OK, I've had problems with my Radeon 8500LE and my monitor since the first version of Catalyst. I've got Windows XP Pro, the OEM 8500LE 128mb, and a Futura 19" monitor. Originally, the pre-Catalyst drivers had no problem recognizing my monitor. Ever since I installed the first Catalyst drivers, my Radeon has been unable to recognize my monitor; after the first reboot following installation of the drivers the monitor simply went black. I could hear the windows login sounds so I know it didn't cause my computer to become unresponsive.
In order to get a picture, I've had to attatch a friend's monitor to my computer, start it up, save that configuration in ATI's "monitors" panel, then connect my other monitor and force it to recognize it. I have to bind a hotkey to this config to get rid of the green hue and distortion when windows starts up. I also have powerstrip running at startup to lock the refresh rate at 85Hz. Whenever I install new Catalyst drivers I need to completely re-do this entire process, and it's happened around a dozen times now.
Here's what puts it over the line, though. I was running 3Dmark 2k1SE just for the hell of it and noticed that I got a substantially lower score with the 3.7 drivers than I did with the 3.6. For instance, I used to get 55FPS on the Nature benchmark in 1024x768x32, now I get 15. I'm told this is just a bug with the 3.7 drivers and Direct3D, so I want to install the 3.8 drivers to resolve all other conflicts in other games (which are performing just as bad in D3D). But this time, I don't have another monitor to act as a liferaft when I install the drivers. How do I resolve this monitor conflict? Or at least, how do I save my current configuration and use it with the 3.8 drivers?
In order to get a picture, I've had to attatch a friend's monitor to my computer, start it up, save that configuration in ATI's "monitors" panel, then connect my other monitor and force it to recognize it. I have to bind a hotkey to this config to get rid of the green hue and distortion when windows starts up. I also have powerstrip running at startup to lock the refresh rate at 85Hz. Whenever I install new Catalyst drivers I need to completely re-do this entire process, and it's happened around a dozen times now.
Here's what puts it over the line, though. I was running 3Dmark 2k1SE just for the hell of it and noticed that I got a substantially lower score with the 3.7 drivers than I did with the 3.6. For instance, I used to get 55FPS on the Nature benchmark in 1024x768x32, now I get 15. I'm told this is just a bug with the 3.7 drivers and Direct3D, so I want to install the 3.8 drivers to resolve all other conflicts in other games (which are performing just as bad in D3D). But this time, I don't have another monitor to act as a liferaft when I install the drivers. How do I resolve this monitor conflict? Or at least, how do I save my current configuration and use it with the 3.8 drivers?