Cata or omega

Hm,... Ok, ati users.. i have a 9800 pro, should I go with the CATA drivers or the Omega drivers? however im not sure... Which are the newest Omega drivers? Tx guys... l8r

I would suggest heading over to www.driverheaven.net , lots of good info in their support forums.

The latest version of the omegadrivers is based on the 5.7 catalyst. Link

Heres a lot of info about them

What's New in Omega Drivers?
v2.6.53

* Based on the Catalyst 5.7 Official drivers.

+ Added new installation option to load ATT at startup.

+ Added some custom profiles at different quality settings for ATT.


Note: Since these drivers include a non-standard version of ATT, I would recommend that if you have any previous version of ATT installed, please uninstall it before installing these drivers, not doing so may cause unknown problems.

Note2: Please don't e-mail telling me there are a few references about the old CP on the site, I'm aware of this and will update as soon as I can.


What's new for ATI Tray Tools?
1.0.3.720

+ Added new options into Game Profiles. Direct3D9 tweaks. Using this tweaks you can override some hardware information about your video board.

+ Added support for SMARTGART. Look in "Hardware" menu. (SMARTGART service must be installed and enabled!)

+ Added 5 new hotkeys for manual overclocking GPU and Memory by 1 step up or down.

+ Added new tweaks databases Video Acceleration settings and Display Tweaks.

+ Added Default buttons for Standard Tweaks window, Direct3D and OpenGL Tweaks.

+ Added options to execute applications when entering 3D mode and when leaving it.

* Updated Shared Memory. Now FPS counter is included in global ATT Shared Memory.

* Improved command line support. Added command line options:

/LD3D [name of profile] - load Direct3D (or 3D in Control Center mode) profile
/LDGL [name of profile] - load OpenGL profile
/LDOV [name of profile] - load Overclocking profile
/LDTV [name of profile] - load Display/TV profile
/LDGP /LOADGAME [name of profile] - load Game Profile (If ATT is already started /EXIT command line parameter has no effect)
/RSTCLK - reset clocks to default values
/EXIT - Exit from ATT

For example if you want to load overclocking profile and exit from ATT, you can add shortcut to ATT into Startup folder of system menu and add this command line. Always put profile name in quotation marks.

atitray.exe /LDOV "My Stable OverProfile" /EXIT

* Fixed bug when TV Properties Tab doesn't visible with extended desktop mode. Now TV Options will be accessible all times, even if you don't have TV attached to the board.

* Updated screenshot system. Added support for JPG/PNG file creating. Screenshot without active game always will be saved as BMP.

* Fixed broken support for temperature monitoring and fan control for ASUS 9800XT boards.

* Improved OSD rendering in situation when game clipped part of screen with ViewPort.

* Fixed error with hotkeys (Hide/Show FPS/FlashOSD)

* Updated Advanced Tweaks editor

* Updated "No overclocking" mode. If you Radeon doesn't supported by ATI Tray Tools (IGP series) you can disable all overclocking functions in atitray.ini. Set opt_disable_ovr value to 1. In this mode all modules depended on GPU and Memory clocks will be disabled. For example Overclocking, hardware monitoring, Auto 2d/3d Overclocking and so on. But you still can use all other functions!

* Fixed wrong OSD color calculation for some old Direct3D (D3D 7/6/5) games.


Other Important Notes:

1. Well, at last, the fix for the dreaded overlay video on some laptops bug has been found. The cause IS NOT the ATI drivers or any of my settings, the cause is a hardware bug, more specifically a BIOS bug. In the testing, many people already updated their Sager notebooks with a new BIOS provided by Sager and the video problem is GONE! So I encourage you to go to your manufacturer's web page and see if a new bios update has been issued for your laptop, and if not, e-mail the manufacturer so they can rush out a fix for this.

2. CCC will work with the Omega Drivers, but is NOT recommended that you install it, all the functions found in CCC are already included with RadLinker Omega Edition or will be included in a near future as this new CP project develops.

