News for "Catalyst"

AMD today released the ATI Catalyst 10.1 driver suite, this year's first. The suite provides drivers and system software for ATI Radeon products (including Radeon HD 5900, 5800, 5700, 5600, HD 4000 series), AMD 7-series chipsets, All-in-Wonder, and Theater multimedia products. The new set of drives brings in application-specific performance improvements, OS and application bug-fixes, and new features. Notable ones are listed below:

• Left 4 Dead 2 - Overall performance improves as much as 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 series products and ATI Radeon HD 5800 series products
• Crysis - Performance improves as much as 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 series products and as much as 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 series products

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.1 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

For a complete list of changes specific to your OS, refer to the Release Notes document.

AMD released its latest version of the ATI Catalyst Software Suite to date, Catalyst 9.12 WHQL, which provides drivers and system software for the company's ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD 7-series chipset IGPs, ATI multimedia products, and the AMD FireStream GPGPU processors. Version 9.12 announced today, comes with expanded GPU support for DirectCompute 10.1 for specific GPUs, includes performance increments, OpenGL 3.2 extension support, along with the usual application-specific fixes.

To begin with, application-specific performance increments include an overall performance improvement as high as 9% on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, for 3DMark Vantage. GT1 - Jane Nash performance improves as much as 15% and FT4 - GPU Cloth improves up to 15%. Performance improves as much as 6% on single card configurations for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat. The release provides DirectCompute 10.1 support for ATI Radeon HD 4800 and HD 4700 GPUs in both single and multi-GPU configurations. Lastly, this release adds support for certain OpenGL 3.2 extensions for all GPUs from Radeon HD 2000 series and upward (HD 3000, HD 4000, and HD 5000).


DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.12 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

For more information, refer to the Release Notes document.

AMD published its near-monthly installment of the ATI Catalyst Software Suite, which provides essential drivers for the company's ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD 7-series chipset IGPs, ATI multimedia products, and the AMD FireStream GPGPU processors. Version 9.11 announced today, comes with the same hardware support base as the older version, includes two new features, and carries the usual application-specific fixes.

New features include GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta, and High Quality downscaling for video transcoding MSE. The release of ATI Catalyst, according to AMD, supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduce system resource utilization, and preserve battery life. Hardware acceleration is supported on all existing Radeon HD 5000 and HD 4000 series graphics processors. The release of ATI Catalyst includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920x1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320x240 @30p - iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive. For a list of minor issues fixed in the release, refer to the Release Notes document.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.11 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

AMD released the latest version of its ATI Catalyst software suite. Version 9.10 WHQL brings with it official support for the company's newest ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics processors, adds features that enhance usability under Windows 7, along with the usual list of bug fixes. The driver also adds support for Super Sample Anti-Aliasing, for Radeon HD 5800 GPUs. A complete list of changes can be read in the release notes document. The most important of them are listed below:

• ATI Catalyst 9.10 now includes full GPU support for the award winning ATI HD Radeon 5800 series GPUs.
• Provides support for a new Anti-Aliasing method on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. Users can now experience the high level of anti-aliasing image quality using Super Sampling anti-aliasing while maintaining good performance levels
• Adds GPU acceleration for the Windows 7 Drag and Drop video converting application

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.10 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

AMD today launched the most powerful processor ever created, found in its next-generation graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards, and the world's first and only to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11, the new gaming and compute standard shipping shortly with Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. Boasting up to 2.72 TeraFLOPS of compute power, the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series effectively doubles the value consumers can expect of their graphics purchases, delivering twice the performance-per-dollar of previous generations of graphics products. AMD will initially release two cards: the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, each with 1GB GDDR5 memory. With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards, PC users can expand their computing experience with ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, accelerate their computing experience with ATI Stream technology, and dominate the competition with superior gaming performance and full support of Microsoft DirectX 11, making it a "must-have" consumer purchase just in time for Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

"With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cars driven by the most powerful processor on the planet, AMD is changing the game, both in terms of performance and the experience," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Products Group, AMD. "As the first to market with full DirectX 11 support, an unmatched experience made possible with ATI Eyefinity technology, and ATI Stream technology harnessing open standards designed to help make Windows 7 that much better, I can say with confidence that AMD is the undisputed leader in graphics once more."

AMD released version 9.9 of its ATI Catalyst driver suite that provides drivers and related essential software for ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD 7-series core-logic, and ATI Multimedia products. This release mainly intends to fix application-specific issues, and features related to Catalyst Control Center application. For more details, refer to the Release Notes document. Highlights include:

• Anti-Aliasing support for Ghostbusters
• ATI CrossFireX support for Resident Evil 5
• Graphics corruption fix for Sims 3
• Catalyst Control Center - Basic now responds properly after exiting Quick Adjust Video Settings
• Edge enhancement and de-noise sliders in Catalyst Control Center no longer lags or appears out of sync with mouse movement
• Launching Hotkeys Manager in Catalyst Control Center no longer causes an unhandled exception error
• The "Desktop Rotation" page in Catalyst Control Center no longer shows additional information for the second display when the secondary adapter is connected
• HDMI is now detected properly as DTV (HDMI) instead of DTV (DVI) when the HDMI display is hotplugged for the first time
• Catalyst Control Center no longer displays error message when specific HDMI displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back
• Intermittent failures no longer occur with MediaShow Espresso once a transcoding process has been completed

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.9

AMD today made ATI Catalyst 9.8 driver suite available to the masses through its proper channel of posting it on the AMD Game portal, complete with related documentation. The company released the software last friday to readers of the company blog, just so it could loosely coincide with the bulk of activity during Quakecon 2009, when the company also carried out a series of private demonstrations of its upcoming DirectX 11 compliant graphics hardware to sections of the media.

