Talk:Catalyst video driver

I don't want to edit the page directly, since this is my first post here, but the workaround on it is hugely overcomplicated, and still doesn't really resolve the problem.

Using the 9.12 DLL reduces the frequency of the crashes, but the game will still fail to start half the time, and Alt-Tab will always crash it. The problem isn't with the OpenGL driver itself, it's with a hack in the post-9.12 ATI drivers specifically for NWN (like a Catalyst "Application Settings" entry, but "secret"). And, like an Application Settings entry, it's activated by running "nwmain.exe". Copying that file to a different name (e.g. "ati-nwmain.exe") and running that instead results in a rock-solid game even with the much more recent 14.04 drivers.

There is one downside: the built-in hack seems to be there to work around a texture blend bug, so you must disable "Environment Mapping on Creatures" in Video Options or everyone will be invisible. In return though, you get a crash-free experience, and can create an Application Settings entry that lets you use 24xEQ edge-detect adaptive multisampling, which is very pretty and doesn't suffer from the blurry text that the game's AA options cause on ATI hardware.

67.148.61.216 12:17, December 13, 2014 (UTC)