# AMD Sneaks in ATI Catalyst 9.8 Driver Suite



## btarunr (Aug 14, 2009)

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

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## AltecV1 (Aug 14, 2009)

support for the HD5000


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## wiak (Aug 14, 2009)




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## Richieb0y (Aug 14, 2009)

i hope the fps in arma 2 go sky rocket high


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## erocker (Aug 14, 2009)

btarunr said:


> there are no specifics available about the driver,





AltecV1 said:


> support for the HD5000



I guess we don't know.


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## wiak (Aug 14, 2009)

AltecV1 said:


> support for the HD5000


isnt it HD 7000 series?


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## scope54 (Aug 14, 2009)

no i looked, no r8xx references. but i did see the new SKU's in there.

and from ive seen i think there may also be OpenGl improvements. Like using GPU caps viewer, its now reporting a geometry shader, and from i remember there wasnt one. I played Quake 4 and it didnt crash on me like it usually did, so they must have done something with the OGL driver.


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## AsRock (Aug 15, 2009)

Richieb0y said:


> i hope the fps in arma 2 go sky rocket high



Need more shaders and more CPU and you will get better performance in Arma 2..

Don't know about trying these lol..  Think i'll wait and stay on 9.6's as the 9.7's were crap when over clocking the GPU.

Seem good so far only tried GTA 4 and GPUTool and no issue's.


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## Teko (Aug 15, 2009)

X1950 in Win7???


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## DaveK (Aug 15, 2009)

Teko said:


> X1950???



Support for the X1950 was dropped in 9.2 (or 9.3 can't remember). I don't know if it's 9.8 drivers or I did something without looking, but whenever I watch a movie in VLC it looks kinda odd, like it needs anti-aliasing or something


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## WarEagleAU (Aug 15, 2009)

Goody, maybe this will work a bit better than my 9.7s, seeing as I have a lighting problem with those.


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## wiak (Aug 15, 2009)

> AMD has released a new set of Catalyst graphics drivers, and there's a twist. The drivers shouldn't hit the AMD Game website until Monday, but AMD marketing chief Ian McNaughton has posted links to them on his blog.
> 
> You can grab the drivers right now for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 in their 32-bit and 64-bit variants. We can't link the actual files, though; some sort of anti-leeching technology is afoot. (Oh, and we were asked not to post hard links, too.)
> 
> ...


http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17418


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## toyo (Aug 15, 2009)

scope54 said:


> and from ive seen i think there may also be OpenGl improvements. Like using GPU caps viewer, its now reporting a geometry shader, and from i remember there wasnt one. I played Quake 4 and it didnt crash on me like it usually did, so they must have done something with the OGL driver.



OpenGL 3.1 seems to be fully supported now and we have GLSL 1.4, at least this is what the last Everest beta is reporting. Now hurry to OGL 3.2&GLSL 1.5 ATI! It's a long way from 10% so go go go!


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## Polarman (Aug 15, 2009)

Saw this somewhere else:

This month we are seeing a massive performance increase with a whole host of games as compared to the ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver. Detailed release notes are available for most of the game optimizations; here are the highlights: 

•Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance improves of up to 50% with the largest gains in configurations using ATI CrossFireX™ technology.
•Company of Heroes DirectX 10 performance improves of up to 77%. 

•Crysis DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 10% and quad mode performance improves of up to 34%. 

•Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 7% and quad mode performance improves of up to 69%.
•Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 50% and quad mode performance improves of up to 88%. 

•Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 40% and with quad mode performance improving of up to 60%. 

•UnigineTropics OpenGL performance improvements of up to 20%. 

•UnigineTropics DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in quad mode improvements of up to 20%. 

•World in Conflict DirectX 10 performance improvements of up to by 10%.

This release of the ATI Catalyst driver provides OpenGL 3.1 extension support. The following is a list of OpenGL 3.1 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.8: 


•Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40. 

•Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced).
•Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer). 

•Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the Nvidia extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens. o At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders. 

•Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object). 

• Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle). o Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object). 

•SNORM texture component formats.


