Been going through the ATI OGL drivers.....and decided to investigate something that's been bothering me for awhile but I've put it off.

I've noticed an "atioglx1.dll" file along with the "atioglxx.dll" file in my system32 folder for quite some time. I simply assumed it was ATI's uninstaller that simply renamed the older .dll instead of deleting it. NOPE!

Looks like ATI is bundling an older ICD along with their newer ICD's!

From the 5.8 Drivers:

ATIOGLX1.dll=6,684,672 bytes)
ATIOGLxx.dll=5,005,312 bytes)

as you can see a major reduction in size in the atioglxx.dll. It doesn't appear that the atioglx1.dll is used for fallback either. I bet if the user has a problem with their OGL program they call up ATI, ATI has them use the older ICD and then they log the call......probably track the programs with errors. That's assuming that they give a rats ass. A shitty ass beta test procedure if I've ever seen one.

Found this post: http://digg.com/gaming/ATI_has_miracle_OpenGL_hack

Here's the real issue with ATI's Open GL: after Catalyst 5.3 (+/- a version), any Catalyst version going forward for the R4xx series GPU's seem to require earlier versions of "atioglxx.dll" and "atioglx1.dll" to run certain OpenGL games, e.g. MOHAA Spearhead. Several fixes are described on the web, yet ATI refuses to acknowledge the issue or repair the problem. I say use resources to fix quirky drivers to allow popular games to run on popular hardware as advertised and then evolve the efficiency. But that's just me.

If that's true that would also explain my SpearHead not working....it would simply crash to Desktop...I assumed it was SafeDisc even tho I have the original CD.

WTF ATI. You cannot hide your incompetence with a single ICD now you have to bundle two with your driver packages? W-T-F. I've never been one of those Nvidia freaks that boast about how their Nvidia ICD can get XXX # of FPS in Q3. I've always known that Nvidia has the better ICD but it's something I put up with for all the other benefits of using an ATI card. It looks like with the 7800 series Nvidia has finally caught up with ATI....so unless ATI fixes their ICD before the next generation of Nvidia cards comes out (When I plan to buy my next Nvidia card) I'll be dumping ATI.....AGAIN! Heck, I'll get better Linux support too!

Can someone who has the latest CATS look into this, to see if ATI has unified their ICD? I would try the latest but I usually stick with drivers for quite awhile because I like a stable system.

Yep! I have also have two of them. Didn't know about this crappy issue. These are taken from Catalyst 5.11 (which are currently installed). 😳

I think one of these is for OGL 1.5, the other is for 2.0

Still, they should have made it in JUST ONE FILE keeping backwards compatibility. That's just my opinion.

Interesting. Also, Anachronox is a very buggy game built around the Quake/Quake 2 engine. Be sure to dig up all the patches you can find for it (I think there is even a semi-unofficial one that helps)

I put the game down (at least twice) after leaving the first planet because I lost interest. It's a very original aventure/RPG hybrid but it needed better pacing.