Catalyst 9.8 has an unusually long changelog this time around, which can be attributed to two important changes: a series of CrossFireX performance enhancements that are game-specific, and the inclusion of OpenGL 3.1 support.

Without much of a buzz except past leaks suggesting that the company would roll out a beta at this year's Quakecon, AMD released the ATI Catalyst 9.8 WHQL driver suite to readers of the company blog, before formally announcing it and adding it to the AMD Game portal. The package installs drivers for ATI Radeon graphics hardware, including its discrete and integrated graphics processors, AMD 7-series chipsets, and ATI Theater series multimedia products.

With lack of proper documentation (read: release notes) at hand, there are no specifics available about the driver, though one could expect the usual application/hardware/OS-specific enhancement, a possibly expanded supported products list with new SKUs in the Radeon HD 4700/4800 series that surfaced over the last month.

DOWNLOAD:ATI Catalyst 9.8 Driver Suite for Windows 7 and Vista 32-bit | Windows 7 and Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

AMD today sneaked in the latest version of its ATI Catalyst driver suite that provides support to several AMD/ATI components such as ATI Radeon series GPUs, AMD desktop chipsets, AMD FireStream GPGPU, and ATI Theater multimedia products. As revealed by the release notes document, AMD introduced several performance and feature-set changes, along with timely bug-fixes. Highlights include:

• Crysis performance at very high quality preset increases by up to 8% on Radeon HD 4800 series
  
• Lost Planet Colonies - performance increases by 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing is used on the HD 4800 series products
  
• Introduces support for the ATI Video converter under Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit
  
• A newly designed Desktops & Displays Manager
  
• Added support for new OpenGL extensions: EXT_provoking_vertex and EXT_vertex_array_bgra
  

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver Suite for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit

AMD announced the availability of ATI Catalyst version 9.6 driver suite, that provides driver support for ATI Radeon series graphics processors (driver version 8.62), Hydravision, AMD Southbridge/Chipset driver, and Catalyst Control Center (version 8.62). The new version brings along the following application-specific performance increments:

• Company of Heores - performance gains of up to 25% for the ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series, and performance gains of up to 10% for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series.
• Crysis Warhead - performance gains of up to 11% for ATI CrossFireX configurations.
• Crysis - performance gains of up to 13% for ATI CrossFireX configurations.
• World in Conflict - performance gains of up to 30% for settings are were previously CPU limited.

The Linux version of this driver suite adds production support for SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and SLED 11. It also provides early support for RedHat Enterprise Linux 4.8.
DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.6 for Windows XP 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit

Release Notes can be read here

ATI has finally updated its web page to include the official WHQL version of ATI Catalyst 9.5, four days after we first informed you that the driver is ready and provided you with download links. The driver packs uploaded on the AMD servers should be exactly the same as the once we have uploaded on our page last week. Below the text separator are the final release notes and everything you need to know about the 9.5 release. This time I'll link you to AMD GAME! for downloads, but remember our links from the previous post here are still operational and can do the work.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.5 WHQL for Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit/64-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit, Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit

Attention all ATI users: your Catalyst 9.5 drivers have just been released. I'm still awaiting AMD's Game website to be updated to show the info on the new Catalyst, but meanwhile direct download links with the valid new driver are working. I'll update the news as soon as some new info is available. Until then, download and enjoy the new driver release.

DOWNLOAD: Catalyst 9.5 for Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit

AMD is ready with the industry's first WHQL-certified set of drivers for Microsoft Windows 7. The Catalyst WHQL Windows 7 driver comes as yet another first for AMD, and a first for Microsoft's Windows 7 certification program. Dated 5/5/2009, the drivers carry the version 8.612, feature full support for Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.1 and works with ATI Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000 series. The drivers also provide support for ATI Stream GPGPU technology.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.612 WHQL for Windows 7 64-bit, and Windows 7 32-bit.

AMD have just released their ATI Catalyst 9.4 Driver for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.4 Windows release include:

New Features

• ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive auto-tune application to estimate the over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive supported ATI Radeon Graphics accelerators
Designed for the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series

Resolved Issue Highlights

• "World of Warcraft" or "World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King": Flickering no longer occurs when Shadow is set to medium/high using ATI CrossFire configurations
• Google Sketchup no longer displays blank screen
• Resolutions above 1024 x 768 will now full screen properly for specific HDMI displays
• Artifacts no longer visible while playing Age of Conan DX10
• VC-1 progressive disc playback no longer exhibits block corruption.
• The Compute Abstraction Layer (CAL) driver now functions properly under Windows XP

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst version 9.4 for Windows XP/Vista/7 (32/64-bit versions)

AMD today announced the availability of GPU PerfStudio 2.0, a free, platform-agnostic, next-generation AMD graphics application development tool for game developers, obtainable through a closed beta program. GPU PerfStudio 2.0 has been designed from the ground up to easily integrate with existing projects, and help to identify and resolve performance issues early in the development cycle. With these tools, AMD is bringing its unparalleled understanding of 3D graphics technology and the leadership of its line of ATI Radeon graphics cards to bear on the development process.

"The GPU PerfStudio 2.0 suite of tools is extensive, customizable and, most importantly, based on open standards, which is critical for developers looking to integrate them into their existing workflows," said Neal Robison, director, Developer Relations, Graphics Products Group, AMD. "AMD is committed to arming developers with a full complement of hardware and development tools that help increase their development efficiency and improve 3D performance quality."

