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.
