displays. I'm just using the 7.9's with ATI Tray Tools for now untill these noobs test their drivers properly.

#16 Anonymous on 2007-09-11 14:34 (Reply)

Same problem here i bought my HIS X1950PRO 512 MB AGP about week of 2 ago after installing it in my computer i installed the newest drivers back then ( 7.8 ) after a week or so i saw ati had 7.9. After installation a dialog window comes up and says to wait a minute to let the drivers detect the best settings but it freezes.. and with 7.8 i have sometimes the problem that the icons are broken on the desktop..

#17 Anonymous on 2007-09-19 04:03 (Reply)

Almost same issue here. x1650 Pro AGP. SmartGart turns EVERYTHING off. I had to go back to 7.6

#18 Anonymous on 2007-09-19 17:22 (Reply)

I have this issue 640x480 4 bit windows xp I hated .

my vga msi 1600 pro and DFİ lanpart nf4 ultra d motherboard.

#19 Anonymous on 2007-09-28 15:31 (Reply)

I have a X1950pro AGP running a P4 3.0ghz (478).

I've installed 7.9 but once i later restarted windows gives me a BLUE SCREEN of DEATH saying that the display drivers are corrupt and it needs to dump memory.
(I've installed 7.9 twice with no avali)

I'm looking now to 7.7, hopefully that will work.

#20 Matt on 2007-10-02 01:06 (Reply)

Well well, me and my cute AGP system ain't so insane after all...lol

I tried all sorts of remedies.... updated system drivers.... I still have to revert back to the only working driver from January... 6.12

ATI Catalyst: 6.12 8.321-061122m-038464C

HIS X1950PRO 512 MB AGP, 32bit P4 3GHz 3 gig RAM

It appears that the problem of all the SmartGart set to off on the latest lies in the application 'ATI Smart' reading as Unknown and set to Off in System Configuration Utility > Start > Run > msconfig .....and so far i can't change that, not as smart as it should be !

This is the only driver that i can overclock without the screens flashing every half second.....hahaha.

This was the well orchestrated answer i just got back from HIS graphic cards... AMD - forget even trying to reach them, impossible.

'Dear Sir,
The card is already overclocked in the BIOS at a clock rate higher than ATI
default. Hence, whether it can be further overclocked depends on individual
card and system. Newer driver usually tried to run the card at higher
performance which means you may not be able to overclock to the same extent
as older driver.
Thanks. Best regards, HIS Support'

Which is a total load of rubbish as the defaults are the same, I can see my different drivers settings on a dual boot system... and if it was the bios upped... why is the old v6.12 still Overclocking fine?

As far as the hardware goes. the X1950PRO still seems a better engineered card than the NVidia XFX AGPx8 7950GT 512MB... if only the new ATI drivers worked.

So, as we can be resourceful, pump the best out of your old driver with this independant and knowlegable ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide...

http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html

#20.1 Zeussa on 2007-10-05 12:47 (Reply)

UPDATE....

Well I seem to have a solution... as per the TweakGuide mentioned last post. Very good guide too. I sugest spending time with it. gets the most out of a good thing.

Decided to apply driver v7.7 from the ATI site... just the driver, no CCCentre. As ATI said for X1950 to stick with v7.7 till their present one is ironed out...lol.

Then Applied the ATI Tray Tool... Now all is good and able to Overclock safely.. it is a very good solution and at least nearer to an update than I had before

#21 Zeussa on 2007-10-06 10:50 (Reply)

ATi have dropped support for the AGP x1950pro card now, and the latest driver set they have confirmed to be available fo rthe x1950pro AGP is the catalyst 7.7 driver.

#22 Denso on 2007-10-06 23:06 (Reply)

Just bought an agp x1950pro and it works fine on the original drivers off the disc supplied with it, but when i install the latest drivers it wont boot properly, all i get is a blue screen saying it is stuck in an infinite loop!

1st and last Ati card i will buy!

#23 Blamange on 2007-10-10 09:56 (Reply)

I have the GeCube X1950XT, and I thought I had a hardware problem until I found out that CCC was wrecking my system. I had to use Task Manager to even get explorer.exe started properly, so when I put my PC on there was no desktop at all. Also this stopped many of my programs from running at all.

I will not be using CCC any more, just Tray Tools. I had a noticable increase in performance with these new display drivers -- nearly 15%!!

#24 Davie92 on 2007-10-12 18:10 (Reply)

I have an AGP 8x HIS x1650xt 512 ver.

7.8 Reuslts in no AGP Acellerationstruktur( thatsi n swedish dunno waht it is in english) and bland shortcuts.

7.9 pretty much the same.

7.7 works well.

Tried to use 7.9 again. At startup the screen toldm e that "Resolution not avaible" and had to restart and run windows with last working settings.

Back to 7.7 again as the newer drivers clearly has stopped provoding updates for agp. (?)

#25 DarkNshY (Homepage) on 2007-10-27 14:51 (Reply)

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