My brother called me earlier complaining of his ATI drivers.  He has crossfired 1900xt's on an Asus P5W DH delux.  I don't know what OS he has, but I told him to check out the Omega drivers http://www.omegadrivers.net/ to see if that helps any.  Any other suggestions?  Does anyone else make drivers for ATI?  Any reason not to go with omega drivers?  Thanks for the input.

Ive only heard a tiny shred about omega drivers, I get the impression they were used quite a bit some time ago, but have fallen out of fashion, i guess cos atis drivers have got alot better in terms of not having soo many 'odd quirks' that mr omega or whoever he is could sort out with some tweaking.  Sorry I cant add any more than that lol.

Well, thanks for added that much.  I guess my little bro should just tough it out.  He said, and I agree with him, that ever since ATI was taken over by AMD that ATI driver developement has sucked.  I think AMD has tried to kill off ATI.  It sure doesn't look like they want to help it any.  

Is this flame bait?  You talk about your brother having problems, blame it on the drivers, but fail to even mention what the problem is.  (my guess would be its an issue with one of the cards or not enough power, but without ANY clues, it is a guess.)  You then go on to talk about how AMD is driving ATI into the ground, and that "driver development...sucks."
 
No body else makes drivers for AMD cards.  Even the Omega drivers are AMD drivers that have been tweaked.  He doesn't write them, simply edits them.  Have they fallen out of favor?  Yes, because AMD cards and drivers are that much better now.  Driver development doesn't suck, they actually do quite well.
 
Label me an AMD fanboy if you wish, I would run a 8800GT if I had the money.  Your posts seem to rag on AMD more then asking for help.  Just pointing that out.

i have used omega drivers on my laptop plenty but only because ATi has very shoddy driver support for notebook graphics cards. they work just as well as the real thing IMO. i stick to the ATi provided drivers on my desktop.

Yeah, hairycat101, I have an X1900XTX running on the same board as your brother (P5W DH Deluxe). I would advise against using omega drivers over the latest ATI drivers. There was a point a while back when the omega drivers were the better option, but like spoonboy said, they have fallen out of fashion. The ATI drivers have only been improving over time and are quite acceptable currently compared to they bad streak in the past.
 
In terms of solving your brothers problem. I would suggest doing two things:
 
1) Go to Intels website and download the latest 975X chipset drivers, Intel 975X is the chipset on his board, and install them.
2) Then download the lastest ATI drivers and install them.
 
**NOTE** Make sure he properly removes whatever video drivers he has on his system now (ATI or Omega) before doing the two things listed above. Also, make sure they are done in the order listed.
 
Hopefully that will solve any crossfire issues he is having.

 
Get back on your meds.  I have one AMD card. It is a 1800 GTO.  I like it.  I have no issues with it.  I don't know if his issues are crossfire issues or what.  His problem is is that games sometimes crash on him.  I haven't thought about power issues.  That might be something to look into.  One more thing about AMD; their drivers do suck a monkey butt.  I built my parrents computer using a 1950 because my dad likes to play Halo.  The drivers 7.11 would not allow him to play because every time Halo started up, it said that there was a debugger running.  I installed 7.10 and have not had that problem.  This is with a completely clean install.  So yea, ATI does have driver issues now that they really didn't have before.  I still like them more then Nvidia (for the superior image quality).  But the image quality thing is becoming less of an issue with DX10...   so next upgrade might just be Nvidia.  

I'm using the Omega 7.12 drivers for my 3850, and my card is performing better than it did with AMD/ATI's official version of the drivers. I kept getting graphic errors in City of Heroes, and the Omega drivers fixed the problems. And another benefit that I've experienced is my computer boots faster now, because it took forever for CCC to load.  
 
But, it'll be different per computer.

 
I am not a fanboy, but...
 
I have used ATI drivers continuously since early 2003. Upgrading almost on every new version. No issues. Used with a 9800pro, 9700pro, 9600xt, 9200 and my current 1900xt512. On mobos ranging from an Asus Nforce2 through a few via chipsets and a short lived Nforce3 to my current Nforce4 Ultra. No issues that I have ever traced to be the cause of the drivers. Most of the time it is other 3rd party software conflicting... including oc'ing apps. Granted, I have not used cut-rate chipsets nor half-baked beta-drivers or software from less-than-top-tier companies... that is a big difference. Many times the other software beyond the driver that non-ati companies ship with it can be total garbage.
 
The only thing you mention that makes them "suck monkey butt" is that you had halo crash until you installed a new version. ooo. Just b/c you installed a new driver and one game stops crashing means nothing. It could have been anything from a bad install of the other version (NOT the same as a bad driver) to another app that you installed and/or removed that "fixed" it. Oh and btw... current version on their site is 7.12... any reason you did not install the newer one?
 
coming from someone who does development for a living (and subsequent debugging) you have way too many variables to make a solid claim that the driver caused it without actually tracing it down. Mobo chipset, video card and any os "patches" are truly the base for everything to build on. If another app does not play nice with them and then causes your game to crash it is not (usually) the fault of those three components but rather that rogue crap-app... Too many ppl just jump and blame one of the three... on games that is usually the graphics drivers regardless of truth.
 
...unless you prove otherwise with repeatable results instead of simple "tehy suxor!" then you are just a flamer.

I tried 7.10 and it did not recognize my 3870.  7.11 works fairly well.  7.12 crashes my system after 30 minutes.
 
I think there might be something to deal with the audio portion of the card since it makes a looping noise before my screen turns blank when I use the 7.12 drivers on a Nforce4 chipset.

 
My issue with Halo was that when I installed what was then the latest driver (7.11) to a brand new build (no third party apps; just ms updates and appropriate drivers) the game (Halo) kept telling me that it would not run because it detected a debugger.  I was lucky in that I had 7.10 (not really mathmatically correct...) and I installed that.  That was the only change and that was the one that worked.  I too have had many ATI cards.  Hell, that is what I have in my computer.  When I said that they are starting to suck monkey butt, it is because I am seeing issues with thier drivers.  When I first got my 9700, I had some issues with the drivers not playing Need for Speed, hot pursuit.  They did eventually fix those.  I have real concerns when the new drivers break things that weren't broken...

 
again, just b/c you installed a new version to have a single game not work does not immediately implicate the driver. There are a host of other possibilities... You did not mention if you really looked at possible game fixes (patches etc) and to claim you have NO third party apps? You are saying you are only running the driver for your chipset (with no other add-on apps connected to that) the driver for your video card and your OS (which I assume to be windows)? These then only have Halo installed? Nothing else is running or installed?
 
Reality is, anything else installed (including any intel "optimization" apps or crazy download speedup programs) can be the culprit. Even sound card drivers... which honestly are more prone to causing game crashes than video card drivers in my experience.
 
Not trying to beat a dead horse here... just saying that there is a small list of issues that I have seen that have been caused by new drivers. Every time they are found on ati drivers (especially on a big name game like halo) a hotfix comes out rather quickly. There are still few of them. Every other issue I have had, even after installing a new version of the catalyst, came down to another app... or even the game itself doing something wrong...
 
I am tired of so many "wolf cry-ers" that blame "bad ati drivers" for the price of tea in china going up. Nv and ati both have their share of issues with new versions. Both are about equal on stability +/- depending on the release. Both fix major issue quickly. Both still do not do everything perfect. Yet consistently there are ppl that come on here and say ati drivers suck and Nv don't. Logic is just all wrong IMO.
 
rock on man.

dude. It was a very very very fresh install of windows xp pro. Less then two hours.  And yes that was the first non-update/non-driver instal.  Halo is a pretty old game now (probably why my dad likes it).  Its not getting new patches.  I doubt anyone is still doing work on it.  This is one case where the driver was, without a doubt, the issue.  Besides this issue, I personally have not had any bad experiences of late with ATI.  The point of the post was to see if there is a 3rd party driver that might help my bro.  He is the one crazy enough to spend that kind of cash on crossfire.  I assumed his issue was with two cards at once and ATI's drivers.  Single card-wise, I don't know if he would have these issues.

why doesn't he test it out? i mean surely it wouldn't take much work to remove a GFX and test for stability.

Unlike the Mac's, IN the PC world there are too many variables to so quickly point out something as the cause.  A lot of times it is simply the effect of something else, something that is behaving badly.  That is why Steve Jobs is so picky about outside stuff getting into his machines without Apple's approval.  
 
In an article written a few years ago by a guy named John Dvork he made a statement that I will always remember.  He said that technological as we advance we are expecting more and more compatibility when in fact, as we advance technologically we will begin to see more and more issues with compatibility.  What he said is true.  Be careful not to point the finger too quickly.  Remember ALL the lines of code that goes into drivers that are meant to optomize speed and compatibility between and among literally thousands upon thousands of different combinations of hardware.  Don't forget that even DDR2 memory sticks are not 100% compatible in motherboards and how long have they been around as a commodity item?  Follow the good advice of getting the latest board drivers and the ATI drivers.  Look at any readme's you may fins concerning the latest drivers in your install.  ATI also has different 'driver' components that need to be matched up.  Check the BIOS on the MB see if there are any problems there with certain drivers etc.  If you want to be an enthusiast you have to pay the price of understanding what the compatibility issues may be to run higher end equipment.  If you want a mere mediocre machine then drop back a few driver revs on your stuff/ or better yet buy a stock machine from Office Depot, circuit city or the like and DON't change anything.  They have done the best they can to put out a stable machine - but the top notch performance will be lacking.

 
 
I think you are on the right track with the audio, In my 939 pc I have the 3870 and 7.12 drivers and had good improvement with updated audio drivers particularly with Crysis. However I have crashing issues also, particularly in Far Cry with my second pc which has a C2D 6320 and ATi 1650 pro on Via chip set board. I have changed over the PSU, GPU(formally 6600GT) and DDR800 RAM(formally 533 DDR2) as the likely culprits, but no luck. So out go the mobo and cpu for a 5000+ BE and Nforce chip set and hope to finally have a more stable system. This system also experienced unexplainable heavy stuttering after 10 or so minutes of play if it lasted that long. Took me a frustratingly long time to finish the game, but I got there.