Wednesday, March 18th 2009

ATI Catalyst 9.3 Released

by
alexp999
 Discuss (98 Comments)
AMD today released the latest version of their ATI video driver, Catalyst 9.3. The key addition with this release is official support for Windows 7, in the form of a unified graphics driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. As part of supporting Windows 7, Catalyst 9.3 supports WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.1 for all ATI Radeon HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 series of graphics cards. According to AMD, "this new WDDM 1.1 support utilizes DirectX 10 rather than DirectX 9 and can cut down your GPU memory usage by half when opening up multiple windows thereby enabling increased performance."

AMD have said the driver brings performance benefits in several cases where framerates are CPU limited and using ATI Stream technology, owners of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of graphics accelerators will see a performance boost in their Folding@Home scores when running the latest Folding@Home client. AMD only documented one performance improvement in the release notes:
  • Lost Planet: Colonies gains up to 20% on 4800 series products, and up to 50% on 4600, 4500 and 4300 series products
DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst version 9.3 for Windows XP/Vista/7 (32/64-bit versions)
Source: AMD Game!

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98 Comments on ATI Catalyst 9.3 Released

#2
TheMailMan78
Big Member
This will help my CPU bottleneck.
Posted on Reply
#3
Marineborn
hmmm, the list of improvments are good, but i have been having nothing but luck with my 9.2 ill give the 9.3's a run thought
Posted on Reply
#4
TheMailMan78
Big Member
alexp999 FYI that was just an example the posted with Lost Planet. The big improvement is....
Catalyst™ 9.3 brings performance benefits in several cases where framerates are CPU-
limited.
Posted on Reply
#5
JATownes
The Lurker
I'll have to try these when I get home this evening, but I also have had nothing but good luck with 9.2
Posted on Reply
#6
alexp999
Staff
TheMailMan78alexp999 FYI that was just an example the posted with Lost Planet. The big improvement is....
Updated, thanks.

:toast:
Posted on Reply
#7
ilpalmare
Tonight i try this new driver ^_^ I return with results
Posted on Reply
#8
Nosada
alexp999...owners of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of graphics accelerators will see a performance boost in their Folding@Home scores when running the latest Folding@Home client.
Anyone noticing any truth to this?
Posted on Reply
#9
csendesmark
Yeah!
DXVA support is working, again! :)
Posted on Reply
#12
Wile E
Power User
alexp999AMD today released the latest version of their ATI video driver, Catalyst 9.3. The key addition with this release is official support for Windows 7, in the form of a unified graphics driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. As part of supporting Windows 7, Catalyst 9.3 supports WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.1 for all ATI Radeon HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 series of graphics cards. According to AMD, "this new WDDM 1.1 support utilizes DirectX 10 rather than DirectX 9 and can cut down your GPU memory usage by half when opening up multiple windows thereby enabling increased performance."

AMD have said the driver brings performance benefits in several cases where framerates are CPU limited and using ATI Stream technology, owners of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of graphics accelerators will see a performance boost in their Folding@Home scores when running the latest Folding@Home client. AMD only documented one performance improvement in the release notes:
  • Lost Planet: Colonies gains up to 20% on 4800 series products, and up to 50% on 4600, 4500 and 4300 series products
DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst version 9.3 for Windows XP/Vista/7 (32/64-bit versions)

Source: AMD Game!
That explains why they dropped support for cards prior to the HD2k series.
Posted on Reply
#13
kiriakost
TheMailMan78Let the AGP go. Its over.
You are over ... the AGP will live for about 15 years more ... :laugh:
Posted on Reply
#14
Wile E
Power User
kiriakostYou are over ... the AGP will live for about 15 years more ... :laugh:
You could only hope. lol.
Posted on Reply
#15
kiriakost
Wile EThat explains why they dropped support for cards prior to the HD2k series.
Can you make this more clear .... we have over aged people around , that are a bit slow :D
Posted on Reply
#16
kiriakost
Wile EYou could only hope. lol.
As long AMD makes good money from HD3850 AGP , the legend will stay alive :laugh:
Posted on Reply
#17
RevengE
Well I'll have to give these drivers a shot.
Posted on Reply
#18
1Kurgan1
The Knife in your Back
kiriakostCan you make this more clear .... we have over aged people around , that are a bit slow :D
He means they dropped driver support for cards like the 2900's and 2600's way to early and it made no sense. But now it does, because as far as it looks from these notes, the new 9.3's support the old 2x00 series, which is nice for anyone who owns them.
Posted on Reply
#19
Polarman
I'm hoping these will fix my DVI issue. Still using VGA.
Posted on Reply
#20
PVTCaboose1337
Graphical Hacker
So lots of people play lost planet? I think not, but I am still looking for a driver that beats 8.12.
Posted on Reply
#21
AsRock
TPU addict
Tried these with GTA 4 and DCS BS and GTA 4 i did not notice a performance drop and played the same as 8.12 and 9.2 driver set did. How ever DCS BS runs a hell load worse as it's messing up my TIR4 setup while looking around the cockpit ( Jerky ).


EDIT: Both games play no were near as good as they did with 8.12's or 9.2's. these are so gone lol...
Posted on Reply
#22
TheMailMan78
Big Member
PVTCaboose1337So lots of people play lost planet? I think not, but I am still looking for a driver that beats 8.12.
Um read the release notes. Lost Planet is an EXAMPLE of what the fix does. What is this fix? READ THE RELEASE NOTES!
Posted on Reply
#23
MilkyWay
agp support is very useful i mean a lot of people still have 939pin systems with dual cores

a lot of older systems still need support

the reason the 3850 was the last agp card is that any more powerful and the cpu bottleneck will become a problem, i think you can get a few AM2 agp boards but most are 939 pin and 939 pin cpus will become a bottleneck eventually

amd has stepped up its driver performance which is nice
Posted on Reply
#24
Silverel
The actual fix for these was optimizations in the GPU, so games that are CPU bound will see greater benefit. i.e. They must have found a way to offload certain aspects that the CPU normally handles, to the GPU on a global scale. If you have free GPU usage (for me, in Warhammer), it should kick up a bit and take some stress off of your CPU.

I'll test it when I get home tonight to see if that's the case.

Oh yeah, F@H looks like a nice 15% bump in performance from some preliminary observations.
Posted on Reply
#25
PVTCaboose1337
Graphical Hacker
Apparently F@H works better on the 9.3s... guess what I am going to do tonight?
Posted on Reply
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