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!

ATI wants to diminish the list of supported graphics cards in the next release of Catalyst. With the release of ATI Catalyst 9.4, the plan is to exclude support for Radeon 9500, 9600, 9800, X800, X1800, X1900 and other desktop video cards. Catalyst 9.4 will also lack support for the FireGL X1/X2/X3, V3000, V5000, V7000 and FireMV 2200, 2250 professional cards. Of course owners of these models will still be permitted to download older drivers and use them happily. The ATI Catalyst 9.4 is set to be released next month.

Source: TechConnect Magazine

ATI's CrossFire multi-GPU technology started off on the Intel platform with ATI's own brand of chipset before AMD acquired the company. AMD/ATI then allowed CrossFire and the succeeding CrossFireX standards to be supported by Intel chipsets. The only current chipset platform that doesn't support CrossFire is the NVIDIA nForce series, which as ASRock demonstrated during the ongoing CeBIT event, breaks the dogma.

ASRock devised a BIOS for its nForce 740i based N7AD-SLI motherboard that enables support for CrossFire. AMD's Catalyst drivers were able to detect the motherboard as a qualified platform and enable CrossFire between two installed ATI Radeon accelerators. The setup was able to show performance increments during a 3DMark06 session. ASRock is reportedly working out similar BIOS firmware for several other motherboards made by it, and wants to enable CrossFire, CrossFireX for all its nForce motherboards.


Source: Hardware-Aktuell

The RivaTuner team today announced a new version of one of the popular graphics card performance-control and monitoring utilities. Rivatuner version 2.24 adds several new features and fixes minor bugs and issues found with the older version.

DOWNLOAD: RivaTuner v2.24

Detailed lists of bug-fixes and feature additions follow:

AMD has just released ATI Catalyst version 9.2, so now you have a brand new driver for tonight and a nice tweaking utility to test. Catalyst 9.2 brings performance benefits in several games:

• Crysis DX10 gains up to 20%
• Crysis Warhead DX10 gains up to 20%
• World in Conflict gains up to 5%

Now the new driver also enables Anisotropic Filtering for DirectX 10 applications in Windows Vista and fixes some minor issues that occured in previous versions. For the full list of fixes, please read the Catalyst 9.2 release notes.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst version 9.2 for Windows XP and Windows Vista (32/64-bit versions)

Source: AMD Game!

Although the Radeon HD 4850 X2 is an official SKU by AMD, launched (rather paper-launched) by the company along with the HD 4870 X2, Sapphire ended up being the only company to come up with an HD 4850 X2 series product line, since AMD didn't specify a reference design of its own. Sapphire went on to launch 1GB (2x 512MB) and 2GB (2x 1GB) variants of the said accelerator.

In AMD's latest release of the Catalyst driver suite (version 9.1), the HD 4850 X2 was excluded from the supported hardware list. Instead the company now released a special release of Catalyst 9.1 for the Radeon HD 4850 X2 series. The driver provides the same feature-set and list of fixes as described in the original release notes document for Catalyst 9.1, albeit being specific for the said accelerator. The WHQL-signed drivers are available for Windows Vista and Windows XP operating systems from the AMD website here.

AMD today released its timely update to the ATI Catalyst system drivers package that provides drivers driver support for ATI Radeon graphics accelerators, AMD 7-series chipset with integrated graphics. The drivers are effictive for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux operating systems.

The new release expands the feature-set of the ATI Catalyst, along with a set of fixes as described in the release notes (PDF). The fixes mostly revolve around Catalyst Control Center and the video acceleration features of the driver. To begin with, the new driver provides full OpenGL 3.0 support, including a few new GL extensions. The release also favours Linux by providing support for Hybrid CrossFireX. More importantly, the Linux version of the driver, provides MultiView support, that enables using independent display-heads on setups with multiple ATI GPUs. It is supported by any combination of ATI Radeon GPUs, Radeon HD 2000 series and later.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.1 for Windows XP (32bit) | Windows XP (64bit) | Windows Vista (32bit) | Windows Vista (64bit)

Yesterday ATI released two updates to its Catalyst driver package, the one is actually being a whole new driver for Windows 7. The ATI Catalyst preview driver for Windows 7 includes drivers for all Radeon HD 2000, 3000 and 4000 series GPUs plus the ATI Catalyst Control Center with limited features support.
The ATI Catalyst release 8.12 hotfix is said to improve DirectX10 performance in various applications in multi-core CPU systems. It also resolves the BSOD issues using dual ATI Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire mode.

DOWNLOAD: Windows 7 Preview Driver | ATI Catalyst release 8.12 HOTFIX

Source: AMD Customer Care

Empowering consumers to get elite-level computing performance for under $900 U.S. dollars, AMD today launched “Dragon” platform technology for desktop PCs featuring the new AMD Phenom II X4 processor. Even the most demanding users such as enthusiasts and high-end gamers desire affordable systems capable of delivering HD entertainment, graphic-intensive game play at the highest settings their monitors can handle, as well as quick and easy transfer of video entertainment to and from mobile devices. Dragon platform technology provides the power to do it all by combining AMD’s highest-performing CPU, the AMD Phenom II X4 processor, with award winning ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets. And it’s offered at an incredible value with Dragon-based systems available for up to $1,200 U.S. dollars less than competing systems that deliver comparable performance.

