AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 10.8 WHQL Software Suite

[pantherx12]

Good thing is he won't have to review eyefinity in every review he does.

As I doubt performance will be that different between cards etc.

I say eyefinity geared cards (5770 flex etc) and eyefinity performance on a regular say 5870 and a 5970 with major driver updates.


@cadaveca, have you checked the AA type in catalyst control centre by the by?

The default setting looks like shit in my opinion anyways. Doesn't AA transparent objects for a start.

 

[rodneyhchef]

Installed this last night on top of 10.7 and it seems to have fixed an intermittant stuttering problem I was having during video playback.

 

[Bobington]

Cold Bug?
I'm not getting how this "higher clocks at idle" thing is a good one, or a feature as Mussels says. What is it meant to resolve exactly?
I've been hoping it's a bug that they're gonna fix too, coz the lower the idle clocks are, the better IMO, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

The higher clocks at idle are meant to solve flickering on multi display setups at 2D clocks.

 

[lemode]

yeah im still sticking with 10.4's if it aint broke and running smooth dont fix it. lol

yeah no doubt...i refuse to get rid of 10.4!

 

[erocker]

I'm having no issues with this driver so far. One thing I don't like are the video presets. Deblocking, noise reduction, etc. need to be turned down from their defaults.

 

[chron]

Runs great on a 480, the way it's meant to be played.

Really? You can max out all the distance stuff and turn shadows and reflection all the way up? Car density all the way up?

I can get the game to run just fine when I use auto configure. Very smooth. What I'm talking about though is being able to max the game out on what I thought was a high end card.

 

[Mussels]

Really? You can max out all the distance stuff and turn shadows and reflection all the way up? Car density all the way up?

I can get the game to run just fine when I use auto configure. Very smooth. What I'm talking about though is being able to max the game out on what I thought was a high end card.

because its not your card thats the problem, its your CPU. the game was never optimised properly.

 

[cadaveca]

I too would like W1zz to include Eyefinity setups in the benchmarks (or plain Eyefinity benchmarks) now that the tech has been established! That would be a very nice read! ;-)
Who's with me?

Not me. I have Eyefinity, I do not wish for W1zzard to have to deal with the issues I did...it's a waste of his time. I only wish he had in the past, so I could have aviod spending this cash on monitors and such...I woulda spent more and got 120hz monitors had I known earlier.

@cadaveca, have you checked the AA type in catalyst control centre by the by?

The default setting looks like shit in my opinion anyways. Doesn't AA transparent objects for a start.

Yeah, I did a bit last night. Still not impressed. And I'll be very specific as to why:

ATi is using [H]'s large WoW audience to highlight how they've fixed CFX scaling in BFBC2 specifically. They show numbers with AA. Obviously, since no in-game AA setting changes actually enables AA in about 30 apps I've tested so far these perforamcne numbers they are hyping are only as large as they are due to a really horrible driver profile, quality-wise.

In case you missed it...that screenie was 4xAA. 0xAA, 2xAA, 8xAA, all give the exact same image. I used the SP side of the game, and 6 different game levels. I then used a digital camera to capture screen images, and then made the captured images transparent, and overlayed them. The use of the camera makes seeing individual pixels really easy. There's not one single pixel different. AA is broken.


V-Sync, another member here has mentioned as well. Easy to test...again, broken. OF course, I used the same digital camera to capture video...so there's no capture software on my pc causing issues.


I also used a completely different box, with a fresh install, that only has this driver, and BC2 installed. Same thing.


NOw, I'll admit, because of this bloody chicken pox, I've only slept 4 hours in the past 72, so my brain is REALLY fuzzy at this point, but it's been good running these tests, keeping my fingers busy, rather than having them scratching.


And let me just pause here and say OMFG I WANNA DIE!!! I wish this illness on noone! now it doesn't itch...it bloody burns like hell, and there's no relief to be had. Already missed out on my Anniversary tuesday, because I shouldn't be in public. Today's my youngest's birthday...i can't even give him a hug. I'm pretty fucking mental at this point. I've had buckshot in my back before, this feels far to similar. And I look bloody disgusting.



Anyway, performance IS up now...I haven't seen any cursor corruption yet, but haven't tried triggering it yet. I'm pretty happy with this driver in comparison to every other one that's been out this year. Still some issues left, but that cursor thing is a big one for me. If that is realyl fixed, then I am confident that they can fix these other issues as time passes...but if things are PERFECT by years-end, I am quite serious in my ATI/AMD boycott. I'm pretty happy with nV surround and GTX480 SLi at this point. Currently playing my way back though batmanAA, liking the Phys-X effects, too.

I cannot beleive it's me saying that, you know. ATi sucks, nV is good. That's a complete 180 degree change for me. Oh well.

 

[fullinfusion]

I wasn't aware that the HD 5970 had a cold bug. Fascinating.

These drivers are damn skippy. I just upgraded from 10.5 because the Stream SDK2.2 support was confirmed and I gotta say the difference is night and day in some of my games.



To be honest I was just recalling the number from memory and I wouldn't be surprised to find out I was wrong. I sincerely doubt the fan could account for a greater than 10W difference (thats assuming that regular idle is 27W per the ATI spec in my faded memory).

