Cataclyst vs Omega

[Wilbus]

Hey all, got a question. Tried out two different drivers for my Radeon 9700 non Pro (a year old by now) and ran it in 3D Mark 03.

First driver is the Cataclyst, tried both with 3.7, 3.9 and I'm now using 3.10.

The other driver was the Omega driver as everybody says it's the best and fastest.

When I run these two drivers in 3D Mark I get, with the Cataclyst 3.10 I get slight more than 4200 pointsa, which is afaik pretty good.

With the Omega drivers I get slightly more than 3000. That's 1000 points less.

Does these mean right away that the Omega drivers give worse FPS in games than the Cataclyst?

[ChasR]

My take on the omega drivers is that they provide a better quality image.  They may be faster on some games.  They are not faster on 3DMark 2003.  If you've been following the AH2 beta threads, follow the proceedures for frame rate tests from Skuzzy and you'll find out for sure which driver is faster in AH.  The Omega drivers are tweeked Catalyst drivers.  In doing their tweak they may have undone the 3DMark tweak in the Catalyst drivers thus the much poorer result. 3DMark2003 is a pretty controversial synthetic benchmark anyway.  The results from 3DMark2001 probably reflect the differences in AH performance more closely.  You might try the Aquamark benchmark to get an idea of the drivers directX9 performance.

[Wilbus]

Ok Thanks, not so much thinking about AH2 though. Mostly thinking about Lo-Mac, getting quite alot of stutter in it.

[Batz]

jet dweeb

[Wilbus]

ROFLMAO!

So true


Actually, I much prefer prop sims, love close fights. Used to hate Jet Sims because it was all "fire and forget" and all missiles used to hit. That's not the case in Lock On, it's very realistic and many fights actually end up being close combat. It's very demanding on the computer it seems like, many people having FPS prop but it's a freaking good and beutyfull sim, very advanced.

[38ruk]

hhmmm wilbuz what cpu u runnin with that card? i was getting 4437 wit a 9600 pro ,clocked 530 ,348,  u runnin aa on the test?   38

[Wilbus]

Heya 38Ruk, running a 2.4Ghz P4 with a 533Mhz FSB and RDRAM. Your 9600 is clocked higher than my 9700 non pro. Believe mine's at 265mhz and 265mhz. Thinking about overclocking it, tried it once but couldn't get more than 20 or so Mhz without getting problems with the graphic (overheating). Any ideas for good fans that fit with the card and a mini tower?

[Shamus]

Using a Crystal orb on the same type of card Wilbus at 345/300.

Running a Thbred 2100 at 2.1gig, Omega 3.8's, for a score of 5308

shamus

[Wilbus]

2.1gig ram?

Crystal Ord = Extra Cooling?

[Shamus]

2.1 Ghz speed on processor

Crystal Orb is a brand name of heatsink that snaps into the 2 holes on the vid card, it is chrome plated copper, better cooling than stock

[Wilbus]

Rgr Shamus, will see what I find in the stores tomorrow, you're getting almost 1000 points more than I do with about the same system so OC'ing the vid card might be good for me. I know there is a chance of dammaging the card if you OC too much and it gets warm. If it's not OC:ed too much, will it still suffer from being OC:ed?

I've heard that OC:ing is bad no matter what and will dammage the stuff.

[38ruk]

hey wil, have u looked into flashing the card , i know some of the non pros had to have a flash to clock them to pro specs, look on the rage3d boards it has all the info u need, if u dont flash the card u cant get a stable overclock, which would look like a heat issue , but really isnt. hope this helps 38maw

[ChasR]

Here is the thread about flashing the bios of the card:
Rage3D 9700 bios flash

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

If you want a true performance benchmark, use the various games you have installed to test your system and the drivers with before and after results.

Benchmarks are relatively worthless except for testing hardware upgrades.
-SW