Omega vs OEM drivers? Which is better?

SeraphicSorcerer · Apr 6, 2004, 01:41 AM

Okay so these new Saphire Driversare out.... Are Saphire's drivers "optimized" for their cards vs let's say the omegas? or would they give better performance, has anyone ever test the 2 side by side I dont really have the resources to do it on my pc since i run a critical server.....

Can anyone tell me What's the diffrences between the 2? (besides the logos and such)

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Apr 6, 2004, 10:15 AM

no they are not, if anything the sapphire drivers are older because they come with the card when it was shipped, so may be 2-4 months old. they use the same exact ATI catalyst driver that ever other card uses so it is the regular ATI driver. omega drivers are based on catalyst and are enhanced. i've found them to give me less issues and you can overclock and fool around with more settings with them and not to mention they make performance faster but nothing noticable. so go with the omegas

Chaos · Apr 6, 2004, 10:24 AM

Pimpsta I believe he is refering to the set of 4.3's(7.99.02) that Sapphire now has on their website(correct me if I'm wrong). If so they are both based on official Catalyst drivers. Omega's are just tweaked for gaming and improved IQ and as far I know the only difference between the 4.3 official set and Sapphire's is a different OpenGL file.

SeraphicSorcerer · Apr 6, 2004, 04:27 PM

Yes That's whatr Im refering too... I dont know these inf filesvery Well Im curious if Saphire Tweaks their INF files......

Like Omega Tweaks his to get maximum performance or i it's saphire basically going Hey USE THESE ON YOUR CARD CUZ WE SAY th3y 4r3 s4f3 (sorry haha) Im curious if they just approve of drivers or if they tweak them for their cards... like omega tries to tweak his for everyone?

And if so does that mean saph's drivers would run better then omega's

Chaos · Apr 6, 2004, 05:16 PM

The only thing that Sapphire would do to the .inf would be to make pointers to their specific model names as far as I know. They should work just the same as the official Cat 4.3 drivers.

So on a server I would stay with the ATI official Catalys drivers. If your card is produced by Sapphire then you should be fine using them also. I currently have the Sapphire drives installed on my built by ATI AIW 9700 Pro and they work fine.

SeraphicSorcerer · Apr 6, 2004, 05:44 PM

Yea but this server I actually play games on too ( im sucha bastard stealing all that glorious cpu power for myself)

but thanks for answering.... Well guess that settles that