Saturday, January 12th 2008
Catalyst 8.1 Beta for Vista Available
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
14 Comments on Catalyst 8.1 Beta for Vista Available
I ran some Crysis tests and it gives a fair increase for me!
Catalyst 7.11 "Crysis HotFix"
Run #1- DX9 1024x768 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 27.345
Run #2- DX9 1280x1024 AA=2x, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 18.4
Run #3- DX9 1680x1050 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 20.455
Catalyst 8.1 Beta
Run #1- DX9 1024x768 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 34.115
Run #2- DX9 1280x1024 AA=2x, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 19.285
Run #3- DX9 1680x1050 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 23.45
Not very bad. It doesn't help much with AA on, but with AA off you can get a fair 5FPS increase. Tests were ran in Crysis SP Demo using the benchmarking tool. I use a HD 3870 stock with a AMD X2 3800+ @ 2.7GHz on Vista Business 64-bit.
why not 7.12 Vs 8.1 ???
regards
btw: Crysis hotfix its specially designed for Crysis before the 7.12 released
didnt try Cat 8.1 yet , im waiting for the official version for windows XP ....
regards
Either way, it doesn't matter. I did a quick test to show 7.11 v 8.1 results, not 7.12 v 8.1 results. I found that 7.11 was more stable for me than 7.12 so I used them. Vista gave me "drivers failed but recovered" errors once in a while followed by a BSOD.