Leading global PC manufacturers HP, Dell and Alienware plan to offer Dragon platform technology-based desktop systems in the first quarter of 2009, with Dell offering immediate availability in its Dell XPS desktop line. “The XPS 625 desktop powered by AMD’s Dragon platform technology features new AMD Phenom II processors to enable a significant boost in speed for enhanced gaming, as well as the flexibility to enable multi-tasking and HD video capabilities free from delays, stalls and lags,” said Arthur Lewis, general manager of Dell Gaming Group. “The XPS 625 gives gamers the unbelievable experience they expect at a price point that won’t break the bank.”

ATI programmers have released a hotfix that corrects the black screen and boot OS failure when Catalyst 8.12 is installed on Windows Vista, and two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 video cards are working in CrossFire X mode. This issue only occurs when two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic cards are installed in the system with ATI CrossFireX technology. One single ATI Radeon HD 4850 card will not encounter this issue. To download the hotfix for both Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, please click here.

Source: AMD/ATI

ATI has just released this year's final version of its Catalyst driver package. As you might already know from our previous BETA release post, with the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can now unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for various ATI Radeon graphics processors. This release also adds Stream technology to ATI's AVIVO Video Converter and many performance improvements.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.12

It's already December, time for a new ATI Catalyst 8.12 driver. It's still a little bit early for the final driver release though, but a Beta version is already available, and now we know some inside information of what this driver will bring very soon. Here's a little sneak preview, with Catalyst 8.12 ATI will land its Stream support for Radeon video cards. The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now included in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream. Catalyst 8.12 is also said to bring Stream technology to ATI Avivo Video Converter, for enhanced video transcoding. For good or for bad, only ATI Radeon HD 4800 and Radeon HD 4600 series support this tool. At last, Catalyst 8.12 comes with many game performance improvements (read more below). Here's the link to the Catalyst 8.12 Beta version, the final release is coming soon. We'll inform you when it is available.

AMD has released an ATI Catalyst driver hotfix, Catalyst 8.11 with Intel X58 i7 Driver, that aims to improve performance on Intel X58 platfoms with ATI graphics accelerator installed. The X58-specific optimizations would also be part of next month's Catalyst 8.12 release. The hotfix applies to all discrete graphics cards, ATI Radeon X1000 series and later. The game-specific improvements are universal (helps everyone). A concise list of improvements this hotfix brings about as listed by AMD is as follows:

• Improves performance in various Direct3D and OpenGL applications on the X58 platform. AMD's next official ATI Catalyst release (ATI Catalyst 8.12) will include these optimizations
• Improves performance for the DirectX 9 version of Far Cry 2 on CrossFire compatible systems
• Improves performance for the DirectX 10 version of Far Cry 2 on both single and CrossFire compatible systems
• Improves performance for the DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 version of Stalker Clear Sky on both single and CrossFireX configurations at higher resolutions
• Brothers in Arms - Hells Highway no longer displays corruption on the 'Black Friday' level.

DOWNLOAD: for Windows XP (32/64-bit) | for Windows Vista (32/64-bit). More information can be found here.

I'm happy to inform you that ATI has just posted links to its latest Catalyst version 8.11 WHQL drives. This release of ATI Catalyst enables users to verify whether an application is running in ATI CrossFireX mode. The new option found in the ATI Catalyst Control Center system tray, will allow users to verify whether a Direct3D or OpenGL application is running in ATI CrossFireX mode and display “ATI Cross-FireX” logo on screen when the application is actually running. This release also includes some performance enhancements (on all Radeon HD04xxx and Radeon HD3xxx products) that improve Far Cry 2 gameplay from 3 to 10% for single card mode and 8 to 14% in CrossFire configuration. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky game also gains 6 to 18% performance in single card settings and 10 to 30% in CrossfireX mode.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.11 WHQL

Source: Game! AMD

AMD had released an updated hotfix to its ATI Catalyst 8.10 drivers the other day, with hotfix 71310. It succeeded hotfix 70517 for the said version of Catalyst. Hotfixes specific to certain games, are intended to selectively improve hardware performance and/or visual quality. When AMD released the older hotfix for version 8.10 of Catalyst, it aimed to improve performance in general. It was later found by keen observers, that the hotfix manipulated with visual elements of the game in an attempt to gain performance. A popular example of this, was noted in the "lost rocks" issue in Far Cry 2, where the hotfix 70517 caused the texture and/or geometric loss of certain rocks along a track from a scene, presumably reducing load on the graphics processor(s).

With hotfix 71310 issued yesterday, AMD seems to have fixed the issue. Expreview put the hotfix to test, where it was found that the "lost rocks" issue was fixed. The larger issue was of the driver interfering with visual elements the game has to offer. The fix however, came at the expense of performance. Expreview used a test-bed consisting of Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU, ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics, 2x 1 GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, all seated on an ASUS Striker II Extreme motherboard, running Windows Vista 32-bit operating system. The testers used Driver Sweeper to make sure a new variant of the driver installed on a purged environment. Testing Far Cry 2 revealed that the issue was addressed, but at a performance loss. The frame-rate dropped from 48.12 fps to 43.20, which is roughly a 10% loss in frame-rate.


Source: Expreview

AMD updated the graphics driver hotfix titled, 737-38664: Far Cry 2 and Stalker Clear Sky HotFix. The hotfix aims to address issues with the two game titles and improves performance. Highlights include:

• Performance improvement for the DirectX 9 version of Far Cry 2 on CrossFire installations
• Performance improvement for the DirectX 10 version of Far Cry 2 on single GPU and CrossFire installations
• Improves performance for the DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 version of STALKER: Clear Sky on both single and CrossFireX configurations at higher resolutions

This hotfix includes STALKER performance enhancements for the DirectX 10 version of the game. Also be sure to download the STALKER Clear Sky DirectX 10.1 patch, which will provide further performance enhancements (up to 10% at higher resolutions) and image quality enhancements over DirectX 10. AMD strongly recommends you download the game patch and test it in conjunction with this Catalyst hotfix. For more information on the hotfix and downloads, please visit this page.

