Catalyst 10.3/GeForce 197.13 Now WHQL Certified
Waiting for WHQL drivers for your graphics card? Wait no longer; they are here!
On the eve of Nvidia's major GPU launch of the year, owners of current video cards are being treated to new, more optimized software drivers.
Today both Nvidia and ATI released new WHQL drivers for their GPU families. These drivers have been available in non-certified form a short while, but now they've been given the stamp of approval.
For those who haven't yet grabbed the Catalyst 10.3 from the preview released last week, visit AMD to get the official download.
This is what you can expect:
ATI Catalyst Control Center - ATI Eyefinity technology enhancements:
- Display Bezel Compensation
- Easy-to-use wizard shows users how to adjust their display layout to remove the pixels occupied by their display bezels
- Per-Display Color Adjust
- Individual Color, Brightness and Contrast controls
- Multiple ATI Eyefinity Groups
- Create more than one ATI Eyefinity group from multiple displays
- Improved Display Configuration switching
- Support for ATI Eyefinity groups and the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center profile manager
- Easy to toggle between cloned and extended desktop modes
AMD has updated its Direct3D (Quad buffer support) driver to enable 3rd party middleware vendors such as iZ3D to output stereo L/R images at 120 Hz (60 Hz per eye)
Application performance enhancements:
3DMark Vantage
Overall scores increase by up to 8% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
Overall scores increase by up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
Aliens vs. Predator
Overall performance increases 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Battleforge
Improves up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Call of Duty: World at War
Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Company of Heroes
Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Crysis and Crysis Warhead
Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Devil May Cry 4
Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
DiRT 2
Improves up to 30% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Far Cry 2
Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Call of Pripyat Benchmark
Improves up to 10% with Anti-Aliasing enabled on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky
Improves up to 2% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Resident Evil 5
Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
Improves up to 15% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Unigine Tropics
Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
World in Conflict
Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Wolfenstein
Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Nvidia 197.13
For the Nvidia bunch, this 197.13 driver resolves the overheating issue as well as the following:
- Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0129.
- Upgrades HD Audio driver to version 1.0.9.1 (for supported GPUs).
- Increases performance in several PC games from v196.21 WHQL. The following are examples of measured improvements. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
* Up to 13% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with a single GPU.
* Up to 30% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with SLI technology.
* Up to 13% performance increase in H.A.W.X. with single GPU.
* Up to 15% performance increase in H.A.W.X. with SLI technology.
* Up to 30% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with single GPU.
* Up to 28% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with SLI technology.
- Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for top new gaming titles including Assassin Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Zombie Driver.
- Enhanced SLI support for Metro 2033, Supreme Commander 2, Unigine, and World of Warcraft.
- Adds override anti-aliasing support for Mass Effect 2.
- Nvidia,
- GeForce,
- ATI,
- AMD,
- Build Your Own,
- gpu ,
- catalyst-drivers ,
- radeon
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I'm glad nvidia improved performance on old games....
...hmmm they also look like common benchmark games...is nvidia trying to do something?
...nah
Thanks nVidia. Now the older games play much much better. Cheers!
Thanks nVidia. Now the older games play much much better. Cheers!
O_o it says "UP TO". chances are you could get 1% which may be as little as 1/2 an fps.
I'm still looking forward to some 2D performance boost with ATI cards (based on the Tomshardware articles a month or two ago) as I'm a heavy CAD user.
Yay! Now I won't have to be scared and press the "continue anyway" button!
Why did you post all the good info on nVidia and for the ATI part just provided a link? Hmmm! This is suspicious!
How do they get these "up to" numbers? If you think of the possible distribution of increases as kind of the right half of a bell curve, then the very high end tail of the bell curve, which represents about 6 people, are getting these extreme performance gains.
Perhaps because they already had that article? It just wasn't official.
And other than nvidia's thermonuclear explosions, they didn't report on this previously non-existant driver.
I think NVIDIA might have some shares in Tom's. Hell, they showed box's of a video card called "FERMI". ATI's 5000 series never got this much attention. ANd ATI was the first card to support DX11. What gives Tom? You guys on the NVIDIA pay roll or what????
Time to download and see what happens.
I'm using the 197.17 drivers now and still no issues. I'm saving my older drivers though just in case.
Looks like an attempt to optimize the drivers to win a benchmarking contest, Can Tom's use other Games than those listed to run the comparison? Yes they can. Will they? Answers on a Postcard........
Why did you post all the good info on nVidia and for the ATI part just provided a link? Hmmm! This is suspicious!
There's nothing suspicious going on here. I've pasted the massive list again at your request and re-arranged it so that ATI is on top in hopes of quelling your suspicions. I hope this helps!
I think NVIDIA might have some shares in Tom's. Hell, they showed box's of a video card called "FERMI". ATI's 5000 series never got this much attention. ANd ATI was the first card to support DX11. What gives Tom? You guys on the NVIDIA pay roll or what????
