Ati Catalyst 7.1 for Vista OUT NOW!

[edgarf28]

Ati Catalyst 7.1 for Vista OUT NOW! (x86 and x64 !!!)

with OpgenGl !!

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

[Jeev]

Wow.. any feedback on these yet?

I'm at work.. so can't install em just yet.

[DJLunacy]

I hope this includes the soft encode and AIW support that would rock.

Thanks

[ClintEastman]

YAY!!! OpenGL!!!!

Anyone tried them yet (At work)?

[Linkinfamous]

Yeyyy! Time to install!

[theyarecomingforyou]

Wow, 90MB for the international version and that's just the 32bit version! Well, Vista and my new hard-drive don't arrive until Friday so I guess I've got a bit of a wait, though I'll grab these now to save time later. Now if only the drivers for my soundcard were released I would be sorted.

[digitalsoft]

dooooooooooooownloading..........dooooooooooownloaded.............instaaaaaalling!

[nautiqueskier]

Finally VLC works with Glass and OpenGL at decent performance levels

These seem to work great, I'll try some games later

[-Hiroshi-]

Installed, works great, things seem smoother. First, new audio drivers, then a graphics card driver really sweetens the deal and brings me closer to saying goodbye to XP.

[digitalsoft]

ooo 3d view is back in CC havent seen that in ages! havent tryed in gaming yet.

[Neonix1]

FiringSquad has put up a quick review of these drivers here: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/window...d_catalyst_7.1/

As you can see, the Radeon X1950 XTX actually recorded a performance improvement under Vista, at 1280x1024 the margin is 15%

Looks like a very nice first Vista driver release, although AMD/ATi's OpenGL driver still needs work done apparently.

[Si Veteran]

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

:D

[nautiqueskier]

Ok, heres a quick review of these drivers

First of all, DirectX rendering is definitely improved. NFS Carbon runs almost as well on my ATI x1600 as my Nvidia 7800GT (with 97.46 Nvidia drivers, haven't tried Carbon on 100.54 but I'm sure it would run faster)

On the OpenGL side, I can't really compare it to previous drivers (cause OpenGL wasn't present) but I'll say that it runs, but slow... really slow, and it looks like crap (its still many times faster than previous ATI Vista drivers). For the first ATI driver with OpenGL though, I'll give them credit, its pretty stable.

The Catalyst Control Center seems largely functional (unlike Nvidias crumbling control system)

Edited January 29, 2007 by Ames

[Spyder Veteran]

now for some final vista drivers for soundblasters! i know i'm dreaming but it'd be nice lol

[deadite66]

woot o/

[XPGoD]

What I'm about to write may sound silly... but I will test these drivers to see if they have the same effect.

This whole weekend, after installing my copy of Vista Business... I installed some games.

Battlefield 2

F.E.A.R. Combat

America's Army

Quite a difference between them, so I boot up my box using the latest Beta Catalyst's. Boot into America's Army.. and my cursor gives me the first indication to the lag I'm about to see.... oh no.

I boot online to SF Hospital and I see this general freaking out on the graphics.. but it's not framerate oriented.

So I shutdown the game and boot into my BIOS and lowered the AGP Aperature Size to 64Mb. Rebooted back into Vista, and went into the Catalyst software and set EVERYTHING to HIGH QUALITY.

Results?

Flies like a dream... BF2 can now be played at 1280x1024 HIGH settings, as with FEAR... FEAR acts like it's on crack... and I played last night with a 59-16 score of 228... WOOT

System:

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton @ 2.315GHz

1GB PC2300 CAS 2.0 RAM

Radeon X700 Pro 256MB AGP 8x

Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic (comeon Creative where are those Vista drivers?)

2x 120GB Maxtor's

I know the system ain't much, but when you work as much as I do, you tend to spend more time on other people's machines than your own.

XPGoD

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

At last hopefully i can finally play games on my laptop again! :D

[SethB]

Sadly, Aero still crashes on my X800 GT. Vista starts with aero running, but the first time you launch an app (even notepad) it crashes and logs this:

The Desktop Window Manager has encountered a fatal error (0x88980406)

Then the display reverts to non-Aero mode.

I'm not alone in having this, as I've found numerous posts by other users, and a colleague at another University has the exact same issue. The only fix I've found is to use drivers from Vista RC-1. I've wiped my machine numerous times, installing only Vista and the graphics driver, in both Vista 32 and 64 bit flavors, and the problem still happens.

How do these things get WHQL certified again? Aren't they tested?

[DJLunacy]

Sadly, Aero still crashes on my X800 GT. Vista starts with aero running, but the first time you launch an app (even notepad) it crashes and logs this:

The Desktop Window Manager has encountered a fatal error (0x88980406)

Then the display reverts to non-Aero mode.

I'm not alone in having this, as I've found numerous posts by other users, and a colleague at another University has the exact same issue. The only fix I've found is to use drivers from Vista RC-1. I've wiped my machine numerous times, installing only Vista and the graphics driver, in both Vista 32 and 64 bit flavors, and the problem still happens.

How do these things get WHQL certified again? Aren't they tested?

I have no problems with my AIW X800 except for the tv functions not working yet.

[Orien]

Nice, installing them right now!

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

After installing thise drivers i can no longer get my laptop to do 1280x800 is there any way i can force that screen reselution?

[Sagittarius Veteran]

Ah, excellent. I've been waiting for these since my upgrade to the X1950XT (which Vista did not like at all).

[Guillaume.Lafrance]

This is weird, the installer only lets me install the Control Center and not the drivers. Anyone else getting this? Am I doing something wrong?

And the Control Center isn't much use, it seems.

Edited January 30, 2007 by Guillaume.Lafrance

[ObiWanToby]

Anyone know when or if AVIVO video converter is supported? I liked converting vidoes in 8 minutes vs 30.

[MediaSoldier]

Does this work with ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 200 Series?