Terry has just announced on our board that the new Cataylst 3.1 drivers are now available for download at the ATI site, just follow the usual links to get there. Didnt I tell you all to be patient
16 bit AA for R300 products
performance boosts
fixes for Mafia, and NFS2
Please read the release notes for all the details, and post your feedback in the offical thread on Driverheaven.
Discuss here
These drivers are really great ive been playing with them for a while now, so enjoy !!
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From Terry in ATI:
Today we have posted another CATALYST update as CATALYST version 3.1. This time the unified driver gets updated with even more features, performance and stability. CATALYST drivers are still the only DirectX9 fully compatible and certified 3D acceleration drivers out there. These are available at
Highlights (for full details please download the release notes) of this posting are:
Stability:
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 no longer hangs when running in maximum detail levels
Mafia no longer flickers or suffers from display corruptions
Features:
The RADEON 9500/9700 series cards now support Anti-Aliasing in 16 bit applications
Performance:
As with most CATALYST(tm) releases, the performance has increased in many various situations. Here are some examples observed in CATALYST(tm) version 3.1.
RADEON(tm)9700
Anisotropic Filtering and OpenGL performance on the RADEON(tm) 9700 series of cards is up substantially across several applications. These performance improvements include:
A performance improvement of up to 35% at high resolutions is noticed in ChameleonMark
A performance improvement between 6 and 24% is noticed in Comanche 4
A performance improvement of 10% is noticed in Max Payne
A performance improvement between 20 and 40% is noticed in UT2003 Flyby
A performance improvement between 30 and 40% is noticed in IL-2 Sturmovik when Aniso or Aniso and Anti-Aliasing is enabled at the display resolution of 1600x1200
A performance improvement between 17 and 24% is noticed in Jedi Knight II when Aniso or Aniso and Anti-Aliasing is enabled at the display resolution of 1600x1200
RADEON(tm)8500
The following section provides information on performance improvements noticed on the RADEON(tm) 8500. This includes:
Anti-Aliasing scores rise 15-35% across various benchmarks
A performance improvement between 10 and 50% is noticed in NHL2002
RADEON(tm)7500
The following section provides information on performance improvements noticed on the RADEON(tm) 7500. This includes:
A performance improvement of 5% is noticed in the 3DMark2001 SE Vertex Shader test
As always keep your feedback coming using the CATALYST CREW feedback program at http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/
Thanks and have fun with these new drivers!
Terry Makedon
SR. Product Manager - CATALYST
