zerodamage

Today, one of our Forum Gold Members "The Neon Cowboy" takes a look at the DNA 9.3.10a and Omega 2504 drivers modified from ATI's Catalyst 3.10's. The default ATI Catalyst 3.10 are also benched as a reference point.

There is some history between these two different driver sets with accusations of stealing. Today, all the questions will be answered.

Here is a tidbit: "I experienced more issues in 3 days with DNA drivers then I have ever seen with ATI or Omega’s. First of all, I had programs error and terminate at an unusual rate. During the beginning of the 2nd day I had a program crash while just using MSN Messenger. Sadly I clicked close before saving or copying the message about a program error and the program was terminated. It took me a second to realize that the DNA taskbar application was causing the crashes, as it would no longer be displayed. After a reboot it was back again. Later that night, Playing Unreal 2 XMP, after about 20 minutes the game froze for a second then dropped to desktop (game was minimized still running). On the screen it was displayed an error I haven’t seen in years of working on and with computers. I tried to open my screen shot program, I then tried IE nothing would start, due to the windows station is shutting down."

You can read the Article HERE


***This is not an official DH review. This is an independant review from one of our members***

shortstuff

Great article Neon. Very good work.

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[color=Indigo]Joe "Roadee" Dawson
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craig588

I was talking with him while he was putting it together, and he spent ALOT of time on this. I'm always impressed with every one of Neon's research articles. (I guess thats what you would call them)

Warpy

Neon,

Thanks for the updates via MSN.... looks like its all ready!!

Time to grab a coffee and some nibbles

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hohum

Ah well that article says it all really, especially the mention of typos - I would be especially concerned with regards to this, as god knows what errors have snuck in there. Good article

Warpy

I think the time taken in preparing this artle and research has to be appreciated.

It's good to know that the benchmarks and testing have proven that "Killerthief" is no more than a crook stealing the work from talented people. And it's Omega that deserves the appreciation from the communities for his efforts in providing us all with stabilty, IQ and performance in his driver sets - which explains why he is on the BETA Team for testing ATI driver sets.

Good job chaps.

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The_Neon_Cowboy

thanks we tried

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digitalwanderer

A great job and a great read! The numbers were interesting and must have had a ball-crushing amount of effort put into 'em, but my personal fave was page 16....the "Ethics" section.

Thanks, that was very well documented and bang-on accurate. It's nice to have it all layed out neatly to have something to point people to.


Oh yeah, has DH received any pschotic e-mails from any driver modders lately? I just had this funny feeling while reading page 16 that you were going to be getting a lot of very badly written and highly emotionally charged letters soon....

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Markius

Great work Neon. Thanks for taking the time to do a really good article.

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Chaos

Nice one Neon, pretty wide range of testing which was nice. The only thing that I didn't like was the scale used on the graphs, even though Omega is on top more often than not the scores were much closer than the graphs represent... Just my opinion but great read all the same

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ChrisW

[DISCLAIMER]I would just like to point out that RadLinker is not an actual part of the DNA drivers...it was just being distributed with them. I don't support any lawsuit and/or claims against ATI and respect any copyrights held by ATI. Any statements made on behalf of the DNA drivers are the opinion of the person making such statements and are not the opinion of myself. If there should arise any questions/concerns about my software, feel free to contact me and I will work to remedy the situation.[/DISCLAIMER]

HsuGotaQ

I am happy now... don't know why. but I just am. Great review / article / critique Neon. I feel satisfied.

Oh and ChrisW... don't worry... your too damn cool to be attack (also you aint did anything).

Malus

Very well written. However, I could see KS just blaming the outcome on bias instead of his shoddy work. Just keep your cool and don't let him try anything stupid.

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Warpy

It seems as though we have upset some DNA fans, which is a shame since the review was non bias. The results prove that, benchamarks dont lie.

Please take note, that When someone fails to want to know the truth they are blind to the facts.

Rage3d Post

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The_Neon_Cowboy

I benchmarked and wrote this independently and then with final help. Those of you that would like to pick at this review as being prejudice. Unless you’re calling the hardware itself prejudice you’ll find none here.

First you have to understand several things. For one I’ve used Omega’s drivers before does that make me prejudice no why? Because I usually (were talking years) running officials myself. I know quite a bit about tweaking and modding. I have good results with both drivers. For those who aren’t overly adept in tweaking driver Omega’s are the best way to go. Actually I had never taken that deep of look into omegas drivers. I was a bit bullheaded and ran them ran mine looked at the 2001SE scores and went back to ATI’s and my tweaking. After looking and wowed at the results in games and other benchmarks I have a feeling I’ll stick with them for a while.

