Cat 8.2 succeeds version 8.1 to everyone's bewilderment

Friday 15th February 2008, 12:12:00 AM, written by Farid

Never letting the beat drop, the red --and somehow at the same time green-- team of mad MCs at AMD released yesterday the second version (the .2) of their 2008 series (the 8) of catalyst drivers for Radeon-family graphics cards.

Available for Windows XP, XP-64, Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit, Linux x86, x86-64 and more. According to AMD, one of the main highlight of this driver release is the performance increase, as much as 20%, in the DX10 mode of Company of Heroes for all Radeon HD 2x00 and HD 3x00 (Windows only, obviously).

Other highlights for the Windows version include bug fixes in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars’ level editor (Windows Vista), World of Warcraft when running in OpenGL mode (Vista) and Doom 3 when running in CrossFire with AA set to 16x and resolution to resolution to 2048x1536 and higher (Windows XP).

The release notes for Linux version only mentions a few Xserver compatibility fixes.


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Tagging

ati ± catalysts, 8, 2


Latest Thread Comments (21 total)
Posted by Albuquerque on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 18:56:04 UTC
I can't say that I have those same issues in UT3, but I'll go play a bit more this week and see if I can make it happen. I'm using max settings in-game, but I'm not forcing anything from the control panel. I wonder if it makes a difference?

Crysis was an ~85% gain for me with crossfire enabled on both DX9 and DX10. DX10 is still painfully slow in places, but I think that's more the onus of the codepath versus the video hardware / drivers. I can play in the "Very high DX9" mode at full rez with VERY reasonable framerate. It's not 60+ by any stretch of the imagination, but it's quite playable for me.

But there's always room for more improvement. :)

Posted by Skinner on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 19:15:19 UTC
Quoting Albuquerque
I can't say that I have those same issues in UT3, but I'll go play a bit more this week and see if I can make it happen. I'm using max settings in-game, but I'm not forcing anything from the control panel. I wonder if it makes a difference?

Crysis was an ~85% gain for me with crossfire enabled on both DX9 and DX10. DX10 is still painfully slow in places, but I think that's more the onus of the codepath versus the video hardware / drivers. I can play in the "Very high DX9" mode at full rez with VERY reasonable framerate. It's not 60+ by any stretch of the imagination, but it's quite playable for me.

But there's always room for more improvement. :)

I also play with AA and AF set to appl. pref. in UT3, AA is not usable right now, it runs at 35 fps.
It also crashes quite a lot btw just before entering a map btw. I wonder if it is my soundcard capping my fps in some spots. I was runing out of pci slots and use my onboard FX supreme 2 audio instead of the X-Fi

Posted by AlexV on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 19:26:17 UTC
Quoting Skinner
It looks like some sort of memory leak in UT3. When I play the Sanity Warfare map, the framerate goes downhill (35 fps)after a few seconds. Also in Trident, a CTF map, some very low framerates are popping up (38 fps 1600x1200 max IQ HD3870 CF Q6600@3ghz) during heavy fire fights. And there're more places not direcly related to increased rendering objects IMHO.
When I rename the exe to FEAR, the drop in Sanity stay's away.

I still have 35-40 fps in Gothic3 at the start and see:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2008/test_ati_radeon_hd_3870_x2/12/#abschnitt_gothic_3

Also GOW en Hellgate dx10 have major drops, to 18 fps, when playing in DX10 (same res).
Crysys is also not to great and dx9 just got broken with the latest (23st januari drivers, it was ok before)

There is still some work to do at the CF front, I hope they will succeed because CF can work so great (65% of my games have very good scaling), but its time now to fix some things which are left.
GOW is kindof bugged through the DX10 path ATM. If it's bugged on Epic's side or on ATi's I'm not yet sure. Fact of the matter is that switching to DX9 got me from unplayable teens to constantly hitting the 60 FPS framerate cap on an X2, and since the latest betas enable FSAA through the CP in the DX9 path there's no reason to use DX10 in this title ATM(bear in mind, I like DX10 personally, I'm not one of the save XP save DX9 zealots:) ).

Posted by Albuquerque on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 19:42:51 UTC
I'm definitely using onboard audio; I've yet to find a solid benchmark in the last 24 months showing me any performance benefit from "offboard" audio solutions.

That being entirely beside the point, I'll tinker with UT3 at my next opportunity and see what I can make happen.

Posted by Skinner on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 20:11:23 UTC
Quoting Morgoth the Dark Enemy
GOW is kindof bugged through the DX10 path ATM. If it's bugged on Epic's side or on ATi's I'm not yet sure. Fact of the matter is that switching to DX9 got me from unplayable teens to constantly hitting the 60 FPS framerate cap on an X2, and since the latest betas enable FSAA through the CP in the DX9 path there's no reason to use DX10 in this title ATM(bear in mind, I like DX10 personally, I'm not one of the save XP save DX9 zealots:) ).
AA in GOW dx9 is also way to slow for my tast for now. (30-40 fps in 1600x1200 max IQ) but otherwise it performs great in this path. (still some mipmap lines though!)

Posted by AlexV on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 20:20:42 UTC
Quoting Skinner
AA in GOW dx9 is also way to slow for my tast for now. (30-40 fps in 1600x1200 max IQ) but otherwise it performs great in this path. (still some mipmap lines though!)
Tried messing with the ini and setting the anisotropy level there?Either that or forcing AF through the CP.

Posted by Skinner on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 20:32:13 UTC
Quoting Morgoth the Dark Enemy
Tried messing with the ini and setting the anisotropy level there?Either that or forcing AF through the CP.
I tried CCC and ingame AF. Not messed with the ini yet, but I think there won't be an option for trilinear AF in the ini?

Posted by AlexV on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 20:55:35 UTC
Quoting Skinner
I tried CCC and ingame AF. Not messed with the ini yet, but I think there won't be an option for trilinear AF in the ini?
Actually, there is. In the WarEngineUserSettings file, found in your My Documents\My Games\Gears of War for Windows directory. Under the SystemSettings tab, you have a Trilinear toggle and a MaxAnisotroy switch. Hope this solves your issues. Cheers.

Posted by Skinner on Thursday, 14-Feb-08 21:00:24 UTC
Quoting Morgoth the Dark Enemy
Actually, there is. In the WarEngineUserSettings file, found in your My Documents\My Games\Gears of War for Windows directory. Under the SystemSettings tab, you have a Trilinear toggle and a MaxAnisotroy switch. Hope this solves your issues. Cheers.
Hmm, it was already on "true".
But after further examination I think it isn't a mipmap boundry, but the DOF boundry actually. I doný know if DOF is supposed to set in sharp.

I see it when standing on the first bridge (ashes or something) in the beginning of the game.

Posted by AcceleratorX on Friday, 15-Feb-08 00:44:57 UTC
Strangely enough I received a WHQL driver warning while installing these drivers even though the drivers are supposed to be WHQL certified. Everything else checks out fine though my OpenGL version is 6.14.10.72*78 *and not 7275 as the first poster as mentioned. Also the CCC version is 2008.0122.1519.27310. Something's definitely up with these drivers, its strange how the WHQL certification was not recognized for my Radeon HD 3870......


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