ABIT Radeon 9600 driver won't load

derceto · May 2, 2008, 05:33 AM

This is what I have:

Abit SA7 motherboard
Abit Radeon 9600 256MB AGP
Windows XP with SP2

Currently I use Omega 2.6.25a driver, which is old, but still works. I tried almost every subsequent Catalyst and Omega driver (up to v4.8.442), all of them installed without a peep, but after rebooting none of them would load. Only the sloppy standard VGA driver loads, which isn't quite useable. No error reported. I even tried to install a newer driver on a fresh, clean system, but it didn't work. What could be the problem? How can I find out why the driver doesn't load?

It's not that I have any problem with the old driver, or miss any function, but I'd rather use the latest drivers for any hardware.

The Radeon driver on the Abit website is an ancient one from 2005.

Thanks in advance!

IvanV · May 2, 2008, 07:25 AM

I'm using a 9800Pro so I guess what works for me should work for you too. Since I haven't been gaming much lately I am a bit outdated myself, but it shouldn't matter much. For Vista, I'm using 7.10 (later versions have issues with AGP cards, though I'm not sure if that goes for all such cards or only the latest ones), and I think I'm still with the 6.9s in XP.

Before installing any new set, uninstall those Omegas and everything that came with them. You may also want to use Driver Cleaner, because there are usually some traces of the old drivers left after the uninstall and that sometimes causes issues. Also, make sure you have the .Net Framework as Catalyst Control Center requires it (I'm not sure what happens if you try to install new Cats on a system without the Framework).

Lastly, I'm all for the latest drivers, but, with our boards, we can't really expect significant speed improvements, so, unless there's a bug that you need fixed, the latest sets won't bring you much. That said, I remember that there had been a nice increase in OpenGL performance all through 2005, so you might see some benefit after going to a newer set (those Omegas you've got are based on official 5.4), but there's no need to go for the very latest, especially if they are making problems.