Windows 7 is Microsoft's next major PC operating system. Early non-retail versions of this OS may have already made it to certain sections of the industry, and this calls for hardware support. AMD is ready with its ATI Catalyst driver suite for Windows 7. The driver itself is titled ATI Catalyst Windows 7 Preview Driver Package. As the name suggests, it is at an experimental/early stage, much like the OS itself. Use of it is not covered by any warranty. It provides support for ATI Radeon HD 2000 series, HD 3000 series, HD 4000 series, derived mobile GPUs, and AMD 7 series chipsets with integrated graphics.

The 32-bit version of the driver can be downloaded from here, and the 64-bit version here.

Odd enough, AMD has just issued a hotfix for the yet to be released PC game title Far Cry 2. The patch is meant to be used for the Radeon X1000, HD 2000, HD 3000 and HD 4000 series cards to improve the performance of Far Cry 2 in DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. Both single and CrossFire compatible systems will benefit from it. The hotfix download package includes both the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center. The hotfix can be downloaded by clicking on this link here. After all this might be a smart move for AMD/ATI. The official launch date for Far Cry 2 is October 24th, and the game will launch simultaneously on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Now ATI owners will be prepared and hopefully won't have problems running the game when it is released.

Source: AMD

By some coincidence, right after NVIDIA's 178.24 WHQL driver release, ATI also published new Catalyst version 8.10. There're two major features that come with the new Catalyst 8.10 and they are:

• Catalyst Control Center Fan speed control - this release of the ATI software driver introduces the ability for users to control the speed of the GPU fan when running in accelerated graphics.
• Force Component Video Detection - this feature allows users the option in Catalyst Control Center to force Component Video detection in the Display Options aspect. By selecting this option user are able to adjust the Component Video property settings (without a device being physically attached) allowing user to change format and frequency to a desired value. The selected values will be applied to the display once a component video display device get connected. The feature is applicable for all AMD products supporting Component Video.

There are no indications of any performance improvements with Catalyst 8.10.

DOWNLOAD: Catalyst 8.10

Source: AMD/ATI

As much as releasing hardware that brings in competition and products at great prices is essential for AMD, backing it up with software is equally important. Company slides that point to tentative time-scales that pertain to AMD's software releases have surfaced. Some of the important software products AMD releases are Catalyst driver suite for ATI products and OverDrive, a tool that provides features to tweak AMD processors and graphics cards, as well as several motherboard parameters for motherboards equipped with AMD chipsets.

The slides also provide a sneak-peak into what could be in store with those releases. VR-Zone has published slides, from which the first one points to release dates for the Catalyst driver suite with respect to release candidates and public releases. The second slide points to time-scales at which software with vital changes are released. We are already past August and AMD has rolled out the feature pertaining to that release, allowing Hybrid Crossfire of AMD chipsets with integrated graphics working in tandem with Radeon HD 3400 series graphics accelerators.

It is a known flaw that some models of the Radeon HD 4800 accelerators fail oZone3D FurMark, an OpenGL based graphics benchmark application that has found to stress Radeon HD 4800 series far enough to result in over-heating, artifacts or even driver crashes. The Catalyst 8.8 drivers have found to treat the FurMark executable differently based on its file-name. Expreview tested this hypothesis by benchmarking a reference design HD 4850 board using Catalyst 8.8 driver, with two runs of FurMark. In the first run, the test was cleared at a low score, much lower compared to those of whatever successful runs on older drivers could churn out. Suspecting that the driver could be using some sort of internal profile specific to the FurMark executable, Expreview renamed the furmark.exe file, thereby not letting the driver know it's FurMark that's being run. Voila! the margin of lead the renamed FurMark executable gave over "furmark.exe" shows the driver to behave differently. A shady thing since Radeon HD 4800 almost became infamous for failing at FurMark, and at least passing it with a low score seemed better than failing at it altogether.

Expreview caught this flaw when testing the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 Professional Cooling System (PCS+) when odd behaviour with the newer driver was noted. Successive BIOS releases didn't fix the issue, in fact, it only got worse with erratic fan behaviour caused due to a "quick-fix" BIOS PowerColor issued (covered here).



Source: Expreview

AMD released the ATI Catalyst version 8.8 drivers. This driver brings in two new features among a host of bug-fixes specific to games, performance increments as such aren't indicated.

The driver suite can be downloaded here.

The two new features include new Avivo video features such as Dynamic Gamma/Contrast correction and improved video presets for ATI accelerators, Radeon HD 3000 series and upward. Another feature addition is that of the Hybrid Graphics feature being available to users of Windows XP. This technology allows pairing of the integrated graphics processor (IGP) of the AMD 780G and 780D chipsets with a Radeon HD 2400 or Radeon HD 3400 series accelerator. For a comprehensive list of fixes, please read the Release Notes.

