Need information on Radeon 8500

[theflyingrat]

My brother has been experiencing problems with his Radeon 8500 and Serious-Sam games. It runs fine in itself, but when running benchmarks to compare to my machines, we noticed terribly low scores.

Here is what happens. Anytime we start Serious Sam or Serious Sam 2, the ATI drivers change themselves. It automatically selects "Convert 32-bit to 16-bit textures". This, of course, lends itself to a lot of chopping in the game itself. You can exit the game and deselect this option, then go back into the game and it will be fine - scores skyrocket about 40% when rendered in pure 32-bit mode. However, when you exit the game, then check the drivers, they are set back to convert 32-bit to 16-bit colors. This has happened with the two latest beta drivers we've tried.

In effect, every time you leave Serious Sam, then go to another game (like Quake III, for example) without changing the driver settings, performance is ruined. He's really mad, as his Radeon performs more poorly after running Serious Sam than his old GeForce2 GTS did.

If anyone else has heard of this, let me know, and if there are any fixes, please inform me. He's going to start throwing stuff soon.

 

[funnyperson1]

have you tryed the newest WHQL drivers i havent heard of anyone having problems with them...

 

[theflyingrat]

I think I'm gonna force him to install those. What is the latest version (I'm not up on my Radoen driver versions)? He has Windows 2000, and the ATI site has like 4 different driver versions posted. Can't they make up thier minds?

 

[funnyperson1]

6025s i believe? I would go with teh recommend WHQL ones

just experiment with different drivers and be sure to tell him to uninstall the old one first along with the MMC and other Ati crap that comes with the card

 

[Ice_Gargoylle]

i dont know if this is right, but if u are running a high resolution, the ati drivers might defualt back to a lower level of detail to gain performance, as do smoothvision and the other option.