ATi Catalyst 9.8 drivers

[SSChevy2001]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbar.../Hotfixfor3DGames.aspx

Hotfix for 3D Games

This articles provides a hotfix solution for game applications, (Resident Evil 5, Company of Heroes, Ghostbusters & Sims 3) that experience graphics corruption during game play.

It also provides a resolution to intermittent crashes that may occur when graphics settings are set to Ultra while playing a skirmish game versus the computer in the ?Angonville map?.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Performance Improvements

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst? 9.8:

? Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - performance improves up to 15-50% in CPU limited settings with the largest gains in CrossfireX configurations

? Company of Heroes DirectX 10 - performance improves by up to 10-77% in CPU limited settings

? Crysis DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 10% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 34% in CPU limited settings

? Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 7% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 69% in CPU limited settings

? Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 50% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 88% in CPU limited settings

? Tom Clancy?s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves up to 40% in CPU limited settings with Quad CrossfireX performance improving up to 60% in CPU limited settings

? UnigineTropics OpenGL - performance improves 5-20%

? UnigineTropics DirectX 10 - Quad CrossfireX performance improves 5-20% in CPU limited settings

? World in Conflict DirectX 10 - performance improves by 5-10%

OpenGL? 3.1 extension support

This release of ATI Catalyst? provides OpenGL? 3.1 extension support. The following is a list of OpenGL? 3.1 features and extensions added in Catalyst 9.8:

? Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40
? Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced)
? Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer)
? Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the NV extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens
? At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders
? Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object)
? Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle)
? Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object)
? SNORM texture component formats

http://www2.ati.com/relnotes/C...t_98_release_notes.pdf

 

[Cookie Monster]

Any release notes?

 

[SSChevy2001]

There's no release note, but they'll more than like be released on Monday when the drivers are official posted on ATi site.

 

[PurdueRy]

Black output still broken for me during blu-ray playback. Going back to 9.4.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Any real reason to update from 9.6 for me? No CF or anything like that.

 

[Sylvanas]

These leaked release notes claim some massive gains- I'll have to try them out on my 4870X2 soon.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
These leaked release notes claim some massive gains- I'll have to try them out on my 4870X2 soon.

Download the official ones right there at the bottom of the amd blog.

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009...e-for-a-quakecon-blog/

 

[nemesismk2]

Does anyone know of any Catalyst 9.8 Game Performance reviews showing any increase for 3870 video cards?

 

[Mem]

Installed fine on my Vista x64 ,no issues to report so far btw this is the first time I have installed over the top of old ones.

 

[kazuyakun]

Holy crap, that's some serious claims of gains right there.

As someone else mentioned, can someone confirm if its true for the 3870. The damn card is only released 1.5 year ago and I can't find anymore reviews on em anymore

 

[Elfear]

If I'm reading the notes on the blog correctly, the gains in CF only manifest themselves when using an AMD chipset. Hopefully I'm wrong because I would love some more performance.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Elfear
If I'm reading the notes on the blog correctly, the gains in CF only manifest themselves when using an AMD chipset. Hopefully I'm wrong because I would love some more performance.

i'll test that out for you; it is my next project comparing my 8X+8X PCIe 790 AMD chipset against Intel's x48 16x+16x PCIe lanes .. gonna be 9.7 vs 9.8 cats

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Mem
Installed fine on my Vista x64 ,no issues to report so far btw this is the first time I have installed over the top of old ones.

As long as I didn't change video cards, I have always just installed over top of the original ones and never once had an issue. I've been doing this for years.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: Mem
Installed fine on my Vista x64 ,no issues to report so far btw this is the first time I have installed over the top of old ones.

As long as I didn't change video cards, I have always just installed over top of the original ones and never once had an issue. I've been doing this for years.

I guess I'm old school since I normally uninstall old drivers first(I'm aware however its normally safe to install over the top in Vista and Win7)...I'm getting a bit lazy in my old age .

I have played a few games since these were installed, anyway still no issues to report with 9.8 drivers .