Expreview conducted a comprehensive comparison between the performance of ATI graphics hardware using the older Catalyst 8.6 + Hotfix driver versus that of the newest Catalyst 8.7 driver. The testbed comprised of:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 overclocked at 4.05 GHz
• ASUS Maximus II Formula motherboard
• G.Skill 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1100
• ASUS Radeon HD 4870 TOP

Tests included a majority of games, real-world performance tests along with synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark. The performance gains of the hardware using the 8.7 Catalyst driver never crossed 2.33%, in fact in some tests there was a performance loss of up to 1.08% against the older 8.6 Catalyst driver plus the hotfix. It shows that on a Radeon HD4870, the newer driver did not bring about significant improvements, at least not on par with what the release notes suggested. Expreview also suggests that if users aren't experiencing other issues which the Catalyst 8.7 fixed such as video output corruption in rare cases, the older driver is worthwhile. Test results are provided below.


Source: Expreview

AMD released stable versions of the ATI Catalyst driver package for the Radeon series graphics accelerators. According to the release notes document (located here), improvements on both the features and performance fronts have been brought about. The drivers specific to your version of Windows, Linux, Windows on Macintosh (Bootcamp), Mac OS and on your model of Radeon accelerator can be found on the company website here.

In relation to the new 3DMark Vantage benchmark, all ATI owners that experience some problems with the benchmark, or just want to try some new drivers for their cards can now try 3DMark Vantage Catalyst hotfix driver for Windows Vista 32/64-bit. The 3DMark Vantage Catalyst hotfix (737-33840) includes bug fixes and performance enhancements for all Radeon HD 2400/2600/2900/3400/3600/3850 and 3870 cards. If you experience problems downloading the hotfix please be patient, all servers are currently overloaded.

DOWNLOAD

Source: AMD Customer Care

ATI has released a hotfix that addresses the following issues when Catalyst 7.9 or higher version is installed on AGP cards:

• After installing Catalyst 7.9 or higher an error is received launching DirectX based games. The error indicates that Direct3D Failed to Initialize or similar.
• In Vista your Experience score will drop to 1.0.
• The DirectX Diagnostic tests will fail in both XP and Vista.

Download the fix from here.
Source: ATI

A new beta version of ATI's Catalyst display driver has been leaked onto the internet, although there's very little information about it. The build number is 8.49 (although that doesn't mean too much - this is most likely a beta version of the 8.5 Catalyst which will be released next month) and the driver supports all Radeon 9500 and above cards. The Windows XP version (which apparently works with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS) can be downloaded here, and the Vista 64-bit version can be downloaded from here. There's no Vista 32-bit download available at the moment.

Source: Station Drivers

Download links of ATI's latest Catalyst 8.4 drivers are now online. To download the full release notes for Catalyst 8.4 click here.

DOWNLOAD

Source: AMD GAME

The long awaited ATI Catalyst 8.3 is finally here! This driver package brings lots of new features, some of them being CrossFireX support, added Hybrid graphics support and full DirectX 10.1 compatibility.


ATI Catalyst 8.3 Release Notes Highlights
ATI Catalyst 8.3 for Windows XP/Vista 32/64-bit

Source: AMD GAME

AMD today announced its latest graphics driver release to advance the Ultimate Visual Experience for PC gaming enthusiasts and casual gamers alike. Expected to be available for download starting March 5, ATI Catalyst 8.3 is a milestone software update in delivering both CrossFireX for Windows Vista - the world's first quad-GPU support, and scalable, cost-effective three GPU support - as well as ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology for casual gamers. These multi-GPU capabilities provide gamers a more realistic and immersive experience allowing them to play at high resolutions with demanding image quality settings, and at a better value than competing multi-GPU solutions.

All ATI card owners may prepare for another new Catalyst very soon. The release notes for ATI Catalyst 8.2 package are already posted online here (download in pdf format), meaning that the new driver download links are to be posted too in a few hours. I'll update the story with active links as soon as they're up and running. Until then prepare yourself for the new Catalyst 8.2.

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Performance improvements with this release of Catalyst includes Company of Heroes DX10 frame rates increasing as much as 20% across all of the ATI Radeon HD 2x00 series of products and on all ATI Radeon HD 3x00 series of products. These performance improvements are even larger (up to 30%) for CrossFire configurations.

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EDIT: ATI Catalyst 8.2 Display Driver Download

Source: AMD GAME!, Phyxion.net

All Radeon HD 3870 X2 owners may be curious to know about this sample ATI Catalyst 8-451-2-080123a driver specially for their X2 cards. The 103MB package includes both Windows XP and Windows Vista drivers. Build date is 08-01-23. Use at your own risk, those drivers are not WHQL certified.

DOWNLOAD

Source: Phyxion.net

The latest and official ATI Catalyst driver package version 8.1 is ready to be tested. Catalyst 8.1 introduces MultiView support. This feature provides for hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across multiple graphics adapters. MultiView will provide hardware accelerated 3D rendering in a system containing multiple graphics cards on an extended desktop arrangement. It will allow for the rendering performance and additional frame buffer resources to be evenly shared with the second and third graphics adapters. This feature will be supported under Windows XP (32 and 64 bit versions), Windows Vista (32- and 64-bit versions), and the Linux operating system. For more information on Catalyst 8.1, including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the Catalyst 8.1 release notes.

DOWNLOAD

Source: AMD Game!

The beta version of the 8.1 Catalyst driver for Windows Vista has found its way onto the internet, although very few details are available so you'll have to try it yourself to find the improvements. The driver works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS and should be compatible with all Radeon 9550 and newer cards. The driver can be downloaded here.

Source: techPowerUp! Forums

AMD has updated its Catalyst driver to version 7.12, which supports all ATI Radeon 9500 series and newer graphics cards. The changes in this release include a number of game fixes, a few performance tweaks and enhanced OverDrive support for Radeon HD 2900 cards. Download locations are as follows:

• Windows XP 32-bit – here
  
• Windows XP 64-bit – here
  
• Windows Vista 32-bit – here
  
• Windows Vista 64-bit – here

Source: AMD GAME!

