ATI Fix Your Drivers!

By Jeffrey | May 2, 2008


I tend to play older games at least as often as modern games. Of course, I use modern programs to make those older games’ graphics look better - such as Doomsday for Doom and ePSXe for my Playstation games - and those programs and games often use OpenGL to display their graphics. No problem, right? Well, yeah, as long as you’re not running an ATI video card.

It seems that ATI has, for whatever reason, had absolutely terrible support for OpenGL in their latest drivers. Polygons are missing, missing textures, graphics look weird, and ATI has done nothing to fix it.

So, on behalf of other classic gamers like myself: ATI fix your drivers!

Read on for images that show what I’m talking about, and a possible fix for you XP users.

So you’re aware, it is not the actual graphics card that is at fault. I have tested this using an HD 2600, an x1600Pro, and an HD 3200 chipset and the result was always the same: the drivers are at fault.

Doomsday:

Doomsday is a modern enhanced port of Doom engine games that lets them use updated graphics, sounds, and rendering using OpenGL. It’s a sweet program that keeps Doom looking and sounding fresh.

Which is all well and good unless you’re using ATI video cards, in which case it looks like this:

But this is what it should look like:

Notice how obvious the missing texture problem is.

But the problem also affects OpenGL rendering in ePSXe, as seen below.

It is easy to see the obvious missing polygons in those images.

Basically, the whole thing is a joke. With all the power of modern video cards, and with how long OpenGL has been around, there is simply no excuse for ATI to not have proper support in their drivers. And yes, these games may be relatively obscure compared to recent titles, but reports are sounding around the web that more prominent titles - such as Quake 2 - also experience these glitches.

So ATI, get with the game.

Possible Fix?

If you are using Windows XP you can try reverting to the 7.10 drivers, as those seemed to have proper support. Every version after that has had this problem.

If you are using Windows Vista, as I am, then you are simply out of luck, as all ATI drivers for Vista experience this.

Topics: Rants |



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