the graphical anomalies have once again struck back! you heard right, but, it only affects the following games: Dawn of War, and Rise of Nations: Rise of legends. I went in to the ATI Catalyst Control Center and lowered the values of the following settings: Antialiasing, Antistrophic filtering, disabled AI catalyst, turned off the vertical refresh, and put mipmap value to high quality. so far, the rest of the games work ok. the games that work are the following: Age of Empires III, The Warchiefs Expansion Pack, Quake 4, Doom 3, Half Life 2, Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle Earth II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Halo: Combat Evolved. sorry to make this post so long.

EDIT: still testing the catalyst values and games, will let you know by tomorrow

You would be better off asking this on an ATi community forum. I bet the experts there could tell you a driver that works best for your line-up of games.

I have this resolved anyway. Dawn of War is the only one that won't work due to anomalies. the rest work okay. I am using ATI Catalyst 8.9 drivers

Well, that is a progress at least. But it would be best if all games worked well.

Maybe ATi have a release date for the next catalysts.

well... I have done some more testing with the ATI Catalyst values. I have changed the mipmap value to quality due to Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle Earth II getting graphical anomalies. so far, so good.

If the catalysts have per-game profiles, you could apply tweaks to each game individually. That way you should be able to get them all anomaly-free, after lots of tinkering and testing that is.

yeah. I have been doing some testing to ensure they ALL are anomaly free. but sadly dawn of war is the culprit for anomalies

Hmm, if nothing works you might be screwed with the 8.9 catalysts. Maybe the 9.x series will correct it.

Oh, by the way, you could visit the ATi forums. Surely they have special driver release threads where people discuss the driver (at least nVidia forums have them). Maybe there is a mention of problems with Dawn of War.

that was my next idea. i am debating whether I should get a 9600 GT or 9800GTX card by NVIDIA. im not sure yet.

You'd get more for your money if you bought an ATi 4870.

my christmas budget is only $200 sadly. but then again I am happy with that.

Then go down until you go below $200. I'm pretty sure the 4850 does, but don't quote me on it.

I won't quote you on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814261027

the link up there is the cheapest 4850 card from newegg.

That is the card you want if the 4870 is not an option. Plain and simple.

I suppose thats true. I will stick with that one then.

You won't regret it. The 48xx cards are believed to be as good as the Radeon 9600/9800 cards were in their golden days.

hmm.. okay. maybe I can look up some benchmarks for those cards!

This article compares the Radeon HD 4850 with the 9800 GTX.
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=14146&page=1

it seems the 4850 card would be a better bet. oh, my video card temp on idle is 38 degrees celsius. when playing a game, its about 40-50 degrees celsius. thats not too terribly hot is it?

Nah, its pretty cold actually. Video cards can withstand a little over 100°C.

By the way, I just noticed something; the Radeon HD 3 & 4000 series are PCI-Express 2.0, while the 9800 series from nVidia are the older generation. You might have to invest in a new mobo if you go with the ATi, making the Geforce 9800 GTX the cheaper option.

Never catch a break do u?

Break from what?

the PCI Express 2.0 cards ARE backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.0 and 1.1. you can put a PCI express 2.0 card in a PCI Express 1.0 or 1.1 slot.

On the idea of stupid crappy errors and such...

I did a fresh install of UT2004 to try fixing my problem with the mouse and keyboard sticking, but it didn't work. v1, v3369, nor v3369 w/Bonus ONS Pack didn't work... HOWEVER, when I installed Killing Floor 2.5 and played that, THAT did work fine in-game. So it's JUST UT2004 that doesn't work properly (odd...). I'll try installing Unwheel to see if that also doesn't have problems...

BTW, I have also installed Combat Arms (another FPS game entirely), and that doesn't have mouse/keyboard sticking problems either, like KF2.5. It's just non-TC UT2004 that has this problem... This all arised when I started playing again after booting my computer up when we got power after the Hurricane. It was maybe 2 weeks without power...

good grief... two weeks without power would have been difficult for me.

I had a DS to play.

That and we got power in a generator to run several things in the house (mainly in one room), including my 360. So... I got pretty damn good at racing R1 class cars in FM2.

Really? That's good to know, thought I was screwed with my current mobo for any future upgrades.

yeah. PCI Express 2.0 is designed to be backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.0 and 1.1. PCI Express 3.0 will be the same way, but it won't be out till sometime next year.

Jeez, they are fast.

His computer problems.