For the past few months some of ATI's older AGP cards like the x800 and other second generation series cards, have been unable to run the latest Direct3D games. Users have noted problems in Hellgate London, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, Need for Speed Pro Street, and Crysis(These problems often consist of not just minor artifacts, but D3D not even working!). These second generation series cards can not even pass Direct x diagnostics with the current drivers. Some say that those users on "old" graphics cards should upgrade and its simply their fault for having outdated technology. This Bias is contrary to what is actually going on, the x800 series cards are perfectly capable of running most of these games at medium to high settings especially Call of Duty 4 and Hellgate London. The Second and Third Generation ATI graphics cards are often referred to as minimum requirements for these new games, and yet they are incredibly unstable right now. And as being listed under AMD/ATI's supported products list, these cards should work with the latest drivers, but they don't. These problems started roughly with the 7.9 Catalyst release (Back on November 10th). Today ATI released its 7.11 Catalyst set of drivers and still has not provided a solution for these second generation AGP cards.
See Read More for solutions:

ATI has just released Catalyst 7.11 for Windows Vista and Windows XP and Linux platforms. This month's Windows Catalyst posting focuses on stability. For more information, please check the Release Highlights.

Note: Crysis players should continue using the Crysis hotfix driver even with this release.

DOWNLOAD

Source: Game AMD

ATI Catalyst 7.10 display driver for all ATI video cards is now available for download. Remember to read the release notes for more information.

DOWNLOAD

Source: AMD Game!

AMD/ATi sends word that a new Catalyst driver package (7.10) dubbed the "Shoot em up" driver will be released by the end of the week. Here is a partial list of performance improvements:

• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Crossfire performance improves as much as 23% on ATI Radeon 1000 series products and single card performance improves as much as 23% on both ATI Radeon HD 2000 and ATI Radeon 1000 series products
• Battlefield 2142 Crossfire performance improves 5-23% on the ATI Radeon HD 2600, ATI Radeon HD 2400 and ATI Radeon X1300/X1550 series
• Call of Duty 2 performance improves up to 6.7% on both single card and Crossfire ATI Radeon HD 2600 and ATI Radeon HD 2400 configurations
• Call of Juarez DirectX 10 Crossfire performance improves up to 42% and single card performance improves up to 34% on all ATI Radeon HD 2000 series products.
• FEAR Crossfire performance improves as much as 16% on the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, ATI Radeon X1650 XT, ATI Radeon HD 2400 series and ATI Radeon X1300/X1550 series

Source: [H]ard|OCP

ATI has just announced the availability of a hotfix for Catalyst 7.9, that addresses the following issues:

• Enemy Territory Quake Wars: Crossfire flickering issues are resolved. Performance is improved
• Bioshock: Resolved intermittent hangs for the Radeon HD 2400 and Radeon HD 2600
• Call of Juarez: Texture corruption is fixed
• World In Conflict: Performance is improved
• Team Fortress 2: Facial morphing corruption is fixed
• Time Shift: Resolved random crashes for Radeon 9xxx and Radeon X8xx series of products

The hotfix applies to all ATI Radeon X series and HD series of video cards.
DOWNLOAD

Source: ATI

ATI today also released updated Catalyst drivers. The new ATI Catalyst 7.9 brings mainly game performance improvements.

DOWNLOAD

Source: ATI

AMD today announced plans to extend its leadership position in graphics software with major enhancements to performance and compatibility for ATI Radeon graphics for consumer Linux users. These improvements are planned for subsequent releases of ATI's Catalyst software package beginning in early September. This announcement represents a significant first step in redefining the graphics landscape for Linux consumer users. Moving forward, AMD also plans to accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community as well.

AMD/ATI has leaked the latest unofficial Catalyst 7.9 driver. Coming in both Windows XP and Vista flavors, this beta version only adds support for the AGP versions of the Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 series. The driver is dated August 1st. Use at your own risk!

DOWNLOAD

Source: TechConnect Magazine

AMD/ATI has released Catalyst 7.8 for the month of August 2007. There is 24 issues that have been fixed for Windows Vista, and another eleven issues fixed for Windows XP. The Vista Driver Security Flaw should haven been fixed with this release. However there is no mention of that being fixed in the release notes.

New Features:

• Overdrive for the HD2400/2600 Series in crossfire, and single card setups.

Performance Improvements:

• Lost Planet DX10 with anti-aliasing improves 11% or greater on HD2900XT products.
• HD2400/2600 (single and CrossFire) show improvements of as much as 6% in 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark 2005.
• Serious Sam 2 with HDR enabled improves as much as 14.5% on Radeon™ HD2900, Radeon™ HD2600 and Radeon™ HD2400 products.

Link to the download and release notes.

Source: AMD/ATI

The market recently discovered a potential security vulnerability that could impact AMD's Catalyst software package. After immediate investigation, AMD determined that a small section of code from one of the files in our installer package is potentially vulnerable.
The AMD plan is to provide a new ATI Catalyst package no later than Monday, Aug. 13, 2007, that resolves this vulnerability. We strongly recommend that desktop ATI Radeon graphics users update to Catalyst version 7.8 once it is available here.

AMD and Microsoft are also investigating additional distribution channels for this update. This vulnerability was not exclusive to AMD.

An unpatched flaw in drivers from ATI creates a means to smuggle malware past improved security defences in the latest version of Windows and into the Vista kernel.

Microsoft is working with ATI on an update which security watchers warn might be far from straightforward to roll-out.

