Best drivers for 9800XT?

[VictorGB]

Hi

Am hoping this community can help me out.

I recently bought an ATI Radeon 9800XT AGP GFX card as 'insurance' that I'd be able to carry on playing MTW if/when my Nvidia 6800GT ever failed.

Having thoroughly cleaned my MTW PC of the Nvidia drivers and installed the 9800GT I hit a problem: the v. 3.7 CATs that I had intended installing couldn't detect the 9800XT. (I suspect that it's too modern for them. Its BIOS are dated 2007. I think the 3.7 CATs are 2004 vintage) I then tried v. 4.2 CATs, but this resulted in strange errors in the battle mode in MTW. I then downloaded and installed v. 10.2 CATs from the ATI site. This is a 'legacy' driver set.

Pike & Musket TW will not load the campaign screen with these v. 10.2 drivers. Vanilla MTW+VI v. 2.01 crashed horribly during a battle. XL+Tyb runs OK so far: 2 hours play, ten turns, one sizeable battle.

But I still want to know what driver set people recommed for a 9800XT for MTW, and where can I get them? (One I've tried them out I'll do a fresh XP install.)

Also, whilst we're at it:

1) What resolution and colour depth settings do people recommend for XP?
2) What resolution do people recommend for the MTW campaign and the battle modes for this card?
3) What antialiasing and anisotropic filtering settings do people recommend for this card?

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

[DAVIDE]

Drivers here: http://support.amd.com/it/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Once i had 9800 pro 128 and i remember i was playing at medieval 2 (i know this is not the case being the game you talk about older) at 1024*768 (15° monitor) and graphical settings in game set all max apart AA as 0 or 2... remember: dont force graphics manually via catalyst. Let them as they are by default and change just in game options

[Martok]

VictorGB, I believe you'll want Catalyst 5.7. That should help.

[Axalon]

Try out drivers prior to 2005 – Catalyst 4.12 and downward to the point the card was released (whenever
that was, late 2003?). That “should” work just fine with MTW. Check guru3d for drivers...

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Videocar...2-bit_c18.html

Personally, I use Cat 3.7 (released Sep 2003) – but that is for Win2k and 9800 pro and that is not the exact
same thing. 2k drivers and OS seem to work better for MTW - that is least what my experience has been so far.

- Cheers

[irishron]

Try nvidia's version 73 series. It's about the last time Medieval1 worked in battles.

[Brusilov]

Try nvidia's version 73 series. It's about the last time Medieval1 worked in battles.

The only problem is that it's a ATI Radeon card and not a Nvidia one.

I had to have a second take at the model number - I'd never heard of the range being used for ATI. I would have thought that graphics card manufavturers would have kept the model numbers unique but apparently not.

[irishron]

Oops. That's what I get for thinking.

[VictorGB]

Hi All

First, many thanks for all the suggestions and contributions.

I will broadly follow Axalon's suggestion and try the 4.11 Cats [http://downloads.guru3d.com/download...0e36b2b3e772b] first and work through earlier versions if they aren't stable/suitable. It is the case that the 9800XT was released Sep/Oct 2003. I am hopeful that the 4.11 Cats are good (released end of 2004) as:

- there is a WHQL set available;
- DirectX 9c came out in the middle of that year; and
- XP SP2 came out in August 2004.

None of which guarantees anything, of course. But somehow this 'brew' of dates suggests to me that things will have bedded down; e.g., been tested with each other.

Fingers crossed.

I'll post how I get on. I feel that, as MTW-suitable kit gradually enters the twilight zone, a record of what works and were it can be had will serve us MTW anachronisms well.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace