New ATI catalyst drivers out

[SawTooTH]

http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

 

[Ch3tan]

Already! Bloody hell only just got the courage to install 3.10

 

[SawTooTH]

Bet you're feeling a right tit or is it a left and a right?

 

[Ch3tan]

Just the left one

 

[Scooba da Bass]

Don't grab them if you play ET;

Significant performance loss is noticed in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
This issue is already resolved and a fix will be available in the next
CATALYST™ driver release.

 

[Jonty]

New Features

ATI OVERDRIVE(tm) Enhancement

ATI OVERDRIVE(tm) maximizes the performance of the graphic accelerator by increasing the speed of the graphics processor. This is done by constantly monitoring the temperature of the graphics processor, so that the maximum clock speed can always be maintained.

The latest rendition of ATI OVERDRIVE(tm) now provides the user with more information on the temperature and frequency of their graphics processor. This feature is supported under the Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows 98/98SE and Millennium operating systems, and is supported on the following ATI RADEON(tm) products:

• ATI RADEON(tm) 9800 XT
• ATI RADEON(tm) 9600 XT

OpenGL Shading Language Enhancement

This release improves support for the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL), a flexible, forward-looking, and hardware-independent high-level graphics programming language. The OpenGL Shading Language, defined as an open standard by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, allows application developers to take advantage of the powerful programmable vertex and pixel processing units present in the 3D graphics system. This release includes changes to increase compliance with the final ratified GLSL specifications, adds support for projective texture sampling, and improves support for interactions between GLSL-based rendering and traditional fixed-function vertex and pixel processing. Developers who are interested in using the OpenGL Shading Language should visit our website for more details and documentation.

Resolved Game Issues

This section provides information on game issues that have been resolved in the latest release of CATALYST(tm). These include the following:

• Playing the game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON(tm) 9000 series card installed no longer results in the skaters' shadow not being completely drawn
• Playing the game Line of Sight Vietnam under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON(tm) 9200 series installed no longer results in the game menu appearing black when setting the Anti-Aliasing option to 1 or 2
• Changing the resolution in Halo while playing in the middle of a Campaign no longer results in a reboot of the machine. This issue was known to occur under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON(tm) 9000 series installed
• Running the game Halo PC under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON(tm) 9700 series installed no longer results in display corruption being seen on the barrel of the shot gun
• All cars are now being drawn properly when Anti-Aliasing is enabled and playing the game Race Driver by ToCA
• The game Ford Racing 2 no longer stutters when Anti-Aliasing is enabled
• The Star Wars game; Knights of the Old Republic is no longer failing to respond when moving the mouse to view the shore
• Setting the display resolution to 1024x768 32bpp and playing the game Nascar Racing 2003 demo, no longer results in the game failing to respond when OpenGL is enabled
• Setting the graphics option to 1024x768 in the game Beach Head 2002 no longer results in the game failing to launch and displaying an error message
• The Windows 2000 operating system no longer fails to respond when ending the game World Racing in a windowed mode
• Playing the game Neverwinter Nights under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON(tm) 9600 series card installed no longer results in the game failing to respond
• Playing the game IL2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles in OpenGL mode no longer results in flashing triangles and textures when playing the Black Death Track

Kind Regards

 

[TdC]

jonty4tehwin!!!

 

[Jonty]

jonty4tehwin!!!

That was shamelessly taken from elsewhere and formatted for the forums Thanks anyway, though

Kind Regards

 

[.Wilier.]

That was shamelessly taken from elsewhere and formatted for the forums Thanks anyway, though

Kind Regards

quit giving away your secrets Jonts

 

[Jonty]

quit giving away your secrets Jonts

hehe, yes sir. I shall give the drivers a quick blast on my system later, and check if the bugs I've encountered in the 3.9 drivers are gone.

Kind Regards

 

[throdgrain]

Has anyone else tried em ? Are they worth having ? I must say Im very pleased with the 3.10 drivers, are they worth replaceing I wonder ?

Questions questions ...

 

[Jonty]

Has anyone else tried em ? Are they worth having ? I must say Im very pleased with the 3.10 drivers, are they worth replaceing I wonder ?

Hello

I have to confess that I still haven't tried them yet, but according to ATI the focus of these drivers is one stability, so they may well be worth a try. I'll try and post my findings this evening (for what they're worth ).

Kind Regards

 

[Jonty]

Hi guys

Just thought I'd let you know that I've just installed WindowsXP SP1 afresh on my system and run some tests with the new Catalyst 4.1's and everything, thus far, has been great. I had suffered numerous problems with the 3.10 drivers, but so far I've run several ATI technology demos, nVidia's Dawn demo (via OpenGL), FFXI benchmark, installed CoD and soon Max Payne 2 and I've yet to encounter any of the problems I ran into before. I'm afraid I'm not sure of performance differences as I didn't benchmark the 3.10s, but it certainly seems no worse in real-world terms (if anything it's a little better in some programs).

About the only annoying thing is the removal of the OverDrive tab by default, although from what I've read it's relatively easy to enable it again for XT owners.

Kind Regards

Jonty

(Just for reference, I'm running Sapphire Radeon 9600XT (128Mb))

 

[mookie]

ooh, how handy, i've only just installed my 9600XT

 

[throdgrain]

Installed em, everything seems fine on me 9800 pro, tried cod, sof2 and bf1942 so far, all seems good

 

[SawTooTH]

Well Ive had no problems since installing the new drivers whereas , as Jonty said, the last version caused all sorts of graphical nonsense/crashes restarts etc. I'm more inclined to try ATI releases as they really do work at solving probs out, not like they were a few years ago.

 

[Jonty]

Hi guys

Just thought I'd say I've been blasting through the Far Cry demo and I've noticed some graphical problems with the 4.1 drivers. It's nothing major, just some rocks/boulders and some of the corpses have texture and/or lighting problems. It's not a 'show-stopper' by any means, though, and it seems nVidia's cards have their problems too.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. Far Cry is very pretty, although note it is 465Mb/495Mb (the former without DirectX9, the latter with it).

 

[Stazbumpa]

Downloaded them, switched off everything non essential and ran 3d mark on the 3.10's. Then I loaded the 4.1's and got a 3d mark gain of 16 marks. Not amazing, but an improvement non the less.


For the record:
Cat 3.10's = 6249
Cat 4.1's = 6265

I have had it higher than this, I think my best score was 6636 with the Cat 3.9's, but I had a few glitches when gaming due to my o/clocked gfx card. ie: the memory has no cooling and was getting a tad warm. My gpu, on the other hand, is water cooled so I can overclock it to ridiculous levels