For those that have ATI cards ATI has released the 7.3 drivers as of yesterday (3/28). While they don't appear to improve (or lower) performance in FS, they do seem to have fixed the problem with CTD's and reboots that the 7.1 and 7.2 drivers caused with the X1950 XT and XTX cards. at least in Win XP. They do claim it's fixed in Vista too though. While general frame rates hasn't increased, panning, especially around the VC seems smoother. In Crossfire mode Super aliasing (14X) seems to work in FS now, with only minimal (about 1 fps) loss in performance. That's in 1280x1024x32 mode (Limited by my projector). All in all this release seems rock solid!! One thing on installation, you may see a missing file error on installation of the WDM drivers (All in one wonder and TV tuner drivers) unless you use these you can just hit cancel, and the installation will proceed. Previous drivers would identify if you had a card that would require WDM drivers. An alternative would be to use custom install and click off the WDM install box.

hi Tom,are you referring to crashes in FS9 or FS10? i've been having crashes with the 6.12's with my X1950XTX in FS9. i tried the 7.2's and on the very first flight FS crashed. went back to the 6.12's. it's been driving me nuts. sometimes FS will crash sometimes not. i had no probs. at all with FS crashing using the 6.12's with a X1900 XTX. i'd been thinking i might be having other problems prior to reading your post. are the crashes specific to the X1950 series cards with the 7.x drivers only? how about the X1950 cards with the 6.12's? thanks in advance for your help. btw, i'm running WinXP SP2. happy flyin, fm

>hi Tom,>>are you referring to crashes in FS9 or FS10? i've been having>crashes with the 6.12's with my X1950XTX in FS9. i tried the>7.2's and on the very first flight FS crashed. went back to>the 6.12's. it's been driving me nuts. sometimes FS will crash>sometimes not. i had no probs. at all with FS crashing using>the 6.12's with a X1900 XTX. i'd been thinking i might be>having other problems prior to reading your post. are the>crashes specific to the X1950 series cards with the 7.x>drivers only? how about the X1950 cards with the 6.12's?>thanks in advance for your help. btw, i'm running WinXP SP2.>>>> happy flyin, fm Both in fact many 3D Apps! It's a problem ATI has acknowledged in regards to the 7 series drivers with the X1950 XT and XTX cards. They suggest disabling the ATI Hotkey Poller, to get the 7.1 drivers to work, which does on my system. Before that I was using 6.12 also. The 7.3 drivers appear to fix this problem, and seem pretty robust. You shouldn't be getting errors with 6.12 though! I did initially also, but after testing my memory I found I had a bad 1GB Stick with many errors. After replacing the bad stick I no longer had issues with 6.12, but the problem with the 7 series remained, prior to disabling the ATI Hotkey Poller!

I have a question regarding the 7.2 Catalysts that will apply to the 7.3 Catalyts as well.I currently run the 7.2 with a X1300 256 Radeon Pro. I also use FS Autostart to close any unnessecary programs/services that I don't need running during my FSX session. One of the programs that I close is CCC.exe. Does CCC.exe need to stay running in the background for any changes that I make to AA and AF in the CCC to take effect? I have AA turned off in FSX and want to use AA through the Catalysts. With the 7.1 drivers I found that gave me better performance. I just recently upgraded to 7.2 and noticed that performance wasn't as good with 7.1 and the visuals were noticeably lower as well and couldn't figure out why. I was playing around last night and accidently left CCC.exe running in the background when I started FSX and I noticed a visual difference, especially with AA turned on through the Catalysts. Performance was a little smoother as well.Thoughts?C.

hi again Tom,i'm not getting any kind of "memory error msgs." also, i don't have any probs. with any of the other programs. IE crashed once with a msg. saying...an error has occurred and IE will need to close. blah blah blah. i have made 12+ hr. flights with the PMDG 747 without FS crashing. other times 5 hrs. or less into the flight and FS will crash. the crashes don't seem to be frequent enough to be a hardware prob. am i making an incorrect assumption here? did you use MemTest to locate your bad Memory stick problem? thanks again for your help. happy flyin, fm

>hi again Tom,>>i'm not getting any kind of "memory error msgs." also, i>don't have any probs. with any of the other programs. IE>crashed once with a msg. saying...an error has occurred and IE>will need to close. blah blah blah. i have made 12+ hr.>flights with the PMDG 747 without FS crashing. other times 5>hrs. or less into the flight and FS will crash. the crashes>don't seem to be frequent enough to be a hardware prob. am i>making an incorrect assumption here? did you use MemTest to>locate your bad Memory stick problem? thanks again for your>help. >>> happy flyin, fm Yes! Memtest indicated many errors on my memory! I had spare memory, and once installed, and Memtest ran clean, I no longer had any problems with the 6.12 drivers! (And the 7.1 after disabling the ATI HotKey Poller!).

thanks, Tom. i'll give MemTest a try and see if it finds anything wrong. if you don't mind my asking what are your system specs?mine are as follows...Asus P5B Deluxe (latest BIOS)latest Intel chipset update installedIntel C2D X6800 (not OC'd)Mushkin DDR2800 2GBATI X1950 XTX Cat. 6.12SB Audigy 2ZSWinXP SP2, DX9c

Sure it's a Gateway FX530XGIntel C2D E6700 (not OC'd)Intel 975X ChipsetDDR2667 2GBDual ATI X1950 XTX Crossfires Cat. 7.3SB X-FIWinXP SP2, DX9c

>I have a question regarding the 7.2 Catalysts that will apply>to the 7.3 Catalyts as well.>>I currently run the 7.2 with a X1300 256 Radeon Pro. I also>use FS Autostart to close any unnessecary programs/services>that I don't need running during my FSX session. One of the>programs that I close is CCC.exe. Does CCC.exe need to stay>running in the background for any changes that I make to AA>and AF in the CCC to take effect? I have AA turned off in FSX>and want to use AA through the Catalysts. With the 7.1>drivers I found that gave me better performance. I just>recently upgraded to 7.2 and noticed that performance wasn't>as good with 7.1 and the visuals were noticeably lower as well>and couldn't figure out why. I was playing around last night>and accidently left CCC.exe running in the background when I>started FSX and I noticed a visual difference, especially with>AA turned on through the Catalysts. Performance was a little>smoother as well.>>Thoughts?>>C.hi Cbeal,not sure about 7.x series drivers. with 6.x drivers you need to have "Cli" or Cli.exe enabled on the StartUp Tab in "msconfig". go to Start button click on run and type msconfig then click ok to check the list. once enabled there you can open task manager (cntrl_alt_del) click on processes tab then disable (cli.exe listed twice) prior to running FS. your video cards AA & AF settings should be detected by FS. not sure about the 7.x series. maybe Tom can chime in on the 7's. happy flyin, fm

There are numerous reports coming in about the new 7.3 drivers and Vista. Be sure to read all the details and info (from a number of sites).Good place to start is here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2109559,00.aspGood luck,Greg

>There are numerous reports coming in about the new 7.3>drivers and Vista. Be sure to read all the details and info>(from a number of sites).>>Good place to start is here:>http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2109559,00.asp>>Good luck,>>GregThanks for the report!! So far, no such problems in WinXP!

Tom,could you post the link to the version of MemTest your using? i found a couple of versions but not sure which one to use. is it the .exe that runs within Win. or the one that runs off of a floppy or CD. since the previous post i tried the one that runs within Win. it didn't find any errors. if i understand correctly it cannot check the memory being used by the OS. thanks for the help. happy flyin, fm