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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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

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.

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.

EDIT: ATI Catalyst 8.2 Display Driver Download

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.

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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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.

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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

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.

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