AMD Releases Catalyst 10.4 Preview, Fixes Bad Company 2 Issue for Radeon HD5000 Users
 

AMD released the ATI Catalyst 10.4 Preview driver suite. The driver builds on the feature-set of Catalyst 10.3, but packs a hotfix addressing an issue users of the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series are facing with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 regarding slow map load times. The new drivers reduce map load times. For users of Radeon HD 4000, HD 3000 and older GPUs, ATI assured that it will release a preview driver that does the same in a few days from now. The driver will be called Catalyst 10.4a. The release notes for these drivers along with a full list of changes for Catalyst 10.4 will be published when the company releases the WHQL-signed version later this month.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.4 Preview for Radeon HD 5000 Series

damn I need to get home and try this out, stuck here at work damn grrrrrrrrrrr

^^me to ;)

bah, need 4K version :(

They work great. Went from 3x the load times compared to my GTX 280, to same load times.

+1

good!
I will try it at home! :)

These are a major improvement for the 5xxx series

Well have just installed in my CF 5870's and am very happy to say that load times have improved :rockout:

are there any other improvements besides the faster loading times in BFBC2?cuz if that's just it,i will wait for the official release.

I haven't been reading about map loading issue in BF. Are these issue with the single player map loading or online.

ATI users load about half the speed nvidia users do.

I just purchased Bad Company 2 yesterday. I haven't installed yet, because I am about to install newer gpu drivers today. I am coming from 9.11's, so if I move up to 10.3 with my 4870x2, will I be having any slow map load times, since I am using a 4xxx card?

Ah, nice! I'll have to try BC2 on my SSD again now that load times won't be bottlenecked by the GPU anymore...

Glad they fixed this!

Yes. All ATI is slow, 5xxx is now fixed with 10.4 and rest will be fixed later (WHQL?).

But it's not that bad, takes about the same BF2142 maps used to load, granted my system was way slower then :)

Tell us how long that takes, can't be many seconds :D

Are they going to bother announcing it when they fix the crysis IQ? I have a friend with a 5850 that actually plays it and I know he won't want to update till they fix it.

meh, no wonder i didn't notice a speedup in my load times.
I need the 4k version!!

You people with the 4xxx and 3xxx can try these http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33962012

They are leaked 8.74 drivers

Life's a salvation on earth my friend...

I timed loading from HDD, and it was about 10 seconds. Timed loading from SSD, and it was a little above... :shadedshu

I guess SSD's are just not for this type of game. I wonder if they would help any in games where you are constantly streaming textures, like Fallout3/Oblivion.

His Loss and blindness.

They were right about the loading times. Now I can get into the game faster...every 60 seconds of it. Dirt 2 and BC2 are crashing without any play time. Funky.

Yes, because surely high visual acuity is something to be looked down on. Your stance on the matter is just bizarre, and there was no need to insult a customer for disliking defective software.

These new drivers do in fact improve the load times by a good amount.

no they arent. those drivers are the same as what we got here - they only seem to fix 5K load times.