Well, the new drivers have not fixed the cursor problem for me in C&C Generals . Looks like it's back to enabling mouse trails and playing with a corrupted cursor for the time being.

The nVidia Dawn demo with the ATI openGL wrapper doesnt work for me with these new drviers.

Been following this thread for a few weeks - I'm in the same situation. Mine's a Gigacube 9600 Pro in an Abit NF7-S (nForce2) running XP Pro.

I've been living with the 3.2 drivers (came in the retail box) since I installed the thing because the only downside to those is that Half-Life hangs when ESCaping to the menus (can always type 'quit' in console to avoid that, unless playing online and your connection gets dropped). 3.5 and 3.6 wouldn't install at all (the dreaded "black screen" reboot). 3.4 *did* install, but that introduced the mouse-related hang problem. Tried the reference drivers from ATI and they actually *refuse* to install - telling me I have incompatible hardware (!). I've also tried the Omega drivers with no success, and tweaked my BIOS settings until I'm blue in the face.

So I thought I'd sit tight and wait for 3.7. To my surprise, this release installed and there was no black screen following the reboot. Promising, I thought, until I started Half-Life to check for the dreaded mouse-wiggle hang-disaster. Still there.

I'm getting truly hacked off with this as I'm still stuck with a dodgy driver that was released in February. ATI are their usual helpful selves (as you all seem to have discovered), and Gigacube are uncontactable, being as the only contact number on their website is in Taiwan. I tried emailing their only listed email address (sales@) to see if they could give me a support address - no reply.

So, yeah... Not a happy bunny.

What about an article in a pc-magazine or newspaper about this topic. I informed a german magazin (PC Games) and they declined to publish this problem.
I get the impression that nobody feels responsible for our issue unless they are involved, too.

Ah yeah: the 3.7 didn't solve my problems with c&c generals.

I read a test of 3D chipsets. Concerning the Radeon 9600Pro they made an addition in the final result table: "FastWrite in the BIOS". Don't ask me what this mean. Maybe this chip only works fine if your board supports FastWrite. Mine does, but with terrible video-results (as it was mentioned before). I can't imagine that such an old and incompatible function is necessary for running a complete new videocard.

By the way: I have no problems with Battlefield1942.

Who is anymore you know. I installed the new drivers last night and found that the evil terr was back again, after it tricked me into thinking it was gone, by letting me play battlefield 1942 for a whole minute in 8x agp before freezing. I guess i'll just have to take this as a live and learn, never buy new technology untill it is already bugged out. I almost feel like just buying a whole new video card and busting this one up and mailing sections of it to ATI and says FU. Its not so much SIS's falt, other videocards work just fine on the board, just that stupid ati and their test runs with the new chip. F them all i guess.

Jerk, i wana run battlefield with no problems. Oh well i'll try twigging with it when i get home tonight, and let you all know what goes on with it.

I can run BF1942 no problems with my setup. Try the Catalyst 3.2 drivers? They work fine for me. Like I said the only problem I've found with them is the Half-Life ESC bug, but since I rarely play games and when I do get the time I like to play CS, I'm pretty miffed about that.

tried the new drivers...
turn off the fast writes in bios and ati control panel

the same issue came up...lockups...etc...

games im playing
f1 2002, f1 challenge 99-02
generals..

damm...

Anyone else have the deal with, no matter what settings you put it at it always gets the same frame rate. I tried to get a really high frame rate on medal of honor so i droped everything and lower the screen size to 800x600 and still got the same fps as 1280x1024 with everything all the way up, that is messed up i think. Well i will try the 3.2 and see what happens with that.

Battlefield dropped to windows the first time I ran it with the new drivers, but being stubborn (or a sucker for punishment) I tried it again and played online for hours.

So far every title I own works fine, but really no better than before.

As I've said ad-nauseum, the VIA chipset driver update was the trick for me.
How many are still having issues with VIA based boards, after installing the 4.49 drivers?

Well i have the SIS 655 chipset on my motherboard, and i have the 1.16a drivers for AGP. I am still having the problem. If all else fails i might try loading windows 2000 then ME then 98, onto my computer and see if that fixes the problem. Then we might be able to blame xp compatability issues. I don't know how far i am willing to go yet, i don't play battlefield that often enough to want the sacrafice XP forever you know. Let me know if anyone has any updates on the SIS 655 chipset.

Guys, i tried everthing, and nothing have worked, when i remembered that my Soyo Dragon p4x400 have option to adjust AGP voltage, so i chnged my AGP Voltage from 1.5v(Default) to 1.8v and all the problems just Gone!

Now i can play C&C Generals, Warcraft 3 etc... with no freeze / reboot issues.

My system is very stable now.

I hope this trick work for all the people that have posted before!

You won't believe it BUT:

I FOUND A SOLUTION FOR OUR PROGBLEM !!!

Here are the steps (it works with VIA KT333 based mainboard and ATI Catalyst 3.7) ...

1.) Disable "AGP FastWrite" in the BIOS
2.) Browse to your folder, where you installed the ATI Control Panel
3.) Execute file: SmartGard (this is a link)
4.) Do following settings (no matter what the auto-detection says!):
PCI Write: ON
PCI Read: ON
AGP Write: OFF
AGP Read: ON
5.) Apply
6.) automatic restart and after that WAIT some seconds because during windows logon, the driver tests your system
7.) SmartGard starts automatically and you have to confirm the new settings with "OK"
8.) Have Fun!

Now, my C&C Generals and Neverwinter Nights work excellent without the reduction of hardware acceleration.
The problem was, that the ATI driver can't detect the AGP settings corectly. Therefore these settings have to be done manually.

I hope this can help some people! Nice to work with you ...

It's fixed!!! The above solution has solved my problems with Generals and NWN, so I hope it works for everybody else .

If I have any issues with any other games I'll post again, but at least we no what the problem appears to be.

Oh, I almost forgot. A big thanks to Matthias

sorry guys
i cant find the file to execute the smartgart thing..
i've searched everywhere in the ati folder...

i need help

thanks alot.

I found the shortcut to SmartGart in the ATI Technologies folder in Program Files. Inside there is another folder for ATI Control Panel, inside that is the shortcut you are looking for. Failing that, do a search for smartgart, that should find it. Hope this helps.

Well i am glad you fokes with the VIA chipset got yours working, us over here with the SIS still no luck, even with that. I guess we need a hero to come along like you guys had.

My motherboard is a Microstar MS-6533 which uses the SiS chipset, and it now works fine. Nothings ever simple in this day and age

People, the SmarGart Settings mentioned above are the default settings,

Again if nothing more works, change the agp voltage to 1.8v.

and be happy !