Anyone who uses ATI-Video Cards should update immediatly to Catalyst 3.8 This is the biggest update in the history of ATI! This update reduces video hardware hangs to ZERO and it does work! 808

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have an ATI RADEON 32MB SDR PCI graphics card .I still have the originial drivers installed .For the most part my system is very stable ,I've been thinking of updating the drivers ,however ,even the ATI web site warns that they do not believe in un-needed driver updates .Plus the directions ,for updating are rather confusing ? You must remove the previous drivers frist ,and to me having no display drivers installed ,is a scary thought. How will I get anything to display on my screen .I had i810 intergrated graphics and its disabled !How do I find out what version of the catalyst I have and what is it, a display driver ? Thanks in Advance,Nick

Nick, These Update instructions should work for you! Before updating drivers, you should completely remove all previous ATI Installations and reboot to Windows generic 16-color vga. #1. Install Direct-X & Reboot #2. Install Windows Media Encoder (No-reboot) #3. Install TV Capture but DO-NOT Reboot! #4. Install Display Drivers and Reboot!!! #5. Install Control Panel and Reboot!!!!! #6. Instead of buying the newest ATI-CD for $10, I next install the older media center 7.5 from my original CD and it works great with the newer drivers. The newer media centers seem to drop too many frames while recording video with Radeon's at or below 8500 series. Also, the new Catalyst has 10-Major updates in addition to the monthly bug fixes. Here are a few of the major updates! -------------- VPU Recover (patent pending) allows the CATALYST™ display driver to reset the graphics accelerator when it is no longer responding to the display driver. Without VPU Recover, a reboot of the system would be required when the graphic accelerator is not responding to the display driver. Depending on the state of the system when VPU Recover is activated, applications that are running may be able to fully recover from the graphics processor reset. If this is not possible, the active application may be closed and the system will return to the desktop. VPU Recover will significantly reduce the number of system crashes caused by graphics hardware hangs. This allows for fewer interruptions and virtually eliminates situations where work can be lost, as well as increasing system stability. -------------- Game Profile Feature CATALYST™ 3.8 provides users with the ability to create 3D profiles so that every game can have its own unique settings. The custom sections of the control panel can now be used to individually configure 3D settings such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic filtering and SMARTSHADER™ effects. These additions allow gamers to activate exciting pixel shader effects in any Direct3D or OpenGL application. -------------- SMARTSHADER™ allows gamers to enable an exciting pixel shader effects in Direct3D or OpenGL applications. SMARTSHADER™ effects delivers the amazing rendering techniques found in pre-shader 3D applications -------------- If you have NEVER updated your drivers, do yourself a favor and at least try them!! 808

Thanks 808, I copied your instructions and will try updating this Sunday ! I also have the ATI TV WONDER USB Edition .The Multi-Media Centers from the TV Wonder and the one for my video card (RADEON) cause conflicts with eachother .I had to uninstall the one for the TV WONDER and I still could not get back my DVD veiwing capabilities, when I installed the ATI DVD pplayer it locked out my TV veiwing ability, so I uninstalled the ATI DVD player ? I had a version of InterVideo's WinDVD on CD and that gave me back the ability to watch DVD via my PC ! ATI sent me the installation CD with the new MMC on it and the drivers ,catalyst etc. They instructed me to install the drivers only off the CD ? For the life of me I could not figure out how to do that .When I sent them an email asking them to provide step by step insructions ,I never recieved any reply ? The MMC I have installed is 7.0 ! Again thanks for the instructions and I will let you know how everything worked out ,if you dont hear back from me that means my PC is totally screwed up ! Not likely that will happen, Thanks ,Nick