Am I out to get killersneak? When it comes down to it I don’t care anything about this individual. There wouldn’t even be a fuss anywere if it wasn’t for him coming and picking fights on DH. Using fake accounts to course troubles, posting false troubles and posting anti omega propaganda.

I don't mind any discussion if you'd like to talk a civilized fashion.
Regarding test results I’d like now to respond to some of the critics of these results.
who have chosen to post thier issues with it on other sites.

................


Did you even read what u wrote? Please read the review it again and you'll see you’re mistaken.
That tends to happen with you come only to pick at something and don't read the whole review thoroughly

But, If you would like to challenge that DNA’s are set to defult to V-Sync off? I suggest you read this very carefully....





.................



MonarchX, those were what was displayed. I did not alter / changed any of the values before or during testing or the taking of those shots. The only setting that was ever changed was on the omegas. After completing the omega's tests, the V-Sync Value was changed and described in the article to show why the difference in call of duty since omegas defaults to on. With every different driver sets the displayed Radlinker values were different accordingly. The shots displayed are the values that were shown. unless you claming the driver I obtained via the download link on the DNAs web site was taperd with? all the mirrors?.

.................

It also was nice to see that killersneak was already talking about the results of these tests long before they were even posted to this site.



Also, it nice to know that all you’re seeking is PR. Mabe I'm wrong here but I'm quite sure you can't trust a member of your beta team/staff to be an unbiast reviewer. If it wasn't for your picking fights to get headlines mabe alot of people would not be so edgy. I wish to only discuss the matter. Nothing is gained from picking or fighting.
.................

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Dyre Straits

Neon,

In that comment above where the poster challenges the results saying that DNA overtakes them all.... He must be color blind. He's not associating the correct colors on the graph with the color legend below. It's as simple as that.

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HsuGotaQ

Jesus Farkin... #^$@*&... okay... where's Digi? Neon, get me some ammo? Where going hunting!

HawK

Good job Neon
For me no suprise though considering:
Omega is an ATI beta tester wich gives him the time to test the new drivers (~4wks avg.?), and probebly during the tests finds the best setting for his omega's (experience).
KS on the other hand has only 4 days(avg.) to do his tweaking (assuming there is no omega copying involved) then have to remove ATI logos/licensing, changing it for his logo, then send it to "his alleged" beta testers, recieving beta testing reports act upon it, putting it together in an install package and all this in 4 day's??

Simple reasoning on my side, and why I have no confidence to use DNA's"drivers"* on my hard earned 9700.
Makes sense to me.

* why does he keeps calling them MY drivers?? he only tweaks ATI drivers (assuming there is no omega copying involved, wich I doubt very much)

The_Neon_Cowboy

Thanks....


also you should make note that .....
OMEGA's 2504 were posted December 21,2003 8:00 PM on DH
DNA's 9.3.10a were posted December 22, 2003 6:49 pm on DNA's

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HawK

Due to me not being totaly unbiased, reason already stated in my above post.
i did made a mistake in the time(on avg.) KS has in releasing "his" drivers to keep the december release as an example:
ATI's 3.10 were posted December 17, 2003
OMEGA's 2504 were posted December 21,2003
DNA's 9.3.10a were posted December 22, 2003

so KS had a total of 6 (and not 4) day's before release,
now given the amount of games/application that has to be tested by "his" Beta testers it still is way to short in my book,
one thing to add: these beta testers must have a wealth of program to test this fully, wich make me wonder, if all these programs are all legaly obtained, and if not , why would anyone wands to trust his hardware, with drivers tested on these "cracks"?, but i'm sure it is all done very legally... given KS's history..

kelticknight

cool report neon,good job,but lm getting little anoyed at seeing this killersneak turning up every day under several different names ,acting like 14 years old with a magor chip on his shoulders,my pc's will never see dna or what ever name he might call them in future and any friends l have ,who have pc,will advice them not to use his drivers or anything he so called makes,this last comment l will make on ks drivers as lm cocerned talking and even more so using them is a total wast of time and pc,,l have learnt a lot in last 2 weeks about ks,that theres nothing that he might do in future to make me want to use any of his so so-called software.the final nail in his coffin for me when he insulted ati guy [terry],that made ks more of a joke of a kid to me,ok enough about ks

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kelticknight

nothing to do with being dutch or what ever nationality ,just about killersneak.think bringing it into where he's from is not fair,these dna drivers are from this guy killersneak and not from the country his from or live in

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wertret

Thanx neon and roadee for the good work

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Roadee

I just did a spelling and grammar check. All articles go through the same procedure. Neon deserves all the credit here, alot of hours went in to this article.