3. The Omega Drivers use a special ATI Tray Tools version with the following features:

> Use very little resources.
> Doesn't require .NET to work.
> Lots of new settings for both D3D and OGL.
> Automatic Per-application profiles.
> Trilinear filtering can be forced for Anisotropic filtering.
> Catalyst AI support.
> Support for ATI Control Center.
> Support for TV Out and displays with profiles.
> Options to change Theater mode together with TV Out.
> Overclocking with templates including FAN Control.
> Automatic overclocking when application required 3D mode.
> Temperature monitoring.
> Artifact Tester with ability to find maximum stable clocks for GPU and Memory.
> Game profiles with desktop shortcut creation.
> Direct3D settings with templates, GUI form and tray popup menu.
> OpenGL settings with templates, GUI form and tray popup menu.
> Hardware low level color correction.
> Hardware tweaks. Setting PCI latency timer.
> Radeon Information Show information about memory type, active rendering pipe lines and more.
> System wide Hot Keys. (Load profiles any profiles/work with colors/run any application)
> Refresh Lock system with ability to set separate refresh rates for each resolution.
> Tweak for overriding Pixel and Vertex Shaders.
> Speed improvement tweaks for Anisotropic/Trilinear Filtering. Support for Catalyst A.I.
> Unique OSD system. Displays FPS, GPU/Memory speed and temperatures, FAN speed.
> Support for system options, VPU Recover, DMA Copy and so on.
> Support Display Rotation.
> Support for MMC applications.
> Support for HYDRAVISION applications.
> Monitoring Graphs. (GPU/Env temperature. GPU/Mem speed, Main CPU Usage).
> A lot of useful things. Like Save/Restore Desktop icon positions and more.
> Audio Recorder.
> Screenshots system.
> Powerful Plug-Ins support.
> PCI Register Set. Allow to program any registers in any PCI device at start up time. (For advanced users only!)

The drivers where made in conjunction with Ray Adams, maker of ATI Tray Tools, as an exclusive feature for the Omega Drivers and we will keep adding features in future releases.

4. Since ATT is a vital part of the Omega Drivers, it will not be an option to select during setup, any previous versions should be uninstalled before installing a new driver set.


REMINDERS:
A- If you have the normal ATI drivers installed, uninstall the ATI Control Panel or CCC BEFORE upgrading to these drivers, the Omega Drivers already have the CP integrated and another CP will cause conflicts or other problems.

B- There is no need to uninstall ANY previous drivers (ATI or OMEGA) when installing these, the new ones will overwrite any previous settings, but if you still want to uninstall them completely, is ok.

C- In Windows 2k/XP, ALWAYS disable DDC in the ATI "Displays/Monitor" CP after installing drivers to be able to use ALL the refresh rates and resolutions your monitor supports, also this is the best way to avoid the 60Hz RR bug.

D- The WDM drivers for VIVO and AIW cards are not included, but they can be downloaded separately from a link in my drivers page.

E- The Radeon cards do support FastWrites and they will work with it on (on some machines), but it is not recommended, there is NO SPEED gain when using FW, and this option will affect your PC's stability a LOT, most game crashes and problems are because FW is enabled. The only time I recommend using FW on is with Radeon 9600 cards that doesn't work properly with FW off or for Athlon64 system with any Radeon AGP card.

F- Install the included Multires utility to have access to ALL the available resolutions in the Omega Drivers, standard Windows doesn't show all of them.

G- After installing the new drivers and rebooting, if your desktop is SLOW and games won't run, is because AGP acceleration has been disabled by Windows, in order to fix this you MUST re-install the latest AGP chipset drivers for your Mother Board (this also includes laptops). After rebooting check the Advanced SmartGart Options in the Omega Start Menu and see if at least AGP/PCI read are both ENABLED, if all of them are enabled, the better, but some MBs doesn't support AGP/PCI write functions, if all still disabled, just click on "Retest All" and press OK to restart.

H- If you are using an Omega soft-mod and you are experiencing crashes, black screens, artifacts or the "check board effect" during game play, run the new included Driver Swapper utility and select the Normal driver, the reason is that your card is not accepting the soft-mod due to broken/incompatible hardware.

I- See Omega FAQ for further questions.


Extra info:

I don't recommend the use of ANY external tweakers with my drivers (like Rage3D Tweaker or ATITool), as they override my special settings and will make my work useless. The only time I recommend a tweaker is when you have a specific problem with a specific tweak and need to change it in order to make the drivers work correctly. Also if you use a tweaker for overclocking, FSAA, Gamma or Aniso settings, is just fine, but you'll be better off using the integrated ATI CP/RadLinker for that (which is ok if you change any setting in it).

If you have any problems with this drivers please go to my webpage and look in the ATI help section for answers. If still have problems look for the drivers thread in DriverHeaven.net forums and let me know what is going on.

IMPORTANT: Don't bother ATI about these drivers as they are unsupported by them!

The omega drivers have a special 9800 softmod, that is the main reason why i use them. Good luck deciding :thumbup: