What's the best ATI driver for me?

[Gumball360]

Right now I have an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro (yeah, I know it's pretty old) with the 8.12 driver and my OS is Windows XP 32-bit.I haven't checked on drivers in awhile and was wondering if there was anything better than that. According to AMD, the newest driver compatible to my computer is 10.2, but I've learned from experience that the newest driver isn't necessarily the best. The hardest tasks that my graphics card faces is Battlefield 2, which I play every so often.I know there are some 3rd-party drivers out there as well. So, should I stick with my current driver or should I update? And if I update, could someone point me in the direction of either a better ATI driver, or a better 3rd-party driver? Thanks in advance.

 

[Dr HOUSE]

Usually the most recent driver for a vid card/OS is the best one but you are right when you say that this isn't ALWAYS the case.If i were you i would get the latest drivers for your card/OS from the ATI/AMD site and see how they go. If you find that they have a problem or don't work well with your games then you can always roll back to the drivers you have now. I seriously don't think there will be a problem though. In 8 years of updating my video drivers every few months i have only had one set of drivers which caused problems.

 

[Rhyled]

I'd avoid 3rd party drivers at all costs. I'd expect more problems (or viruses) from them than help.I haven't had any problem with using the latest version of the ATI's Catalyst Suite, http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx except for a bizarre AGP based HD 3850 card I'm running on an old computer. The hotfix download (also available on that page) fixed that issue.