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## Scrizz (Aug 15, 2009)

These were alot better than either the 9.6 or 9.7s for me!
good stuff


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## AlienIsGOD (Aug 15, 2009)

hit that up around 7pm..these work nice for me


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## phanbuey (Aug 15, 2009)

i wish nvidia would come out with some new drivers that are worth a d*mn... so far their performance has been decreasing and getting more bloated.


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## SNiiPE_DoGG (Aug 15, 2009)

rumor had it (or maybe not rumor just me going crazy) that ATI hired a completely new driver team two driver cycles ago, since then things have been getting better and better so I am inclined to think that its true


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## kajson (Aug 15, 2009)

Not to rain on their parade, but if you can create drivers with 40 to 50% gains on some of the leading games, on products that have been mostly out for over a year. Well then people do deserve to get fired, because how insanely crappy where the drivers before that.

I think drivers should at least be 80 to 90% of what they can be after 6 month tops.

Only a complete haulover of their driver team could explaine it I think..


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## DavyGT (Aug 15, 2009)

kajson said:


> Not to rain on their parade, but if you can create drivers with 40 to 50% gains on some of the leading games, on products that have been mostly out for over a year. Well then people do deserve to get fired, because how insanely crappy where the drivers before that.
> 
> I think drivers should at least be 80 to 90% of what they can be after 6 month tops.
> 
> Only a complete haulover of their driver team could explaine it I think..



I believe the 50% claim is a far cry from the reality.
Here is 9.7 with 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire setup:




And here is 9.8 with the same 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire setup:





EDIT: It appears the people without Core i7s are seeing the greatest improvement, ie: the min framerate increases. I think this driver release is supposed to improve CPU scaling.
EDIT EDIT: Nevermind, driver release is aimed at pure Crossfire setups or to CPU scaling perhaps?


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 15, 2009)

I honestly don't believe when they made that claim they were specifically targeting mixed CF setups.  But talking about traditional CF setups.  Besides, you are only showing the 1st run not the average of all 3 runs


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## Cheeseball (Aug 15, 2009)

Those are quite huge gains! I just dropped these drivers in and I'm getting like 8+ FPS in Clear Sky on my HD 4770.


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## DavyGT (Aug 15, 2009)

EastCoasthandle said:


> I honestly don't believe when they made that claim they were specifically targeting mixed CF setups.  But talking about traditional CF setups.  Besides, you are only showing the 1st run not the average of all 3 runs



I usually just Far Cry 2 to run once, just as a quick stability test and clock reference, so there is no average to show.


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## possessed (Aug 15, 2009)

DavyGT said:


> I believe the 50% claim is a far cry from the reality.
> Here is 9.7 with 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire setup:
> http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff266/DavyGT/97.png
> And here is 9.8 with the same 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire setup:
> ...



those 50% gain claim is for a complete: amd platform(phenomII+790gx[fx]) and non-mixed crossfirex setups


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## DavyGT (Aug 15, 2009)

possessed said:


> those 50% gain claim is for a complete: amd platform(phenomII+790gx[fx]) and non-mixed crossfirex setups



Yeah I suppose. I guess I'll have to wait for next month's release to fix mixed Crossfire. Hopefully.


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## possessed (Aug 15, 2009)

DavyGT said:


> Yeah I suppose. I guess I'll have to wait for next month's release to fix mixed Crossfire. Hopefully.



not sure if you get any luck with your intel setup.

read post #12 on this thread.
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1515530&postcount=12


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## 1Kurgan1 (Aug 15, 2009)

DavyGT said:


> I believe the 50% claim is a *far cry* from the reality.
> Here is 9.7 with 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire setup:
> http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff266/DavyGT/97.png
> And here is 9.8 with the same 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire setup:
> ...



I just gotta laugh at that statement and linked benchmark


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## Sapientwolf (Aug 15, 2009)

I'm running a QX9770 @ 4.00GHz, an X38, and 2 HD 4870s in Crossfire.  I haven't seen much difference with anything yet so I think Intel platforms got the shaft on this update.


