On a recently built HTPC (specs below), I've been running the 7.12 version of the ATi/AMD Catalyst drivers (onboard x1250 chipset). Occasionally I had issues, particularly with DVD playback. Media Center would intermittently crash when a DVD loaded. Other times, DVD playback would be completely corrupted, displaying large blocks of pinks, yellows and blues. Only a full reboot would fix this, but inevitably it would resurface.

ATi recently released the 8.1 version of their driver suite, so I installed it, hoping it would resove these issues. Bottom line, it got worse. I could no longer play a DVD at all, as the corruption described above was always present. During this time, my son was pining to watch Spider-Man 2, so I uninstalled the ATi software completely and rebooted. In an effort to get him watching quickly (he had been waiting, after all), I popped in the DVD without the drivers and much to my surprise, the DVD played back fine.

Repeating the process with several DVDs, I found the corruption and crashes no longer occurred. It's been 3 days and I have not seen it since. More, all TV playback, both live and recorded, HD and analog alike, have all been error and lag-free.

So, assuming that I will not game on this PC (it's a dedicated media center), am I missing something by not having these drivers installed? As far as I can tell, my PC is far more stable and performs better without them.

I'm curious what you all think. Thanks!

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Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1
Asus M2A-VM HDMI
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (65W)
500GB SATA HDD; 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 SDRAM
nMEDIAPC HTPC 500BAR
Samsung 20X DVD±R
HD HomeRun; nVidia DualTV
Linksys DMA2100; WRT600N Router
ZALMAN CNPS 8700 NT

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to your question...  I just wanted to say that I just recently got an XPS 420 from Dell with the ATI HD 2600 XT.  The Catalyst software was pre-installed by Dell.  After I got everything setup and relatively stable, I decided to upgrade the Catalyst software and driver for the HD 2600 XT...  sure enough, I install, reboot, and BAM!!!  Trouble.  I can't even get into the Catalyst software.  I had a few other issues, but don't remember exactly what they were.  Luckily, I had created a restore point in Windows, so I restored back to the old Catalyst version and everything was fine.  A few days later, I tried again with the same results.

Long story short, I only use my XPS 420 as a Media Center computer, so I would also like to know if there are any downsides to uninstalling the Catalyst software?  Will my GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive still work?  I think it is my video card (not the Catalyst software) that does all of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD decoding.

Thanks!

-Scott

did you use the dell catalyst software?   You are going to want to get it straight from dell, there's some hardware decoding support on the xps420 and you may get green screens or worse if you use the standard ati drivers

just repeating what I've heard, I installed the ati drivers, saw people posting about green screens with it, and I went back to the updated dell drivers

megad:

did you use the dell catalyst software?   You are going to want to get it straight from dell, there's some hardware decoding support on the xps420 and you may get green screens or worse if you use the standard ati drivers

just repeating what I've heard, I installed the ati drivers, saw people posting about green screens with it, and I went back to the updated dell drivers

I tried both.  The first time I simply used the new software from ATI.com, but the second time I used Dell's update software and had the same issue.

-Scott