Though there has been much debate about the Cat3.8s killing monitors, well you might want read this from a moderator in the Short-media forum:"So far, a total of 183 monitors, ranging from high-end 22" Viewsonic P225F's to lowly 14" Compaq SVGA monitors have been reported as dead/damaged due to this problem. It is to be taken seriously.I'll attest to this problem, as my Dell UltraScan P1110 21" Trinitron has been damaged due to this problem. Running the Catalyst 3.8's on my Corona system @ 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz and playing Unreal Tournament 2003, I exited the game and the monitor started flickering like mad, attempting to change refresh rates. After 8 unsuccessful retries, the monitor displayed the "NO VIDEO SIGNAL FROM INPUT 1" message and the power light turned orange. A burning smell was coming from the back of the monitor. Hooking the monitor up to another system proved useless, as it did not start up."You can read the rest here:http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthrea...52230#post52230

This is really bad.I have noticed that my monitor does refresh quite often after getting into FS9 and out of FS9.I think I better revert to the old Catalyst 3.7.Regards

Thanks for the information! Based upon the earlier post relative to the concern, I installed the Omega Drivers and could not be happier. The flickering is all gone, the kneepad is readable and my frame rates seem to be as good as the 3.7's. Plus they seem to handle 16x AA without a problem. Thanks again.BobP :)GW2K 2.0 gigVisiontek 9800 pro (128)Win2k OS

I'm afraid the Omegas still have the overheating and monitor refresh issues.I'm going back to Catalyst 3.7 immediately.

Real quickly, how would the 3.8 drivers be repsonsible for overheating the cards? Are they overclocking them?

Not the case at all. Just rumor.http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28844

I would be interested in knowing if anyone who has had or knows of this problem in monitors that are NOT overdriven. I guess I would wonder about people pushing refresh rates past the point where the monitor can handle them.I'm running the Omega 2.4.9.6 drivers on a NEC Multisync LCD 1700V with excellent frame rates, no flickers, and no problems to the point. Monitor is set at it's native refresh rate of 60Hz.

>I would be interested in knowing if anyone who has had or>knows of this problem in monitors that are NOT overdriven. I>guess I would wonder about people pushing refresh rates past>the point where the monitor can handle them.>>I'm running the Omega 2.4.9.6 drivers on a NEC Multisync LCD>1700V with excellent frame rates, no flickers, and no problems>to the point. Monitor is set at it's native refresh rate of>60Hz.It seems to be more of a program bug assocciated with driver at certain times not reading the correct inf file using the video cards highest supported refresh rate instead of the monitors and starts passing that onto the monitor and at 200hz that is not good.

Any monitor I've ever owned goes "out of scan range" if an unsupported refresh rate is sent to it. I've been in Safemode in the past on more than one occasion when changing out computers and monitors. Unless they're a really cheap monitor, they just shut themselves down to prevent damage.

While this may not be related but I found that my Viewsonic 19" went out of range with my 3.8 Omega/9600 combo, and cut out a few times because of two settings (refresh rate coupled with the overclock). I was overclocking the card from 324/202 to 425/216 and pushing refresh rate to 100Khz. This together with FS2004 running on fps lock at 40fps caused an override at dense scenery. I reduced the fps lock to 25fps (because I did not want to operate below max overclock/refresh) and all the problems disappeared because the burden became much more tolerable. At 25fps lock FS2004 is still excellent.Not sure if this is of help?Shez

Hi, everyone. I can confirm loss of Sync and total blackout, where I had to recycle the power of the monitor in order to get the video back.I have a KDS 21 in. and never had any problems with it before. As soon as I installed 3.8 and ran the 3Dmark2001 I experienced tearing. I went back to my GF3 card and had no problems, for about a week, I then tried the 3.7 and the 9700 Pro and had no problems. I installed the 3.8 and had an immediate, after about 3 min., problem with tearing. I then switched back to 3.7 and had very seldom problem, once every 10 bootups, I went back to my GF3 and had about the same results, 1 every 10. I am fairly confident that something was damaged, I will not know for sure until I get the opportunity to put a Scope on it, but it does not look good. I do not have the video and or the system over clocked, and my case temps are around 32 with CPU around 42 C. TV

Hi Ed,I'm wondering whether those of us with LCD monitors are 'protected' from this issue. Like yours and, I imagine, most others, my LCD monitor's native refresh rate is 60Hz. If I try a resolution higher than 1280x1024 (or even 1280x960 for that matter) I get a 'Not Supported' message on screen and no harm is done. I am not sure whether the graphic card drivers can force a higher refresh rate on LCD monitors nor indeed whether the monitor's internal 'protection' will intercept and thus prevent damage in a similar fashion. I'm certainly not going to be the first to put this to the test! ;)Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with the Omega 2496b driver set debating what to do.Regards,Mike

Hi all.I've been using the Omega 2.4.96 ( Driver date 9/22/2003, Driver Version 6.14.10.6396 ). My card is a Radeon 9500Pro. I've had no oddities with refresh rates, monitor blackouts, etc.I don't know if the 9500 is immune to these problems due to an earlier chipset, or if it is because I'm using an earlier version of the "leaked" Omega drivers.My system has problems with all other drivers since the ATI 3.2 Cats, other than with this driver.I have WindowsXP, and run the drivers at 4xAGP, fastwrites off, and write combining off.Dick

http://www.driverheaven.net/Topic: "ATI SPEAK: CATALYST 3.8 - The TRUTH not the Rumours" Good enough for me...I'm off to try them now :)Mike

Hi,Well, I throughly cleaned the 3.7 drivers off my system using the guide at rage3d and have been using the CAT 3.8's since they were released. I have fast writes on and write combining on, USWC is selected in my BIOS. I also select a refresh rate of 85 Hz and select 85 as my refresh rate in the DxDiag 'Override' option. Speaking for myself I haven't had any problems.Jim