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## DavyGT (Aug 15, 2009)

Sapientwolf said:


> I'm running a QX9770 @ 4.00GHz, an X38, and 2 HD 4870s in Crossfire.  I haven't seen much difference with anything yet so I think Intel platforms got the shaft on this update.



I'm starting to think this update has more to do with making CPU scaling better, then shafting Intel users. I mean this guy (Alba) is running a Core i7 with 3x4890 and noticed some huge gains: Link to OCAU and this guy (js01) got better frames from this update: Link to TPU
Summary: I think we're both hoping for performance that we've already received.


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## Sapientwolf (Aug 15, 2009)

DavyGT said:


> I'm starting to think this update has more to do with making CPU scaling better, then shafting Intel users. I mean this guy (Alba) is running a Core i7 with 3x4890 and noticed some huge gains: Link to OCAU and this guy (js01) got better frames from this update: Link to TPU
> Summary: I think we're both hoping for performance that we've already received.



Yeah no kidding.  Those FarCry2 results looks pretty good, but I don't have FC2.  I guess I'll just have to wait for the official release notes to see if any of the changes affect me.  Also are the scaling options missing for you?  I dug through the driver and I couldn't find where to set it to GPU scaling for my life.  I'm pretty sure they were there in 9.7.


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## DavyGT (Aug 15, 2009)

Sapientwolf said:


> Yeah no kidding.  Those FarCry2 results looks pretty good, but I don't have FC2.  I guess I'll just have to wait for the official release notes to see if any of the changes affect me.  Also are the scaling options missing for you?  I dug through the driver and I couldn't find where to set it to GPU scaling for my life.  I'm pretty sure they were there in 9.7.



I can't find scaling options after a quick skim through the CCC.


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## Steevo (Aug 16, 2009)

wiak said:


> http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17418



I love how the haters come out instantly. 



I don't unistall or anything, just install the new drivers. Bada boom.


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## a_ump (Aug 16, 2009)

DavyGT said:


> I usually just Far Cry 2 to run once, just as a quick stability test and clock reference, so there is no average to show.


thanks, ima download these now as i'm dying for more FPS in clear sky lol, game is so demanding.


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## Mussels (Aug 16, 2009)

DavyGT said:


> I can't find scaling options after a quick skim through the CCC.



they were hiding pretty well in 9.7, i will look and let you know.

downloading/installing now 


improvements to situations with CPU limitations is  and :O - hell, i'm CPU bottlenecked til around 4.2Ghz, so this is great news.

edit: the installer went bad and hung on the HDMI audio driver, making me have to reboot the machine.

edit 2:
Scaling is still there, however it still has the bugs where it remains greyed out.






the bug seems somewhat improved, as i only need to drop to 1680x1050 to get scaling options now instead of 1280x1024 like in 9.7


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## Whilhelm (Aug 16, 2009)

Wow these drivers fixed my Fallout 3 issues with flickering HDR and a weird water glitch. Nice. Everything I have tried seems to run better on these drivers.


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## animal007uk (Aug 16, 2009)

Far cry 2 seemed smoother but the FPS diden't change realy.

Tom clancys HawX was a lot better at max settings the stutter seems to have gone and again the game is a lot smoother.

haven't tryed anything else yet and also have extyra ram in the pc now so maybe thats why some games feel a bit better to.

so far tho i can't see any probs with the new drivers and if anythiong there defo better.


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## soryuuha (Aug 16, 2009)

Somehow i feel that the stutters previously have something to do with OpenGL thinggy..


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## animal007uk (Aug 16, 2009)

speaking of farcry 2 and stuttering, does anyone have the same prob as me where the game stutters in DX10 mode but runs perfectly fine at same settings in DX9 mode, i don't realy see any diffrence in the looks so can't understand why it does this.

Race driver grid seems to run a lot smoother to so im thinking its mainly down to the faster and extra 2 gig of ram i have rather than the drivers but the drivers work good so far no probs at all.


