ATI Catalyst 10.3 Drivers Offer Gaming Boosts
New ATI Catalyst 10.3 Preview Driver gives your GPU a shot in the arm when it comes to pushing those pixels.
While those firmly planted in the Nvidia camp will be waiting with bated breath for the unveil of Fermi next week, but those with current ATI allegiances will be pleased as punch to know of a new Catalyst 10.3 Preview driver that squeezes some more extra performance out of Radeon HD 4800 and 5000 series.
Check out the download here if you're feeling adventurous with the preview driver.
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
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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
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JeanLuc Nice jump in performance and that's without the little extra bonus that Nvidia gave some of their customers when they found out there video card had melted after installing the driver!Reply -
micr0be i have been satisfied with my 4870x2 for over a year ... and it keeps getting better ...Reply -
t0r012 this is interesting. with word on the street that the GTX4x0 being 5-10% faster than the corresponding 58x0Reply
looking at some of these driver improvements such as
-Improves up to 10% with Anti-Aliasing enabled on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
-Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
seems like when the new GTXs come out they are going to be real close. That should only last till Nvidia's first driver update.
Seems to me Nvidia drivers jump in leaps and bounds and ATI are smaller incremental updates. Strange when you see a 4870x2 snuck up on the gtx295. But when you look back though the benches you see them getting closer and closer.
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znegval Am I talking nonsense or did they nearly beat the nvidia-claimed few percent better performance by fermi just with a driver update?Reply -
thedreadfather 5-10% faster than what?Reply
This was expected and I can say I'm really excited that they were able to offer better performance. When I'm able to afford it, I'm without a doubt buying an ATi card. I can't say how Fermi will perform, but if the sources are correct, I'm not paying $350-500 for the top two cards when "5-10%" costs so much less. Prove me wrong nVidia. Please?