It's poor of AMD not to have at least a few of the older Cats available. From memory, nvidia still keeps a few older drivers available as well.
Fingers crossed 9.3 will cut down on a few BSOD's
Ahh, the joys of trouble shooting. I'm sick of reading crash dumps
This is one reason why I may have 2 or 3 different catalyst hanging around here. Usually once a good one is one I tend to be reluctant to rush into the next update just by simply seeing the next number inline. That helps when swapping one build for another on a fast pace where I don't have to go right to the update site for the latest when I already have a working Cat. to toss on.
And yes seeing no more older catalysts available without contacting the support staff for a link for one can be a real hassle when the latest like this one is bad news!
NVidia has seen some bad ones as well while they maintain updates that go back a few years there when looking for an update for older models or old AGP cards for that matter. The one thing seen with AMD after buying ATI out however is seeing drivers available for older cards while ATI before that would simply drop support too fast!
Dropping support for older cards would be more understandable and tolerable if it meant much better support for the remaining cards. Unfortunately that just doesn't seem to be the case
Logic would dictate that if each release supports less cards, then having older drivers readily available would help retain disgruntled customers. Taking away support and then easy access to older drivers is enough to be a "catalyst" itself in pushing people to a rival manufacturer. Consumers have long memories.
Logic is like oil. It's a rapidly depleting resource
The reasoning you have to look at seen by AMD there was having a selection process for OS then model series you select from like Radion, Fire GL, and so forth. The present catalysts go back to the X1000s there but not for much longer.
The idea when they took over was to cover the bases on wider basis for those still running older models while no longer carrying all versions of the catalysts themselves. The problem with that however is now being seen with the 9.4 where you can't simply go back and download the 8.9 for example that may have been running perfect before deciding to grab the latest.
what i found out after much tweaking is that if you you choose Compatibility mode to Vista Sp1 you can see the rest of the options (if you GPU is supported under the inf file which i found out on downloading 9.4 didnt but updating from 9.4 beta did..) so i finally have 9.4 working...
Is compat mode for when your installing? I should have tried that when I went back to 9.3 earlier today. It still had the same 'lets not install the drivers via the installer' trick...
"So far" 9.3 has swapped BSOD's for appcrashes.... The same drivers with the same games in Vista and it's running trouble free. I'm sick of this build
You likely found the problem there by both needing to be run in the Vista compatibility since this is all tied to the installer. I have a second install of the 7077 I can boot into to test that idea out on since that was only a temp install there.
Just found one way to get older versions. http://products.amd.com/en-us/QuickS...aspx?q=support
Once you are at the site there you select an older model at least in the 2000s from the list of the different series of cards. Since the latest several still support those you may end up with the previous catalyst.
The search there however is for the driver package not seeing the catalyst included. http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...ostype=Windows 7 Beta - 32-Bit Edition
yeah the downloaded installer that extracts all the files is the one that gets the change
lol im guessing in 7077 right?"So far" 9.3 has swapped BSOD's for appcrashes.... The same drivers with the same games in Vista and it's running trouble free. I'm sick of this build
well i believe these drivers are not as rigorously tested as the vista ones since these are "beta" drivers....
So has support now stoped in 9.4 for the older cards like radeon 9600?
When going to http://game.amd.com to select the latest from that site to see the Catalyst included that's where you are running into the problematic 9.4 beta for 7. The other AMD site simply carries the basic drivers only. There you select the model series you are running to get the correct driver set.
For arriving at AMD first and then not getting lost the way they have it set up now you select which you are looking for at http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx
With the catalyst you would pick the upper arrow to end up at the game.amd.com page. For the older models like that one you would only get the drivers without catalyst at the lower arror shown there.