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## jamesrt2004 (Aug 16, 2009)

Mussels said:


> they were hiding pretty well in 9.7, i will look and let you know.
> 
> downloading/installing now
> 
> ...



does that only work for HDMI

as I don't think it ever has for dvi?  (or i just never noticed it   win7 btw)





animal007uk said:


> speaking of farcry 2 and stuttering, does anyone have the same prob as me where the game stutters in DX10 mode but runs perfectly fine at same settings in DX9 mode, i don't realy see any diffrence in the looks so can't understand why it does this.
> 
> Race driver grid seems to run a lot smoother to so im thinking its mainly down to the faster and extra 2 gig of ram i have rather than the drivers but the drivers work good so far no probs at all.



Imo its the card that would casue stuttering for you, people only complain of stuttering with x-fire cos of bad drivers meaning every now and then a big dipping in the framerates and back up again meant it stuttered i jsut have a feeling your gpu isnt powerful enough :/ (no offence?) try running a few lower settings could be its just filled up the memory on the card or something

(also try ocing processor a bit as it's quite a demanding game)


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## animal007uk (Aug 16, 2009)

i don't run xfire and yeah me card aint great but i dont see why farcry 2 stutters in DX10 with the same settings as DX9 (DX9 is fine) and even if i lower the res or settings i still get that wierd stutter in DX10 mode.

anyways don't play that game much lol as for everything else it all runs nice atm.


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## Mussels (Aug 16, 2009)

DX10 is more demanding than DX9. its possible your 4650 is struggling.

Also, most DX10 games on the market are poorly made - they're a patch on top of a DX9 game.


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## animal007uk (Aug 16, 2009)

you might even be onto something there mussels, im having probs with ram and me pc, and me 4650 takes all power from the PCI-e slot i wounder if my PSU is crapping out when playing farcry 2 causing the stutter, might explain why pc won't boot at 1066mhz ram speed
gonna have a look into it.

cheers


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## DailymotionGamer (Aug 16, 2009)

Did a fresh install of XP, and i have them install with my 2400, haven't tested any games. But i did notice some new opengl extensions.


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## a_ump (Aug 17, 2009)

i was hoping there was a review out comparing these to 9.7, but i guess review sites are waiting for the official release. 9.7 seems pretty solid for me. 

i played far cry 2 the other day with my new HD 4870, and i got none of the stutter feel some of you talk of, smooth at butter.


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## PCpraiser100 (Aug 17, 2009)

I'm still loving my HD 3870 despite the scale of my i7 as I'm still surprised I still get improvements with the latest drivers. They save my skin a lot when it comes to Far Cry 2, COD4, and Crysis. Will try these drivers out when I have the chance.


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## joey_sfb (Aug 17, 2009)

Good!!! I am surprised they could squeeze out more fps from some of the more recent titles.


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## a_ump (Aug 17, 2009)

9.8 might be geared towards xfire configs. but these are the results i got from the 2 games that used to lag owith me

==Company of Heroes v1.71 DX10: ultra settings(high for ones that can't go ultra)/8xAA/1680x1050
9.7
Avg: 30.756 - Min: 9 - Max: 60
9.8
Avg: 41.502 - Min: 13 - Max: 59
==Stalker CLear Sky
9.7
Avg: 36.113 - Min: 22 - Max: 49
9.8
Avg: 37.963 - Min: 26 - Max: 46

EDIT: SCS settings





So company of heroes got a nice improvement in FPS, which is awesome as i'm just now starting to pick the game up again n learning to play at its quite different from most RTS where its amass a huge force. Clear Sky i couldn't notice much of a difference, but apparently my minimum rates should be better yet max lower? haha either way i'm happy with it as there's sure to be bug fixes and whatnot as well.

for those of u that don't know, sun quality is right after steep parallex in scs settings


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## Zubasa (Aug 19, 2009)

Mussels said:


> they were hiding pretty well in 9.7, i will look and let you know.
> 
> downloading/installing now
> 
> ...