Nope, we're all on Bestofmedia's payroll.
How come the ATI 4800's get single digit boosts whereas all the NV cards get 13%? Something smells fishy....
I installed the latest Catalyst drivers. My HD 5750 went from a 7.3 to 7.4 in the Windows Experience.
Haven't really tested it against 3DMarkVantage or 3DMark06 yet.
New catalyst drivers - Grey screen of death still happening. Thanks ATI driver team for doing such a great job /golfclap.
How come the ATI 4800's get single digit boosts whereas all the NV cards get 13%? Something smells fishy....
Conspiracy Theory much? Notice it says "Up to" in front of ALL of the Nvidia gains. Whereas the ATI ones are just "x%".
I would personally like to see maybe a 10% boost in BF:BC2 from Nvidia or DICE whichever is able to do it actually.
Payroll schmayroll. Tom's has always given more shine to NVidia. It's probably down to the writers being NVidia fanboys, but who cares? - They have still always given me enough information to buy ATI products in an informed way. Anyway.. At the moment NVidia can do with some shine. It's not looking all that hot, which is good for the industry ATi should never become complacent. And once they bring out something faster the price wars will start - Which is good for the consumer. And then a year or so later ATI will once again come out with a few shockingly good cards which kick the pants of NVidia for the next 1.5 years or so value wise, etc, etc. Once you've been watching the game for a while the patterns become obvious.
My money is on NVIdia being completely out of the PC graphics market in a few years time and totally into server solutions. I say this mainly because I do not think NVidia will survive fusion if they do not adapt. Like it or not fusion is going to kick the pants off what is available today.
One must never forget that one of the primary CPU manufacturers in the world did not merge with one of the primary GPU manufacturers in the world just because they liked each other. Fusion is logical and AMD and ATI were the only companies who moved towards it. At great pains I might add.
"Conspiracy Theory much? Notice it says "Up to" in front of ALL of the Nvidia gains. Whereas the ATI ones are just "x%". "
Wrong - read again - all the ATI ones also say "up to"
There's nothing suspicious going on here. I've pasted the massive list again at your request and re-arranged it so that ATI is on top in hopes of quelling your suspicions. I hope this helps! Nope, we're all on Bestofmedia's payroll.
LMFAO! I love it when the author's get in here and dish it out as well with sarcasm! Good stuff Marcus!
I'm glad nvidia improved performance on old games....
...hmmm they also look like common benchmark games...is nvidia trying to do something?
...nah
Wow, a bunch of dumbasses. Have you not noticed Crysis: Warhead, H.A.W.X. and Left 4 Dead are also on AMD/ATI's list? And you got +8 votes?
Are the fan boys so blinded that they no longer think for themselves. All they do is repeating AMD/ATI’s PR statements.
lol your right, Nvidia is improving old games but ati didnt? So Call of Duty: World at War, Crysis and Crysis Warhead, Devil May Cry 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and farcry 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky are new right?
ATI didn't seem to add any much needed improvements for BFBC2.
That's too bad.
How do they get these "up to" numbers? If you think of the possible distribution of increases as kind of the right half of a bell curve, then the very high end tail of the bell curve, which represents about 6 people, are getting these extreme performance gains.
Because if you benchmark 5 different systems you'll get 5 different variations of improvement.
How come the ATI 4800's get single digit boosts whereas all the NV cards get 13%? Something smells fishy....
Because ATI Drivers are horrible. Its a Shame cause their hardware is good.
There's nothing suspicious going on here. I've pasted the massive list again at your request and re-arranged it so that ATI is on top in hopes of quelling your suspicions. I hope this helps! Nope, we're all on Bestofmedia's payroll.
All is forgiven Marcus! Come here, give me a hug!
Why did you post all the good info on nVidia and for the ATI part just provided a link? Hmmm! This is suspicious!
I've seen plenty of ati related links and news reports for quite a while. it swings back and forth depending on what news is most prevalent. I've also seen a ton for the ipad, and diablo 3, are you going to tell me that tom's is now on activision and apples payroll?
and seriously how can tom's hardware be nvidia fanboys when as long as i've kept up with tom's(over a year) hands down every system they make is with ati? the next thing you're all gonna tell me is that we should ban dihydrogen monoxide!
I saw a huge imporovement going from 196.21 to 197.13. Specially in BC2, my game no longer crashes to desktop.
I swapped drivers right when the 197.13 was still a Beta, no complaints here =)
I just don't get it. Anything for my GTX285 over 182.50 causes MPEG-2 to stutter or mysterious crashes. I sure hope things improve someday...
All is forgiven Marcus! Come here, give me a hug!
How about a wave?
Very nice amd. I got a solid boost out of the new drivers.