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Catalyst 8.6 out

Broken Hope

Broken Hope

Broken Hope

Soldato
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16 Jan 2003
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New Features

Catalyst™ 8.6 introduces the following new features:

* OpenGL Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support
* OpenGL CrossFireX™ (QUAD) support - 3 or 4 GPUs in CrossFire™ mode
* Catalyst Install enhancement - No reboot required after Catalyst upgrade install

OpenGL Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support

This release of Catalyst™ introduces Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support for OpenGL applications for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 Series of products. Using the Edge Detect Custom Filter, users can enable 12X and 24X Anti-Aliasing. Selecting 4X Anti-Aliasing plus selecting the Edge Detect filter delivers the equivalent of 12X Anti-Aliasing. Selecting 8X Anti-Aliasing plus selecting the Edge Detect filter delivers the equivalent of 24X Anti-Aliasing.
OpenGL CrossFireX™ (QUAD) support - 3 or 4 GPUs in CrossFire™ mode

This release of Catalyst™ introduces CrossFireX™ QUAD support for OpenGL applications. Users with any combination of a ATI Radeon™ HD 3870, ATI Radeon™ HD 3850, and ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 X2 graphics accelerators running with 3 or 4 GPUs will be able to run in CrossFireX™ QUAD mode (when used in a CrossFireX™ compatible PC).

Users are also able to run in CrossFireX™ QUAD mode while running in extended desktop mode on the Windows Vista desktop.

Catalyst Install enhancement - No reboot required after Catalyst upgrade install

This release of Catalyst™ introduces an enhancement to the Catalyst installer. Users are no longer required to reboot their system after Catalyst has finished installing (as long as the installation is an upgrade from a previous Catalyst install).
Performance Improvements

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™.

* 3DMark Vantage:10 to 15% gains across all Radeon™ HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products, with larger gains in specific cases.
* Call of Duty 4: Performance increases across all Radeon™ HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products, with gains as large as 35% in specific maps.
* Call of Juarez DX10: Performance increases between 2 and 9% across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products
* Company of Heroes (DX10 version): Performance increases between 4 and 10% across HD 36xx and HD 34xx products.
* Lost Planet (DX10 version): Performance increases by 1 or 2 fps across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products, creating in some cases up to 20% increase.
* Lost Planet (DX9 version): Performance increases between 2 and 20% across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products
* Prey OpenGL: 3-5% gains across HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products.
* Quake 4 OpenGL: Up to 8% increase across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products.
* Shadermark 2.1: Minor improvements across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products, with the largest gains appearing on HD 3650 (up to 9%)
* ViewPerf 10: Substantial performance improvements across several of the sub-tests, with the largest gains in ugnx (up to 55%), catia (up to 17%) and tcvis (up to 10%) across all of the HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=xp/radeonx-xp

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=vista32/common-vista32

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=vista64/common-vista64
 
nice one, like those performance gains I am reading:D e.g. wondered why COD4 benches showed nvidia cards ahead...
 
3DMark Vantage:10 to 15% gains across all Radeon™ HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products, with larger gains in specific cases.
Click to expand...

omg why they lock performance ?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!

(Response the 9800 improvement drivers are getting :p)
 
Haha, obviously AMD's response to nVidia's performance driver release. Hey, I hope we see a driver war... Free performance all around. :D

Wait hold on, over 35% performance gains in some cases? That's more than some people were predicting the 4850 would bring at all. Ahahaha.
 
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They'll still be for the GT200's that are out now though, as they will be the exact same cards, apart from being on a smaller 55nm die, and having a letter 'b' added to the end of the core name. :p
 
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Right, we're calling all ATi cards XXXXXX+ from now on (where X is the current model number, so we're basically adding a + onto all cards) sound good lads ? :D :cool:
 
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