I'm as nuts about power saving as I am about performance. I wrote a program that automatically engages my CCC profiles on a per game basis (similar to a feature in RivaTuner/ATI Tray Tools) because I found some games run stable at higher clocks and some games run just swell at lower than stock clocks. When a game is exited the program defaults to a specified profile, in my case 157/300 idle clocks. The result is a satisfying (and automatic) power savings. Do you think I should make it available on the forums?



I googled it and apparently the HD 5970 can suffer from a cold bug while under water cooling (or anything more extreme I'd imagine). A cold bug is the term used to refer to a hardware boot failure due to hardware temperatures being too low. At least I'm pretty sure...

Well the Sapphire 5970 OC edition has the cold bug.... I mainly see it during the cold winter months when I forget to close the room window overnight.

As BlackPanther called the Measels...

It only happens if it does during the first min or so after boot up.
The idle clocks are to low and Erocker taught some of us owners how to custom set the clocks as a profile... It helped out a lot of ppl for sure.

Sapphire knows there 5970's have the bug problem... not all do but a great magority do.

They released a bios for such a problem. Ppl that run water to ther gpu really have it tough for the cold but the new bios fixes that..

One more note, ppl claim lower temps and better clocks with the update.

I flashed the 5970 but a file was corrupt so I flashed the pld bios back to the card...
once I get my Nvidia gpu back at least I have a back up plan if the flash fails.

 

[cadaveca]

Cursor Corruption is NOT fixed, I'm sad to report. My normal triggers work just fine.


However, now it's back to fixing itself when you move the cursor to another panel...about 30 times!





:shadedshu

 

[Bobington]

Cursor Corruption is NOT fixed, I'm sad to report. My normal triggers work just fine.


However, now it's back to fixing itself when you move the cursor to another panel...about 30 times!





:shadedshu

It's fixed for me, how are you trying to trigger it; I'll see if I can replicate it.

 

[cadaveca]

I'm going to re-try driver installs, see if that makes a difference first. THEN I will see if I can replicate it, and will psot the steps, for sure. I need to confirm it's not just me.

 

[SK-1]

Hmmm. 2nd CTD for me...

 

[bobseptic]

this release of 10.8 is the best driver so far for me on 5970 oc with bad company2

FPS up 5+ to 12 and the previous lows of some explosions have improved by 20fps.

i had previously been using the 10.5 hotfix as everything after that has been rubbish for bc2.

all settings on max and DX11

pleased with this driver. might even try eyefinity again.

Im sorry but i take that back cursor issue and an issue with parts of bc2 going black in some maps.

10.5 hotfix is the best driver with 5970 oc, windows 7 64bit, i7 hardware combination.

AA broken forever

 

[cadaveca]

Im sorry but i take that back cursor issue and an issue with parts of bc2 going black in some maps.

10.5 hotfix is the best driver with 5970 oc, windows 7 64bit, i7 hardware combination.

AA broken forever

I found that my cursor issue was related to old settings kept in registry after uninstall of previous driver. I can trigger the DP monitor going to sleep, by changing resolution in certain apps, but haven't seen any cursor problems as of yet.


had some BCBF2 CTD and system freezes in single player, but AA issue seemingly has been fixed, too.


Now I'm left with going back to previous drivers, then updating agian, seeing if i can replicate it, and then maybe I can develop some sort of runtime to fix the problem, or I can forward the info to AMD and let them deal with it.


But at this point, I want to say all issues are due to AMD's driver install/uninstall failing.

Still working on it...will update when I have better info.

And I'll leave off at this point saying that this is problably the best driver that's come out this year, so far. It's unfortunate that most won't see this though, but at the same time, those without issues are the ones that do registry cleans when swapping drivers.

 

[TheGuruStud]

I use driver sweeper.

 

[cadaveca]

I use driver sweeper.

Any issues? now that you've uninstalled and re-installed?

 

[erocker]

But at this point, I want to say all issues are due to AMD's driver install/uninstall failing.

I completely agree and it goes back further than 10.1's. It's amazing the amount of crap they hide in the registry. Unfortunately, some of the crap I found can't be deleted or I get a blank screen on Windows startup.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Any issues? now that you've uninstalled and re-installed?

Nope Everything's fine.

 

[fullinfusion]

I completely agree and it goes back further than 10.1's. It's amazing the amount of crap they hide in the registry. Unfortunately, some of the crap I found can't be deleted or I get a blank screen on Windows startup.

10.8 works great for me but I can't get 10.4 to install again.
10.4 is ..... *for testing*

CCC 10.8 seems to lock me to the current version.

I even did a good clean but like you said it hides very well in the registry.

Any work around for future reference?

 

[erocker]

10.8 works great for me but I can't get 10.4 to install again.
10.4 is ..... *for testing*

CCC 10.8 seems to lock me to the current version.

I even did a good clean but like you said it hides very well in the registry.

Any work around for future reference?

I'm sure there is besides reinstalling your O/S. Actually though, I don't mind reinstalling my O/S. All of my games are through Steam and they sit on another drive.

 

[fullinfusion]

I'm sure there is besides reinstalling your O/S. Actually though, I don't mind reinstalling my O/S. All of my games are through Steam and they sit on another drive.

Nice!

Well like I said before... 10.8 works very well! It works awsome for Dirt2 and GOW, Hawx, RE5.... Vantage mark... and everything Bench Mark related

Im hooked!

I'm fussy but I'm glad its working and giving me the edge

 

[Bobington]

Quick update: seems 10.8 and 10.9 still have the cursor bug so the release notes are not accurate.