Radeon 9000 Atlantis pre-install concerns

Tomorrow, the mailman is going to drop by and deliver a Radeon 9000 Pro Atlantis 64MB DDR VIVO for my Dell. I know it isn't the latest Radeon out there or the best capture card ever, but considering that my current is a 16 MB ATI and the VIVO card does not cost me a dime (it's a gift), it's a deal. Also, I am hoping it will be a good replacement not only for my lousy 16 MB video card, but also for the slow as **** Hauppauge WinTV.

The reason I am posting is, I've heard and read mixed things about people having problems with this card, so I am hoping that you can give me some pointers with which I can save myself from some headache... I have a few questions for you gurus, but if you can think of additional hints and tips, please do tell.

1) Has ATI provided the card with newer drivers, or should I use the ones that come with the card?

2) Does the card support WinXP Pro AND DirectX 9 without any major problems?

3) Do you know if it can capture PAL as well, or only NTSC?

Thanks!

__________________
Posting Guidelines

Make sure you are running Windows XP service pack 1. Install DirectX 9.0b via:

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Download the latest driver from ati and don't use the crap that comes with the hardware however some of the programs may need to be installed first..then updated. Everything else you want to know should be included on the ati site directly.

You can get DX9b from here also.

Download 1-3 from ATI's site also. Install DX first.

I have a Radeon 64 DDR VIVO and It works great in XP with DX9b. I use MS Movie maker and that works good with my VIVO.

__________________
Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

After a little initial trouble, I got the card working almost flawlessly. I've tested the capturing, and so far it seems absolutely amazing. Whereas I couldn't capture higher than 320x240 @ 30 fps without dropped frames, Atlantis seems to allow capping directly into MPEG2 in hi-res without any problems.

One weird thing persists though... When using Video-In, if the source is a PAL feed (PAL-B selected), the video is jerky. I'm NOT using the most recent drivers from ATI because quite simply they would not work. It was only until I installed the software that came with the Sapphire's OEM installation cd that the capturing would work at all.

__________________
Posting Guidelines

ATI's drivers are like that. I had a little bit of a hard time myself when I did a clean install a few weeks ago. You have to uninstall all ATI and possibly default drivers for your video card and remove it from Device Manager too. Then once you reboot, and it prompts you for the drivers, you have to point it to the exact folder to where the latest drivers extracted themselves.

It may take a try or two.

__________________
Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

Thanks for the help!

This is kind of rehashing the same issue, but I thought I'd elaborate on the problem..

I own a European playstation, and hooked it into the card hoping that it could display the PAL signal. Well, it does, the colours are wonderful and all that jazz...however the picture jitters. It doesn't jitter as badly or anywhere near as badly as when I try to hook the psx to an NTSC tv set, though. I am thinking maybe it's a problem with interlacing, but since I am not terribly familiar with the concept, I cannot be sure. ATI's MMC 7 does not seem to allow/have de-interlacing, so I am hoping that someone might have some ideas as to how to find a workaround for this.

What made me think it might be interlacing-related, was that I tried playing Final Fantasy VII for a bit, and whenever I would move the character down the screen vertically, the jittering would stop for the duration of the movement. Does this mean anything to any of you? Please share any hints and tips, as I really would like this to work.

__________________
Posting Guidelines

What ver. of MMC 7.x do you have? I have this issue when I hook my NES and SNES up to my PC too.

__________________
Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

Version 7.1

__________________
Posting Guidelines

I cannot find a solution to this... If I reinstall my ancient WinTV card (PCI, with its own wdm drivers), will that cause problems with the Radeon card and its drivers?

__________________
Posting Guidelines

No, just make sure that all of ATI's drivers are gone. I think it has to do with the MMC software. Have you tried any other software?

__________________
Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net