Catalyst 10.3/GeForce 197.13 Now WHQL Certified

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.
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • XD_dued
    I'm glad nvidia improved performance on old games....

    ...hmmm they also look like common benchmark games...is nvidia trying to do something?

    ...nah :)
    Reply
  • HansVonOhain
    Thanks nVidia. Now the older games play much much better. Cheers!
    Reply
  • duckmanx88
    HansVonOhainThanks 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.
    Reply
  • loud_sounds
    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.
    Reply
  • calmstateofmind
    Yay! Now I won't have to be scared and press the "continue anyway" button!
    Reply
  • the_krasno
    Why did you post all the good info on nVidia and for the ATI part just provided a link? Hmmm! This is suspicious!
    Reply
  • husker
    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.
    Reply
  • False_Dmitry_II
    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.
    Reply
  • ern88
    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????
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky
    Time to download and see what happens.
    Reply