upgrading to xp? (AIW Radeon 7500)

Hi----long time no see =)
I have a question for anyone who might want to give me their input.
I've been using win 98 for ohhhhh ever. Finally got my AIW 7500 card to work last summer and got win xp shortly after. i JUST upgraded last night (not wanting to mess anything up before now--- but hey it needs to be formatted anyway)... so here's the wird part, anyone who has owned an ATI card will agree... I uninstalled the drivers before upgrading so I could install the ati xp drivers. Well, it recognizes the card and i haven't installed a thing.
So now here's my problem... I need MMC but I am terrified if i run the installation it will just throw everything off. if the card is working already, can i skip to step 3 (the ati control panel) or should i just do the routine 1-2-3 and hope for the best.
surious to know what you would do... because eventually i will need it! Thanks , Heidi

[letgoofmyears]

I'm not sure if I understood your question correctly, but if you're asking if you should install the drivers off your cd instead of the one XP loads, then the answer is yes.....and no. The drivers on the cd are going to be better, but what you need to do is go to ATI's site and download the latest drivers there. I have the Radeon 7000 on one of my systems, and the pre-installed drivers on XP didn't include the latest OpenGL or direct3D drivers. Hope this helps.

great i think that's all i need to know. i had already downloaded the latest drivers from ati.com just before i upgraded (to be on the safe side).. actually the drivers that came with my card when it was new didn't work.. i spent so much time on ati's website when i first got this thing i thought about making it my homepage. anyway, thanks for answering my question---have a nice Christmas everybody!
heidi

[Ducatti20]

I have the 128MB ATI 8500, XP's drivers are ok for the net and lite apps, but the latest drivers from the web site work very well... definately go with them..

[Bagmaster]

I've used ATI products since I built my first computer 3 years ago. I'm using a 32 meg Rage Fury Pro with tv out right now. When I installed WinXP it loaded drivers for it with no problem, it just didn't load opengl drivers for it. I updated to all the lasted drivers and software off the ATI site, much better drivers. If you want to update the dvd software for ATI, it's a separate download and requires the original cd to install it. It'll ask for the code number off the cd and ask for the cd it's self to verify with.