 

[PurdueRy]

Anyone here have a blu-ray drive on their computer and feel like testing their black level output to a connected PC monitor in TMT3 and/or powerDVD? With anything past 9.4 I get 16-235 output levels as opposed to the normal 0-255 resulting in blacks that at most reach a medium grey tone.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Anyone here have a blu-ray drive on their computer and feel like testing their black level output to a connected PC monitor in TMT3 and/or powerDVD? With anything past 9.4 I get 16-235 output levels as opposed to the normal 0-255 resulting in blacks that at most reach a medium grey tone.

Is there a driver setting that controls this? I'm getting a bit let down by ATI's control over HDMI output settings (overscan, etc).

 

[Pelu]

anyone can explain what means under CPU limited? because i dont see any gain at all.. does it means i am not CPU limited at all?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Anyone here have a blu-ray drive on their computer and feel like testing their black level output to a connected PC monitor in TMT3 and/or powerDVD? With anything past 9.4 I get 16-235 output levels as opposed to the normal 0-255 resulting in blacks that at most reach a medium grey tone.

Is there a driver setting that controls this? I'm getting a bit let down by ATI's control over HDMI output settings (overscan, etc).

From my reading it seems like their is if its a HDMI output to a external display but not a DVI connection to a monitor.

But, at least in the "normal" areas of their drivers there is no control over this.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Pelu
anyone can explain what means under CPU limited? because i dont see any gain at all.. does it means i am not CPU limited at all?

That could mean that you are CPU limited. That means any gain in the gfx card side of things in nullified by a limitation at the CPU.

 

[Sylvanas]

Xbit investigate Cat 9.8's

The results of my test session suggest that AMD/ATI programmers have done a good job to optimize the graphics card driver for the new OS (and not only for it because Windows Vista and Windows 7 share the same Catalyst driver pack). The Radeon HD 4890 and Radeon HD 4870 X2 perform faster with the newer driver than with Catalyst 9.7 in Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., Far Cry 2, and Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor. A smaller performance growth could also be observed in Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason, Lost Planet: Colonies, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. In the other games and benchmarks the two versions of the driver are equal to one another. The new version does not provoke a performance hit in any game, except for a minor reduction of speed in Stormrise. I noticed no image defects with the new version of the driver during my tests, so Catalyst 9.8 is undoubtedly a step forward and I recommend it for installation and use under Windows 7 and Vista.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Thank you very much for posting this.

 

[solofly]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbar.../Hotfixfor3DGames.aspx

 

[jamesbond007]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Anyone here have a blu-ray drive on their computer and feel like testing their black level output to a connected PC monitor in TMT3 and/or powerDVD? With anything past 9.4 I get 16-235 output levels as opposed to the normal 0-255 resulting in blacks that at most reach a medium grey tone.

Is there a driver setting that controls this? I'm getting a bit let down by ATI's control over HDMI output settings (overscan, etc).

From my reading it seems like their is if its a HDMI output to a external display but not a DVI connection to a monitor.

But, at least in the "normal" areas of their drivers there is no control over this.

I don't play Bluray movies anymore using my PC since I bought a dedicated set-top player for that purpose, BUT I do not recall any black level issues using HDMI to my Sony 46" Z-series that is calibrated for each input source. As a playback screen for downloaded 1080p content, it looks insane and as a desktop monitor it is simply bad-ass. When I played BRD through HDMI to the TV, I believe I had the 9.6 drivers. I have a pair of 4870 512MB in crossfire in Vista 64bit Ultimate. As for overscan issues, I was able to correct it using the ATi software. I don't recall where, but it's in there; just dig for it! Otherwise, my TV would have roughly a 1" black border around the entire picture as the overscan by default is set to 85% IIRC.

 

[hclarkjr]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2
Does anyone know of any Catalyst 9.8 Game Performance reviews showing any increase for 3870 video cards?

i tried them and seen no gain at all over 9.7

 

[dflynchimp]

Yeah I think 9.7 brought the biggest performance boost in the form of Crysis. I jumped up to 9.7 from 9.2 and crysis went from being unplayable to completely smooth and enjoyable at maxed out 1920 settings. as for 9.8 I didn't really notice any significant increase.

What I want to know is when are they going to allow me to clock my 4870X2 to below 500core 501,mem. It would really help with the power savings. (Unless I'm missing out on some 3rd party software that lets you do that...)