Catalyst breaks Vista Crossfire
DAAMIT IS IN a bit of a pickle over Crossfire and its newly-released 8.12 Catalyst software. Apparently, users are flooding the support forums with complaints of crashes, BSODs and inability to boot into Vista.
If you invested in Crossfire, you're likely to have blown a fair wad of cash and you won't be too happy to hear about this. When you installed the 8.12 Catalyst driver, you might've found yourself with a slight BSOD or black screen at Windows boot problem... slight being an understatement.
Well, some of our more vocal readers pointed out that Crossfire under Vista is broken by the 8.12 Catalyst drivers - you know, the ones everyone was waiting for in order to get instant performance gratification after the Green Goblin started peddling its latest ForceWare drivers.
One user in particular invested in four HD 4850s for his rig, and has tried every possible combo to get it working, to no avail.
We contacted ATI about the matter but we're still waiting for the official reply. Meanwhile, looking at the ATI forums, the matter has occupied many a fanboi, as the enthusiast community – the ones who can afford dual, triple and quad GPU setups – is pretty peeved about the matter.
It seems the problem persists, and users who have tried workarounds end up with stuttering, flickering, stop-action gaming experiences.
Looking a bit further into the matter, ATI has acknowledged the problem and posted an entry to its knowledgebase that reads like this: "There is a problem. 8.12 won't work Crossfire under Vista. Go back to 8.11 if you want Crossfire in any of its forms."
Acknowledgement is good, but it won't solve problems after the fact. µ
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Multiple systems with 8.12 working fine.
Catalyst 8.12 is borked for single video card configurations as well. If you are running Vista 64-bit with more than 4GB of memory, the device driver will install, but will fail with an error code 0x43 when invoked. Vista will then fall back to it's built-in "safe" video drivers which, of course, suck! 8.12 works fine in Vista 32-bit, or if you have less than 4GB of memory in Vista 64-bit.
Most of the complaints come from HD3870 owners (that's the card I own), but other video cards appear to be affected as well.
AMD/ATI's useful response is "go back to 8.11 or wait until next month". Thanks ATI, that's very helpful.
Doesn't the Hotfix work? It has been available for some time.
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=40671
According Valve hardware survey Crossfire users are 0,19% of the gamers and then something pertaining to infinitesimals in the whole PC market.
So... is this worth an article?
Al, think about it. You just blew several hundreds of dollars buying cards for crossfire and all of a sudden you reboot and it won't boot up windows. How pissed would you be if it were your money?
People who do crossfire aren't a big share of the market, but they like to talk about their cards, how they work (or don't, in this case). If you like to be taken for a $500 ride, that's up to you.
According to some study 0,000001% of the world's population are extremely well-paid footballers. One of them goes out for a drunken binge and crashes his gazillion dollar Ferrari breaking his foot or leg in the process.
Worth writing about it?
The similarities between London busses and ATI cards are obvious- they're big, red and have terrible drivers.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I am sure the people with vista boxes and crossfire are hacked off, sympathies.
The guy who mentions the valve servey makes a good point, but also Vista gamers are in the minotiry too, as are ATI-based videocard drivers. This makes it a minority of a minority of a minority- but no less annoying or b0rked.
I blame the well-paid footballers!
How do we know this is not the Vole's bunging a niche for Intel's Hydra? -- I would think that MPs sporting MBs with Larrabee o' Hydra wouldn't need mobilising the press... or crossfires.
@Jean
Maybe you're right Jean, all this is worth an article, but on the Psychiatric Journal.
All people who buy double graphic cards (both NV or ATI) deserve it. :-)
I'm running an older x1950 Pro, and the 8.12 drivers also BSODs my XP32 left and right. I went back to 8.8 and my box seems stable again. Awful, awful work, ATI.
Well, i have a dual-bot system with Vista64 & Xp64, and i have this problem in both of them with the 8.12 drivers...
Both crash at startup, before the desktop can load, so i dont think it only affects vista here.
There was (and still is) a huge resistance to move onto Vista even though it's over a year old, yet a new Catalyst driver comes out and the world+dog run off and install it, the start moaning it doesn't work.
If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. Sit back, let world+dog test it for you, then you should be safe. I only installed 8.11 last weekend.
there is a hotfix for this problem that works perfectly. If you cant boot anymore, just shut down your computer, remove the crossfire bridges (it will deactivate the crossfire). Now you will be able to boot and then install the hotfix, shut down put back the bridge and youre back on track...
