Should I update to new ATI driver?

Tyenot · 29 Aug 2010

Hello,

I have a older ATI Radeon HD 3650 I installed about 2 years ago. After a driver update around January 2009 I began to have an issue with the card. When I would start the computer I had a less than 50% chance of having the monitor start. I would push the reset button and then be able to see the screen.

Some of you may recall this was when ATI released a new driver every month for 6-7 months. Well I updated with every new driver to no avail. Until the last update in April 2010. It has happened only a couple of times since then.

Should I follow the rule of keeping my drivers up to date or leave well enough alone?

Thanks for you input,

Tye

fishnbanjo · 29 Aug 2010

Is this an AGP Card? If so you'll need to apply a HotFix available from ATi/AMD's site Catalyst AGP Hotfix - Radeon HD 4000 Radeon HD 3000 and Radeon HD 2000 Series AGP products Note: this is a HotFix for the version 10.8 which is the latest rev, you probably should download both and apply v 10.8 first then the HotFix. Hope this helps.

pbcopter · 29 Aug 2010

In my opinion, if you are happy with your video card performance and have no issues, I would not upgrade the driver.

profdlp · 29 Aug 2010

pbcopter said:

In my opinion, if you are happy with your video card performance and have no issues, I would not upgrade the driver.

Agreed.

Most driver updates concentrate on improving performance and fixing bugs for the latest hardware and games only. An older video card isn't likely to benefit much (if at all) unless you are already having problems.

Mark Phelps · 29 Aug 2010

Tyenot said:

... Should I follow the rule of keeping my drivers up to date or leave well enough alone?

When my card WAS supported by ATI drivers, I used to upgrade every time.

Since the SW added the drivers to the ATI folder on the "C" drive, it was a simple matter to reinstall the previous driver if there were problems.

I have read though (I think in THIS forum somewhere) that folks have been getting problems with the 10.7 and 10.8 drivers. So, if you are running 10.6, you might just want to stay with those until the 10.9 come out.

thefabe · 29 Aug 2010

Along wiht the above posts, always try and get them from the manufactrers web site.
One thing I would and always recommend is before you download and install a new driver or any software or program is to create a restore point. This way of your unhappy with the program or have problems with the driver you can easily restore back to where you were before you made the change.
A little food for thought. Fabe

Tyenot · 29 Aug 2010

Thanks for the input. I'm going with gut on this one and leave well enough alone.

Thanks again,

Tye

edit - It's a PCIe card

neo101 · 30 Aug 2010

I can see over the time period you mention, that M/soft. Ati etc will have updated and ironed out Win7/much of the problems with drivers.

When I first installed Win7 it was a dog and occasionally blue-screened crashed without warning. Never had that when first installing XP!

After two specific updates over the following months (one for Win7, one an M/soft mouse driver update) it was sorted and stopped crashing/mouse cursor freezing!

The Ati 10.8 drivers run one WEi point slower than older drivers but are perfectly stable on my system with an AGP 4670 card.

I also have your version of card as an agp 'spare' - they use a ton of power and need a good quality PSU!

Your graphics start up problem could be a power supply issue - ie not enough juice?

Tyenot · 30 Aug 2010

neo101 said:

Your graphics start up problem could be a power supply issue - ie not enough juice?

That may have been the problem. I replaced my PSU went from 500w to 650w a couple of months ago about the same time the issue stopped.