[Rainman5419]

I had a few Windows system files that were corrupted on me, and I just decided to reformat the HDD and do a clean install.
I've gotten everything up and running, but I'm having a hard time with my graphics drivers. I'm using a Intel board, and XP is having trouble finding the onboard Video Controller, so my question is Is the driver for the onboard video required if I am using a Radeon x700 PCI-E card?

Second, I had tried installing the video card, and found that it still seemed to be using the onboard graphics. I had tried the install initially during my spree of Windows updates (89+ yeesh) and at the time hadn't installed .NET framework. After installing .NET I still had issues with the most recent Catalyst build so I used version 6.12
http://ati.amd.com/s...revious-xp.html
After installing that(and it seemingly working) I had still experienced poor quality(lower than before the reformat), even after tweaking the Catalyst Control settings to max quality it was still much worse than prior to my reformat, I guess I jumped in a bit over my head here, so any help is appreciated.

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Welcome to G2G

Ok, firstly if you are using an off-board video card (PCI-E in this case) then you shouldn't need to install drivers for the onboard card.
As for which card the system is actually using, just check to see which one your monitor physically connects to. If the monitor connects to the ATI card & you get a picture on screen (which you obviously do), then it's not using the onboard card as such. That said however, it does sound like the system hasn't disabled the onboard card either. Normally, the onboard will be automatically disabled whenever an off-board card is inserted but this isn't always the case. You may need to disable the onboard card in the bios or even by using a jumper on the motherboard.

If you open device manager (Start->Run..->devmgmt.msc), do you see both video cards listed in the Display Adapters section?

[Samm]

Welcome to G2G

Ok, firstly if you are using an off-board video card (PCI-E in this case) then you shouldn't need to install drivers for the onboard card.
As for which card the system is actually using, just check to see which one your monitor physically connects to. If the monitor connects to the ATI card & you get a picture on screen (which you obviously do), then it's not using the onboard card as such. That said however, it does sound like the system hasn't disabled the onboard card either. Normally, the onboard will be automatically disabled whenever an off-board card is inserted but this isn't always the case. You may need to disable the onboard card in the bios or even by using a jumper on the motherboard.

If you open device manager (Start->Run..->devmgmt.msc), do you see both video cards listed in the Display Adapters section?

[Rainman5419]

Thanks for the prompt response, but I only see the Radeon x700 Series, and Radeon x700 Series Secondary, which I'm fairly certain is just for multi-monitor setups. I ran out of ideas, and I still don't have faith in the Catalyst install. Also if it helps, I have the x700 XT 256MB version, I know there was some odd combo of the XT/Pro having differing memory amounts. I was also originally running the video out of the DVI port and using a VGA/DVI Adapter, now I can't get that port to work, but the VGA one works fine.

A bit more info since I was searching through the dxdiag tool. I'm using the version of DX9c that came with my XP SP2 disk, and when testing DirectDraw I noticed image blurringly fast speeds of what was supposed to be a rotating cube with the DX9 logo, and it seemed to get worse as it went from DirectX 3d 7 Interfaces to DirectX 3d 8 Interfaces to DirectX 3d 9 Interfaces.

Edited by Rainman5419, 27 October 2007 - 07:32 AM.

[Samm]

After you performed the fresh installation of XP, did you install the chipset drivers for your motherboard prior to the ATI driver? You don't need to install the onboard video card driver but part of the Intel chipset driver package should include a driver for the PCI-E bus and the video bus driver (be it agp or pci-e) should always be installed before the actual video card driver. These drivers will be on the motherboard CD or can be downloaded from Intels website for the latest version. BTW - this is just a guess really & probably got nothing to do with your problem but thought it may be worth mentioning anyway.

The other thing you could try is a newer version of the catalyst driver. I know you said you had problems with the latest version but how about trying one thats newer than v6.12 but not the latest.

The other thing to consider, is by the sound of it you have installed several different video drivers already - i.e the onboard driver, the latest catalyst driver then the older catalyst driver etc. Sometimes this alone is enough to screw the driver installation up, especially if 'update' a new driver with an older one.

I do know that you need to have the .NET framework installed prior to the catalyst installation. Also, if you update the catalyst driver, you have to uninstall the existing driver first before installing the new one. Therefore, you may want to try uninstalling all catalyst drivers and reinstall the one you want.

After uninstalling the catalyst driver, you can then use ATI's driver cleanup to remove any left over driver files etc. (Link below)

 cat_uninstaller.zip   111.96KB   175 downloads

I'm going to be away from the computer now for the rest of the weekend so if anyone else wishes to jump in here, please feel free!

Edited by Samm, 27 October 2007 - 10:27 AM.

[Rainman5419]

Sorry for delayed response here, but I had installed the mobo drivers prior to installing the catalyst drivers, I did take your advice and uninstall all of the catalyst driver info and do a fresh install of that, after making sure I had the most updated .NET 3. I installed a more recent 7.X catalyst driver, but I still seem to be getting the same issues.

[Rainman5419]

Nay more ideas, or I have I hit a dead end of sorts?

[Samm]

Do you know which catalyst driver you were using before you reinstalled everything?

[Rainman5419]

I wasn't sure if I had, since I used multiple 7.X builds, but I retried 7.3 and that didn't fix the problem.

[Samm]

Ok, let's go back to your problem - you said that the graphics are poor quality. Can you clarify this a bit please? i.e are they just generally poor and everything including Window desktop is affected or is it only noticable when you play games or videos for example? How about photos & still images, are they affected too?

[Rainman5419]

The quality/performance is good for most everything except for games, and apps that are graphically intensive. There is a slight FPS loss compared to previous to the reinstall. The reason I mentioned the dxdiag Direct 3D giving me odd results, was because I think that's where the issues are centered around.

[Samm]

As this seems to be mainly a gaming related problem (not my strong point I'm afraid), I'm going to seek the advice of a gamer so bear with me for a day or so while I find someone to help you out...

[ZEUS_GB]

Sounds like a strange problem.

What resolution are you running Windows at? Are you running in 32 bit colour mode? Are you overclocking the graphics card?

This could be a driver issue or hardware issue, i'm not sure which but hey that's what troubleshooting for.

1 - Try is reinstalling DirectX 9, you can find the download at the Windows download site.

2 - Remove your ATI drivers, boot into safe mode and then run Driver Cleaner to remove any and all trace of the ATI drivers. (instructions are included in the readme file).

3 - Check the card for overheating (it's a long shot).

A final note, graphical speed is effected by drivers. Some driver version are horrible and cause cards to run slightly slower, so it's not unusual to get different performance with different drivers.

Edited by ZEUS_GB, 02 November 2007 - 04:42 PM.

[Rainman5419]

I'm running windows at 1280 x 1024, in 32 bit color, and I'm not overclocking anything actually.
As far as DX goes, I tried uninstalling it, but I didn't have a former version to roll back to. After trying to reinstall the latest version I had similar luck, since it seems the build of XP I installed has the latest version of DX10. I've never had any problems with my PC overheating, but I'll double check my temps in BIOS. I'll try that 2nd option now though.

[ZEUS_GB]

XP doesn't support DirectX 10, DirectX 10 is Vista only.

It's not so much the PC overheating, it's the graphics card overheating.

[Rainman5419]

That's what I had thought initially too, I had DX9C, and when speaking to microsoft tech support they had me download the latest version(which I already had). I mentioned I though DX10 was Vista only, and the tech told me it wasn't the case. I guess the outsourced tech support knows even less than I gave him credit for. Any utilities I can use to check the graphics card temp?

Edited by Rainman5419, 03 November 2007 - 01:00 AM.