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driverdriver

This excellent work by Neon Cowboy took alot of effort and time, it is very well done and i realy hope it is going to pay-off meaninig, DNA should realise all that he used to be doing is modifying a ATI driver, but now he was pushing on the wrong buttons messing with the big guys and he should just crawl back in his hole now....

Zulan

sheesh

But anyway Great review,

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Poppi

I read the entire article, which clearly shows the hard work put into it. I couldn't help but continuing to feel the unbalanced heart of the article. I am not a fan of any driver producer. I simply don't have the time to put a magnifying glass to my monitor and do believe my system is capable enough so all 3 drivers would show no "in action" lag.

Unbalanced because of the fact the author seemed to be waiting for every opportunity to point out the faults of one set of drivers. Even when the next subject was introduced the negatives were the highlight of the section versus the results. I could go on and on, but as stated I simply just don't have the time to be committed as many of you are.

Just want to conclude with an analogy making this article an armed U.S. soldier in Iraq who had one bullet left in his M-16. The soldier comes upon 2 individuals holding black bags. One had a black kerchief over his face and the other was well groomed and spoke perfect english. I beleive the round would be in the kerchiefed man, even though it was later found his bag had food for his family and was trying to protect his face from the sand. It was later found out the groomed man had thousands of dollars in his bag, although he had not worked for months.

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Zardon

alot of people are going to feel that because quite obviously this is omegas support forum, right?. Bear in mind though, this article was not created by myself or a staff member, but a forum member who delves into tweaking and modding, he is well known on this forum. The guy in question - Neon has done alot of work on the forums of this site, with previous articles such as modding PSUs and he even ran an indepth analysis of driver temperatures when the whole debate about the famous ATI official 3.8 cat set erupted.

When he presented this article to the staff (roadee) and they in turn presented it to me, I simply couldnt ignore the amount of work he put into it, and like all things in life, reviews or articles will always present an opinion at the end - we arent robots. Im sure if you have read it, you will see that not only does Neon cowboy dislike the ethical conduct of KS, but there are facts and visual proof regarding crashing and other miscelleanous issues which would shape a negative opinion. I believe personally if Neon cowboy had the same issues with Omegas sets or even ATIs he would have presented this in his article, and I think its mighty unfair some people are just dismissing this because its been posted on Driverheaven.

snake

LOL !!! But anyway it's none a surprise for us all, ATI users.
You don't have to believe in God, just trust ATI, Omega, Rage3DTweak and
the little new ATITool and your cards will be happy for 2004

By the way, GREAT WORK AGAIN Neon

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Kombatant

I will speak my mind as well, although I fear some of you may not like it that much. First of all I would like to agree with everyone in the sense that Neon has put a lot of work in this, and trust me, it shows. And I am the last person to question his findings. I may not post much in DH, but I follow the site and forums pretty closely and I do not doubt his integrity.

You sensed a "but" coming though, and here it is. May I also remind you that this is merely my own personal opinion and has nothing to do with Rage3D or anyone else for that matter. When we write reviews or reports about something, whatever the subject may be, I believe it is our duty to maintain impartiality. We are human, and we do favour certain things, that's inevitable. Sometimes it even shows in our reviews. But I feel that Neon's report can very well be mistaken for prejudice. It is not that important who is right and who is wrong in this matter; I think that this is beyond discussion. It is the way the case was presented that left a not so good feeling to me once I read it. I will be blunt and even say that when I finished reading it gave me a "DH is out to get Killersneak" feeling, and I am certain that this is the last thing that the author of the report or the DriverHeaven administrators would like. A feeling other people got too, from the few conversations I had about this matter with other people.

My point is this. KS is an odd apple, I agree. I myself have protected him in Rage3D several times because I believe in second chances; and I think many people who like Angel and his work did not like that. But I try to be fair and that goes for everyone, despite how I personally feel about them. I was also the one who had him banned, because although I had given him warnings about his conduct in the forums, he chose to ignore them, and rules are rules and they stand for everyone (so yes KS, since I know you will read this one way or the other, I was the one. So email-bomb me or something ) I have deep respect for Angel and what he does, and the fact that he hasn't come out in all this merely shows his integrity. It's just that I feel that this report will do more harm than good in the long run. Maybe it's just me. But I had to speak my mind.

Regards.

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