Nothing to see here. Move along.
As has been mentioned, the fix for this problem was available before this story was even written.
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=40671
As to the comment about it being borked in Vista 64 with lots of memory... That doesn't seem to be the case. Cat 8.12 works perfectly for me under Vista 64 with 8 Gigs of memory installed.
It is an issue... 4850's x 4 with 8 gig under vista 64, and I'm either getting a bsod or incompatible display error. thanks BRit but you are wrong
8.12 works fine with a single 3870+4gb ram - on linux.
And the 9.1 driver is not soo far away. I am sure that noisy, loudmouthed 0.05% of the market can wait the two and a half week until the next release.
One of the initial complaints from Doug was "Catalyst 8.12 is borked for single video card configurations as well. If you are running Vista 64-bit with more than 4GB of memory, the device driver will install, but will fail with an error code 0x43 when invoked".
I'm sorry, but *that complaint* is wrong. It works fine for me with a single 4870 under Vista 64 with 8Gigs of mem.
Tim, did you try the hotfix posted?
New Harddrives, Thank Agin, Bub, start moveing stuff like that about & activation goes out. Gamecardss & Memory, NOT affecting activation, as vga often went out & card was needed, while more is more in memory slot. If I wanted $500 card, Why Wouldn't I Want $500 480 Mb/s SSD Configiuration? Buy'd, with PCI-e 16X card, to boot. All new everything, Shanghai ddr2 maxc1066 memroy main & ....One Game Card Slot with w/ integrated corossoivefire or its hybrid X , yet bangies for buck may abee sliding North. Free d' Data. Free SSD. Drashek P S<Does 8.12 Have HAVOC?
Not everyone with a Crossfire setup plays Half Life 2 or other FPS. I don't.
I play CRPGs and my 3870x2 died with black screens in game and while booting into Vista under 8.11. I concluded in that case it was the card and not the drivers or the Gigabyte motherboard because I rolled back to 8.7 and same issues. It worked fine for 10 months. So, it's in the channel for replacement.
Crossfire support is important for ATI, even more so than SLI for Nvidia. This is the first time I've seen such a huge blunder in support from ATI. Usually, there are just scaling issues in particular games.
I hope they get it fixed soon.
BRiT... Read Crossfire, 8.12 works fine with the hotfix on single cards, Im running crossfire, and the hotfix does not work w. crossfire on systems over 4 gig.
As for this whole debacle it would have been nice if ATI dropped in for the last 3 driver released that borked my system and said, hey we are aware of the problem, and we'll rectify it by 9.1 (which when is that... im sorry if my system is broke for 1/2 year on drivers I'm looking green again).
It would be nice if after this ati's driver team expands their test systems to include high, medium, and low end systems.
If Nvidia wants to replace my crossfire by all means go ahead, if this driver bs isn't fixed soon Im done.
I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit on a machine with 8GB of RAM and 2 4870s in CrossFire and have not had any issues since installing the new drivers when they first became available...
I'm not entirely sure why anyone would be surprised by this. There have been, are and always will be problems with drivers. It is always the case that if you get a problem with a driver, you revert to one that worked and report the problem. Simple!
With the hugely diverse configurations of today's PCs you cannot expect any driver developer to "get it right" 100% of the time.
Instead of complaining and calling each other and the developers names - work together and solve the problem. Some of you may take issue with this comment but: this is how Linux users solve problems!
My 512mb 4870, Vista 64bit + 8gb ram works just fine. Its not all people effect which leads me to believe its something else causing a conflict. Perhaps the motherboard drivers or some such.
Just go into wondows services and turn off ati event service and install driver. Ihave two 4850s crossfire works fine. Vista 64 4 gig ram.
Vista Home Premium, 4 gigs ram, 2 - 4850's and no problems with the 8.12's except that Crossfire does not seem to be activated unless the Cat AI is on. Has anyone tried turning it on to see if the problems are gone ??
If someone is silly enough to use vista, they deserve getting 2nd rate drivers. Drivers are made for XP with vista and linux as after-thoughts.
I tested a 3870 and 4870 back to back, in a Vista x64 Core i7 system with 6GB RAM.
Drivers (Cat 8.11 or 8.12) don't load with the 3870 at all while everything works ok with 4870 (same system, same drivers, just changing the card).
It seems the 48xx cards have been tested and work rather well with 8.12, it's the older cards that have been ignored.