Monday, July 21st 2008
AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 8.7 Graphics Driver Package
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.
Feature Improvements
Source:
AMD Game
Feature Improvements
- This release of Catalyst introduces an enhancement to the Catalyst Control Center Information Center. Full Hardware information will be shown for each physical graphics accelerator installed in the system.
- This release of ATI Catalyst Linux introduces preview support for Ubuntu 8.04 ; SLED 10 sp2.
- 3DMark Vantage: Performance increases of up to 20% is noticed in the Performance Preset on single card configured systems when using ATI Radeon HD 36xx or ATI Radeon HD 34xx products.
- Company of Heroes DX10: Performance increases of 3% to 12% is noticed in specific maps on single card configured systems when using either an ATI Radeon HD 48xx, ATI Radeon HD 38xx, or an ATI Radeon HD 36xx products.
- Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases of 4% to 15% is noticed in specific maps on single card configured systems when using either an ATI Radeon HD 48xx, ATI Radeon HD 38xx, or an ATI Radeon HD 36xx product.
- Call Of Duty 4 DX9: Performance increases of up to 4% in specific maps is noticed on single card configured systems when using an ATI Radeon HD 48xx product.
- Lost Planet DX9: CrossFire scaling improves up to 1.7x and performance increases up to 80% across all Radeon products when AA and AF is enabled.
69 Comments on AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 8.7 Graphics Driver Package
EDIT: O.o on the lost planet scaling tho!
AMD is getting much better. So far these drivers are rock solid. Now all they need to do is give us a fan controller.
So they release a 'hotfix' at the same time as the driver now? I guess that's the driver with the bits that didn't get through WHQL then eh.
Yes, they need to give us fan control!
While we are ranting, what's with the slowness of their site if you goto that hotfix page and similar pages? Why can't they do a nice clean HTML page instead of a 'prepare your system to lock up for 3 minutes pointlessly' sadness? Or perhaps they should release a GPU JAVA-script-just-for-AMD-sites accelerator of some sort.
K
WoW trials...I was like wtf when I got to the desktop and saw that there. It has since been banished back to wherever those sorts of evil things come from.
K
Thanks for the correction.
And no it's not my pc, or both of them even, those AMD support pages are always slow, the sidebar setup uses some java code that just crawls and has been for many many months/years.
Perhaps it's an issue I notice because of firefox and my personal security settings, but it only happens on those AMD support pages.
K
And I'm a bit unsure I can take the aggravation if things go wrong again (every second driver install fails to install a working CCC and I have to manually fix it by copying CCC files while I'm not sure which I need to copy to get it to work until I finally have it working again)
EDIT:
I removed the driver, and CCC, and all radeon software, then when I rebooted I got a CCC error... but I then removed CCC's start too, then removed all ati files from windows/system32, then removed all old ATI segments from the registry, and my profiles, then did another reboot.
Then I installed the 8.7's and got the same familiar 'file copy' error requester I've been getting for months (no indication what file) and a new additional requester shortly after that said 'could not find a compatible driver to install' then the CCC installer autostarted and CCC installed, I rebooted and lo-and-behold everything seems to be OK, CCC works, driver files are current, graphics work, games work, DXVA works.
Not sure what those errors were about now, perhaps I'll find out later.
Been running my 3850 on 8.3.
nice job ati :3
If there would be an issue at release that is 100% cause of the drivers you will see it asap in threads like these.
But after using ATI for 6 years now i have updated monthly without any issues.
K
It may take time but i'll feel better after it's done.
.....if im right