Omega or Catalyst?

[Soulyss]

I just got a new ATI 9600XT vid card, got it installed and upgraded to the latest Catalyst drivers, everything seems to be running fine.  But then I heard about these "omega" drivers that some people seem to swear by.   Which one should I go with?  This is mostly for AH and LoMAC that I'll be playing.

[Kaz]

No harm in trying the omega drivers, they may or may not be better in those games.

http://www.omegacorner.com/

[Skuzzy]

The Omega drivers are just tweaks of various registry entries of the basic Cat drivers.  However, do not take that simple statement as the drivers being a no-brainer.  Many registry entries are used for video cards and a fair number of them can cause problems if not set correctly.

[zmeg]

The omega drivers work well with most games if you don't change any settings, however they have v-sync off by default so they aren't good for AH.

[dracon]

I have been using the Omegas for more than a year.  You can tweak (change) VSYNC and Anti-Aliasing.  I have used them in a GeForce 1 and a GeForce 3 64M.

I too just bought a 9600XT 128M.  My first ATI Radeon.  I am using Omegas Drivers for it.  I wish I could send the card Back.  I mean it's OK, the 128 M makes things smooth.  However,  the 3 games I wanted to improve were AH, AH2, and Forgotten Battles.  I lost FPS in all of them.  AA and AF can be used but you still suffer the FPS hit.  In AH when I turn on AA X2 or X4 I get a odd line alongside my mouse arrow.  UT 2003, Halo, MOHAA, and Call of Duty are pluses.  Picture quality is fine but I doubt you could tell much difference between an Nvidia or a Radeon

Go to Guru3d.com and download DriverCleaner2.  Follow all instructions to the letter.  Go to Omegas Corner and download the Cat 3.7's.  I am currnetly using the Cat 10's with good success.  The Cat 3.7's seem to be the best at this time.


Omegas Corner: http://www.omegacorner.com/index_ati.html

Driver Cleaner 2: http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner

My Best,
Dracon