Ati driver bug?

Hello,
I've been using Windows 7 since the RTM was released, since the new fall tv line up started I began to view full episodes on network's website as always. I realized that either the ATI driver or Windows 7 have a problem with flash videos (or flash?). I never experienced something wrong before with Windows XP , the playback was smooth (considering all 24p movies with 75hz refresh) but now abc.com in 720p is annoying jerky, cbs 1080p is literally unwatchable, Youtube's 720p files are really jerky. I also tried BBC player (with a proxy), same results.
I'm sure it's a software problem (maybe they added a new useless feature in windows 7 drivers that does that) since this only happens when I'm in fullscreen and the cpu usage is always below 30% with HD streaming. Again, this only happens in flash, no problem with videos played with local players, even 1080p Blu-Rays are flawless with both software and hardware decoding.

I tried to reinstall Windows XP to see if maybe I was mistaken but the problem doesn''t present there, everything's fine. Plus I tried another PC with Windows 7 with a "crappy" NVDIA integrated video card, no jerkiness, even with CBS 1080p streaming.

I have an ATI HD 2600 PRO, I tried to reinstall 9.7 and 9.8 drivers with no change, does anybody have the same problems and maybe a solution?

Thanks

Hi Sandro - Welcome to the site

You can try - ATI Catalyst™ version 9.9 downloads
Here is the - Release notes

I moved on from my ATi cards at the outset of the Windows 7 builds. This was for no aprticular dislike, but the ATI equipped computer was generally getting on a little. However, I digress! I confess to not being a great garphics user in any areas, so this suggestion would possibly not be suitable for you. I only installed the drivers from the offered options, and not the catalyst. I also ensured, even after that, that the catalst utility was not starting in Msconfig. Vista was (is) a heavy user of resources, and this small touch certainly solved my small graphics problems.

Thanks clifford.

I tried your advice davehc but of course no change. this is frustrating

The only thing I can think of is to check if you have the latest flash player. Also, have you tried these videos in different browsers, and if so do they all have this issue or some do and some don't.

Already tried that. I'm now trying to install another Windows 7 in a partition with latest drivers like this one to see if a fresh install has the same problem, at least I'll have some more info about the nature of the problem

ok it's not my problem! I tried to do a fresh install of windows 7 x64 and try to use flash player with both microsoft and last ati driver, the problem is still there! So maybe i didn't notice it before because i wasn't watching episodes but now it's clear. is it possible that noone with ATI card never experienced this?

That's interesting that it still happens after a clean install. I haven't seen this on the ATI system I used, but it could be a bug in either Adobe Flash or the ATI drivers. It might be worth contacting them both about this bug to see if it is a known issue, otherwise you may need to wait for an update.

I fixed it, it was a power supply issue . I realized that my second HDD was very often unmounted/mounted by Windows (like it'd lost power) and that the bios boot process took more than the usual 3 seconds but like 10. I switched the PATA power cable and now everything is fine. I don't know why but the HDD problem somehow took some energy away from the video card (?? is that even possible?) and the VGA didn't have enough power to use the hardware acceleration, in fact i couldn't play h.264 videos with MPC HC and PowerDVD anymore with DVXA (I saw this today, that's when I got the power idea).

Hope would be helpful for someone

Thanks for reporting back with the problem, I guess the 2nd HDD was just introducing lag somehow. Great to know it's fixed for you