AMD/ATI has released new Catalyst 7.8 BETA video drivers. Unfortunately there're no release notes for this release. Use at your own risk.

ATI Catalyst 7.8 BETA all OS

Source: ATI drivers & bios

Anyone who owns an AMD graphics card and runs it under Windows knows that driver updates are complete and frequent. However, change the operating system, and this level of support seems to evaporate. You're lucky to even get a LiveCD to boot if you have an ATI card in your system, and even if you manage to install a version of *nix, good luck getting 3D applications to run bug-free.

Thankfully, AMD decided to listen to their customers. The latest AMD Catalyst for Linux is much cleaner, much more efficient, and much faster than the older version of Catalyst. Classic *nix functions, such as switching between X server and CLI are much smoother/don't freeze the system, and late 3D applications (even simple ones such as Google Earth) actually work now, which couldn't be said for older versions of AMD Catalyst for Linux.

Granted, the Linux version is not as fully featured as the Windows version. However, it is just as functional, and just as stable, as the Windows version, which is a huge step in the right direction for *nix users.


Source: The Inquirer

ATI has updated the Catalyst display driver for all 9500 series and newer cards, taking the version number to 7.6. Numerous issues have been resolved, and there are also significant performance improvements for Half Life 2: Episode 1 and Dark Messiah Might and Magic when using a dual 2900 XT setup. Full release notes are available on the ATI website, with the download links as follows:

• XP 32-bit - download
• XP 64-bit - download
• Vista 32-bit - download
• Vista 64-bit download

ATI has released a new version 7.5 of their Catalyst software suit. This release of Catalyst introduces the following new features:

• DirectX 10 driver support for the Radeon HD 2900 XT (single card and CrossFire configurations) for Windows Vista
• Second Generation ATI Theater 650

Not a word about Radeon HD 2900 XT performance improvements in this release. Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from here.
Source: TPU! Forums

The following driver version 8.37.4.3 is provided as an update to the driver software that currently ships with the Radeon HD 2900 series products. The download file contains the display drivers and Catalyst Control Center. This driver applies to the following operating systems: Windows XP Home/Professional/Media Center Edition/Professional x64 Edition and Windows Vista 32/64-bit. For more information please refer to the release notes.

Source: AMD/ATI

AMD/ATI has released new official drivers for ATI based video cards. This release of Catalyst has improved OpenGL performance under the Microsoft Vista operating system for all Radeon X1000 series of products, in both single card and hardware CrossFire configurations. Typical improvements of 15% or more can be seen in games such as Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey, with enthusiast class of products seeing improvements of 30% or more. This release of Catalyst also adds the Avivo Video Converter for Windows Vista (32-bit). Head over the AMD/ATI download section and select the proper Catalyst driver for your operating system and video card.

Source: AMD/ATI

The French Station Drivers let you download a leaked Beta of the upcoming Catalyst 7.3. Of course the driver is non-official and the improvements appear to be very minor. OCWorkbench ran it through their paces and differences to the Catalyst 7.2 aren't nearly there.


Source: StationDrivers

A recent interview with ATI/AMD at ExtremeTech shows some insight to future versions of Catalyst Control Center (CCC) software. AMD/ATI knows that previous versions have been lagging, complicated, and somewhat bloated. AMD made a good effort to fix this by a complete rewrite of CCC, but it still feels a bit lacking to some people. Instead of working on making the current CCC faster and more streamlined (like the old control panel), AMD/ATI is focusing on making one centralized application to manage all AMD/ATI products.

Says AMD representative Phil Rogers: "Longer term our goal is continue to improve the user experience and to move towards a single or central user interface where AMD customers can configure the majority of AMD product settings... It is our goal and vision to eventually have a single UI for all AMD products (graphics, CPU, chipset), but this is of course a major project, and it will be quite some time before we're able to release such a product"

This means that AMD hopes to make their control center much more featured, but this may prove to backfire upon release. With great power comes great responsibility, as Spiderman's Uncle Ben once said. And if AMD can't quite handle the responsibility, we may be looking at one complex, bloated driver interface.

Source: The Inquirer

ATI/AMD has released its latest Windows XP Catalyst driver, version 7.1, for the newer Radeon cards (9600 and newer). There have been quite a few minor fixes, official download available here.

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This is a beta version of the upcoming Catalyst 7.1 Radeon driver from ATI/AMD. We are sure a lot of people will be really pleased to see it. The revision build of this archive is 8.33 and should be an interesting driver for sure. I can not stress enough that this is a beta driver which is distributed by ASUS. You use it at your own risk.

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Download: ATI Catalyst 7.1 Beta for Window Vista (91.6MB)

Source: Guru3D

While NVIDIA still hasn't posted a G80 driver, ATI has upgraded it's suite of drivers for Windows Vista. Anyone with Windows Vista RC2 or RTM can download and install the latest version of Catalyst Beta Driver for Windows Vista, which fixes issues in several games such as Serious Sam 2. It also fixes issues in Windows Media Player, the general installation/uninstallation of the drivers, and Temporal Anti-Aliasing. You can read the full release notes here.

You can download the December 13th version of the drivers here.

AMD/ATI does not reccomend using these drivers on mission-critical systems, does not support them, and says they will only install on a computer with Windows Vista RC2 or later.

Source: AMD

ATI has released new official Catalyst 6.12 drivers for ATI based video cards. This release of the ATI Catalyst software suite introduces DirectX video acceleration for CrossFire enabled configurations.

Download: ATI Catalyst 6.12 Software Suite (34.6MB)

Source: AMD