ATI Catalyst Drivers v4.7
ATI released a new version of their Catalyst video card drivers. The new version comes with a lot fixes, performance enhancements and also enables a new feature called temporal antialiasing (read more about this in our : ATI Radeon X800 Review ).
Here's a snip from the drivers release notes:
New Features
This release introduces a new feature called Temporal Anti-Aliasing. OpenGL and Direct 3D applications will benefit from this feature when custom settings for Anti-Aliasing are used, and temporal Anti-Aliasing is enabled. The feature provides higher Anti-Aliasing quality when an application frame rate is 60 frames per second or higher.
This feature will be located within the ATI 3D tab and will be supported under bothWindows XP and Windows 2000.
Performance Improvements
As with most CATALYST releases performance has increased in various situations. The following performance gains are noticed:
- Further improvements in our Vertex Shader handling bring performance improvements to applications that use stencil shadow volumes. For example, the Battle of Proxycon and Troll's Lair tests gain 10-30% on RADEON X800 PRO.
- Call of Duty framerates improve 5-10% when anti-aliasing is enabled on RADEON X800-series products.
- Aquamark performance is up slightly (2-3%) on RADEON X800-series products.
Resolved CATALYST Driver Issues
This section provides information on CATALYST driver issues that have been resolved in the latest release of CATALYST . These include the following:
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- Enabling both the CRT and DVI connectors and setting the CRT to primary no longer results in display corruption being seen on the display connected to the DVI when running 3D Labs applications and disabling the display on the DVI connector
- The mouse pointer no longer flashes or becomes corrupted when setting the display mode to 1080i and launching Windows MCE
- DVD playback hesitation at the beginning of a movie is no longer noticed when using the ATI DVD Player under Windows XP with an ATI 8500 ALL-IN-WONDER installed
- The Windows XP operating system no longer fails to respond when a D3D application generates a floating-point exception error
- The BIOS Version information is now stated correctly in the Details found in the ATI Options tab. Further, the correct DAC and ASIC information is now displayed in the Adapter tab found in the advanced setting of the display properties
- The Overlay Theater Mode table has now been extended to support 1080i and 720p
- Launching EVE Online under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 8500, 9100, or 9200 series no longer results in a VPU recover error before the terms and conditions is displayed
Resolved Game Issues
- This section provides information on game issues that have been resolved in the latest release of CATALYST . These include the following:
- Setting the D3D option to Optimal Quality and configuring the game Freedom Fighters to 1280x1024 no longer results in display corruption being seen on the test resolution window. This issue occurred under Windows XP with an ALL-IN-WONDER 9200 installed
- The water that surrounds Death Island in the game Halo: Combat evolved is now seen as blue in colour. This issues was known to occur under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 8500 installed
- Image rendering issues in the Truform room found in Serious Sam are no longer noticed when increasing the Truform level to maximum under the Advanced Rendering Option
- Flashing textures in the water are no longer noticed when running Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON X800 XT installed
- Playing the game TOCA Race Driver under Windows XP no longer results in the shadows being missing under the car when the shadow quality is set to high