Well no scaling for me on DVI :shadedshu
Got my new BenQ monitor with scaling truns out to be the saving grace 
At lease no crappy drivers needed for now


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## Mussels (Aug 19, 2009)

scaling on ATI always has been, and always will be your friend screwed

nah i hope they fix it soon... as soon as they admit there is a problem.


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## AsRock (Aug 19, 2009)

a_ump said:


> 9.8 might be geared towards xfire configs. but these are the results i got from the 2 games that used to lag owith me
> 
> ==Company of Heroes v1.71 DX10: ultra settings(high for ones that can't go ultra)/8xAA/1680x1050
> 9.7
> ...



Why isn't COH updated there like on 2.30 some thing now,  unless you just use a pirated copy  ?. Either way the benchmark figures are a fail as you should be using updated version of COH.


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## Mussels (Aug 19, 2009)

Coh is on 2.500


benchmark has not changed since DX10 was added, i actually tested that recently. No game patches for CoH have altered performance, at least not as far as the in game benchmark goes.


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## a_ump (Aug 19, 2009)

AsRock said:


> Why isn't COH updated there like on 2.30 some thing now,  unless you just use a pirated copy  ?. Either way the benchmark figures are a fail as you should be using updated version of COH.



because i only have the origional CoH, none of the expansions and with the origional once u update the patch past 1.71 you can't play the compaign or skirmishes, you can only do multiplayer. Even if it was pirated it wouldn't stop me from patching it lol.


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## Mussels (Aug 19, 2009)

actually you can play the campaign... you just enter your CD key and it unlocks it.
I only owned the original until recently myself. and merely added the keys to unlock the newer expansions.

Its offtopic to this thread however, now that its been discussed whether or not game version affects benchmarks.


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## a_ump (Aug 19, 2009)

yea you just add your cd-keys for the expansions but when it asked for mine i tried to enter my CoH(origional) cd-key and it said it was invalid.

but anyone got any numbers they wanna post up? i don't think the review sites are enough, i mean i got 10fps increase with the driver yet on review sites it only shows the HD 4890 getting like 2 fps. so i think it'll affect each system differently. On a side note, i notice that the HD 4890 has separate drivers from the HD 48 series...anyone else think maybe ATI just optimizes the drivers for the 4890 more than the 4870?


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## AsRock (Aug 19, 2009)

Mussels said:


> Coh is on 2.500
> 
> 
> benchmark has not changed since DX10 was added, i actually tested that recently. No game patches for CoH have altered performance, at least not as far as the in game benchmark goes.



Well just checked mines 2.6

How you change from DX9 to DX10 as i don't see the option in COH ?.  Or do i just select all Ultra settings ?. Which  there is only one setting that is not set to ultra which i believe was called shader quality.

I'm in the middle of taking benchmarks with XP x64 and Vista x64 but was going do DX9 andDX10 with vista but no option .  Oh and all with Cat9.7 and 9.8's.




a_ump said:


> because i only have the origional CoH, none of the expansions and with the origional once u update the patch past 1.71 you can't play the compaign or skirmishes, you can only do multiplayer. Even if it was pirated it wouldn't stop me from patching it lol.




WOW they left ya that far behind huh.


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## a_ump (Aug 20, 2009)

i suppose, but there isn't anything that i find wrong with the game at v1.71 so works for me . I believe all the following patches only fix bugs that are in the expansions and gameplay tweaks.


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## AsRock (Aug 20, 2009)

a_ump said:


> i suppose, but there isn't anything that i find wrong with the game at v1.71 so works for me . I believe all the following patches only fix bugs that are in the expansions and gameplay tweaks.



Gameplay surely has change more so in the last patch.


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## Mussels (Aug 20, 2009)

AsRock said:


> Well just checked mines 2.6
> 
> How you change from DX9 to DX10 as i don't see the option in COH ?.  Or do i just select all Ultra settings ?. Which  there is only one setting that is not set to ultra which i believe was called shader quality.
> 
> ...



you're right on the patch, ToV upped hte game the 2.500, and they patched since then to 2.600

Ultra shaders enables DX10, which also gives two other settings the ability to work on ultra.


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