ATI Catalyst 3.10/4.1 issue

[Usagi]

After upgrading from ATI Catalyst Driver 3.9 to 4.1 I recognized a decreased responsiveness in Blender. After actions in the 3D viewport (zooming or orbiting view as well as editing etc.) there is a delay of about 1 second before Blender reacts to further mouse actions. This happened in 2.31a and in the CVS from 26-Jan-2004 as well.

To narrow down the problem, I tested every Catalyst since version 3.8 and found out that the problem shows up with the latest two (3.10 and 4.1).

Does anyone have the same problem? Do you have an idea what could be done about it? I wish to use the newest driver because it solves a problem with Star Wars KOTOR.

My system: ATI Radeon 9700 @ 1152x864x32bit, Athlon XP 2400+ (2 GHz), 512 MB RAM, Windows XP SP1

[Neo]

Well, I have exactly the same problem (I have a radeon 9800), and we're far from being alone...It's a problem with ati drivers that have a bad support of 2D opengl which is used in blender interface. And that's the problem, because as far as I know, blender is the only software (except wings 3d) that uses it. So I don't think ATI opengl driver coders (if they even exist) would make a priority to fix that. So I guess it won't be better with newer ati drivers.
So what can we do ? (except buying a nvidia card...) Cause nobody seems to have a solution that match for people that NEED to have the last catalyst drivers (4.1 drivers solves a problem in 3dsmax 6)
Because of that, I have not used blender since I have my radeon 9800 and it's really boring.

[z3r0 d]

my general ati troubles:
rending in windows (into a render window, not into the 3d view) causes blender to freeze, and on occasion can cause odd things such as blender drawing it's ui in the render window, while responding to mouse events in the blender window

I have no luck in windows with blender, and the ati catalyst driver versions:
3.5
3.7
3.8
3.9
3.10
4.1

oh, and on all of those version blender becomes more unresponsive with use

however in linux I have different luck. Speed is fine (with both 3.25 and 3.7 drivers), however anything with uv mapped textures is painfully slow

and I had to upgrade to the 2.4.21 kernel (from the athlon 2.4.20-SUSE) kernel in order to get them to work

there are lots of threads on this forum regarding ati driver woes, get used to it not working. Maybe the drivers will be better with the release of DOOM III (which is opengl based), but I doubt it

[Jogi]

Originally Posted by Usagi Does anyone have the same problem? Do you have an idea what could be done about it? I wish to use the newest driver because it solves a problem with Star Wars KOTOR.

Old problem...
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtop...060&highlight=
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtop...163&highlight=
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtop...r=asc&start=15

If KOTOR is D3d game just use cat4.1 and get opengl driver from cat3.9.

[Usagi]

Originally Posted by Jogi Old problem... http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtop...060&highlight= http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtop...163&highlight= http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtop...r=asc&start=15

I searched the first pages of the forum before posting, but didn't find those. :-|

Originally Posted by Jogi If KOTOR is D3d game just use cat4.1 and get opengl driver from cat3.9.

Right! Thank you.

[Neo]

Old problem...

Well, it's an old problem because nobody found the solution...
Some people say that it's a problem with new ATI graphic drivers but that's not true...It's true that ATI drivers sucks but that's not new...I tried downgrading to Catalyst 3.9 and they're right that is much better but that's still bad when I compare it to my old nvidia geforce 2 mx. So I think it would be a great idea to optimize blender for Ati users, because they are more than ever.

[Jogi]

Originally Posted by Neo Old problem... Well, it's an old problem because nobody found the solution... Some people say that it's a problem with new ATI graphic drivers but that's not true...It's true that ATI drivers sucks but that's not new...I tried downgrading to Catalyst 3.9 and they're right that is much better but that's still bad when I compare it to my old nvidia geforce 2 mx. So I think it would be a great idea to optimize blender for Ati users, because they are more than ever.

Well, mayby some coders should talk ATI about this, I think they listen. No one else know what kind of OpenGL functions make these problems than coders themself, mayby not pinpoint but generally they can guide ATI personels to track the problems.

CATALYST Crew Program is first step for users and coders I quess, http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/

[Serialsiner]

Originally Posted by z3r0 d my general ati troubles: rending in windows (into a render window, not into the 3d view) causes blender to freeze, and on occasion can cause odd things such as blender drawing it's ui in the render window, while responding to mouse events in the blender window

I had exactly the same issue until I started rendering in Dispview mode and now everything's fine

[nico]

A friend told me Blender works good with the drivers that shipped with the card, but not with downloaded drivers from the net.

[z3r0 d]

Originally Posted by nico A friend told me Blender works good with the drivers that shipped with the card, but not with downloaded drivers from the net.

interestingly enough, with my card the drivers that shipped with it did not install

[Usagi]

Originally Posted by Jogi Well, mayby some coders should talk ATI about this, I think they listen. No one else know what kind of OpenGL functions make these problems than coders themself, mayby not pinpoint but generally they can guide ATI personels to track the problems. CATALYST Crew Program is first step for users and coders I quess, http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/

This would be a good thing. I only hope they pay attention to freeware the same way they do to commercial software.

[Neo]

I only hope they pay attention to freeware the same way they do to commercial software.

Maybe if every ati blender user send them a mail about this they will pay attention to our problem...

[Usagi]

I sent a description of the problem to ATI. Let's see what happens. %|

[zilppuri]

Dang!
My old GeForce broke couple weeks ago and I bought Radeon 9200 to replace it. Sure in paper it looked good and it's quite fast for it's price, but it seems that the drivers are rubbish. First I noticed that the videocapture doesn't work with the ATI software (works with 3rd party software) but now this!

Everyone should buy big red text to their homepage saying "Don't buy Radeon: It doesn't work with Blender"!

I have just this one project going on where I only would need to do the UV mapping, but it happens that it's so slow that it's nearly impossible. Just to move the view I have to hold the middlemousebutton for several seconds to ensure it will really move somewhere.

Dang![/b]

[zilppuri]

In http://www.blender3d.com/Support/?sub=GraphicsCards
it says:

If Blender runs but displays incorrectly, try lowering the hardware acceleration level in the 'Performance' tab of the Advanced Display Properties.

I noticed that it worked atleast somewhat to my problems with Blender using the newest Catalyst drivers. I'm not sure if it totally solved it, since I didn't manage to play around it for long time. Atleast the UV mapping wasn't that slow anymore.
Perhaps you can try it and see if it's any help to you?

[Scooter_X]

Okay, noob here. I've been reading because Blender is running really slow for me. It takes awhile to react, and gets worse with use (as does with a lot of people.) Not only could it be my driver (not sure what driver or version) But could it be just that my vid card sucks? (ATI MOBILITY RADEON 7000) The rest of my system should not hamper anything at all, (PIII 2.8 GHZ, 704 MB ram, Win XP SP2) Any thoughts would be helpful.