Hi, I’m looking for a version of the Cat drivers which will work with ET, all the ones I’ve tried give this error after about 10 minutes (Radeon 9800 Pro):
After submitting the error report it usually says it was caused by ATI, so how do you other Radeon users play without it crashing like this?
I am using the Omegas based on the 4.7 cats myself on a MSI 9800 Pro. Turn off VPU recover and you are good to go. Omegas can be downloaded from http://www.omegadrivers.net
all the ones I’ve tried give this error after about 10 minutes
So maybe your problem is not driver related? I have the same card and I occasionally have this error, but that is the known ET bug (crash after download).
i have a radeon 9800 pro and im using the original drivers i got with it and i have never had this problem.
one question i do have (which i will add here so i dont have to start a brand new thread about it) is when i am playing if something comes up like an msn message or something after it has gone away my screen goes darker and it makes everything really hard to see i was just wondering if any1 else gets this problem? the only way to sort it for me is to close et then open it again which ruins the game i was just playing 
… or just sign out of messenger when you are playing 
If you need to have messenger open you can always
/r_gamma to see what your gamma level is (say it is 1.5)
/r_gamma 1.6 to chanage gamma
/r_gamma 1.5 to set back to original level
thats what i do when playing at work on my laptop with ATI card
… or just sign out of messenger when you are playing
… or set your status to busy, then you wont get popups 
I had a similar problem, using an ATI 9600 and (I think) the 4.7 Cat drivers. After a while the game would either freeze, throw up an error box and then recover itself - or it would crash completely as seen in your image. I found that changing the AGP speed down from x8 to x4 worked and I have not had a problem since. However, I may try the vpu recover option off now, cos if I can get x8 to work with it then I will!..
never had a problem with any catalyst drivers (mostly used omega’s) for my 9800pro.
Red|Cell try r_ignorehwgamma 1 (or 0 i suppose) and then set your brightness how you like it.
So maybe your problem is not driver related? I have the same card and I occasionally have this error, but that is the known ET bug (crash after download).
I’m not quite sure what else the problem could be, if you have any ideas let me know. The comp is not overheating and is well above the recommended specs, and I’ve tried clean installs of ET. I completed Doom3 recently without issues on the same setup. When I submit the error report, it tells me it was caused by ATI, that’s why I assumed drivers. I know about the crash after downloads, but this is a persistant crashing even when I haven’t downloaded anything.
@Subterfuge: Thanks, I haven’t tried Omegas but I’ve already tried 4.6/4.7/4.8/4.9
@SenF|Doddsy: I didn’t think of trying 4x, since my mainboard can support 8x, but if nothing else works I’ll try it.
I will try disabling VPU recover for now and see how things go.
i have a radeon 9800 pro and im using the original drivers i got with it and i have never had this problem.
That would perhaps be useful if you had stated which version they are
@Red: It tells you on the options tab of the ATI control panel.
I tried switching off VPU recover. Rebooted, played for a while, it crashed in under 10 mins.
Then I switched off Fast Write as well, rebooted, played for a while. It also crashed after a brief period.
Lastly I lowered the AGP down to 4x. I thought this had fixed the problem, I tested it for almost 3 hours and everything was going smoothly. I was about to stop playing and report the good news that it was all fixed, when suddenly it crashed again.
I’m not sure what else to try?
Catalyst 3.9 seems to work best for ET
I have;
9800xt 3 gig P4 800
9800pro 3 gig P4 533
9700pro 2 gig P4 533
9700pro 866 P3 133
and various 9600, and 9500 cards in other machines.
Without doubt the best drivers I have used to date are the 3.9’s. (for ET)
Also 3.9 drivers do not change light levels when messenger pushes through ET and then leaves.
The speed difference between 4X & 8X AGP is miniscule so if your PC is happiest with the 4X then no real loss in performance.
Thanks I’ll 3.9 out.
Apparantly lowering to 4x has done the world of good in ET. It still crashed that one time but since then I’ve played several hours without any problems. Much better than it was before.