ATI Catalyst 10.3 Preview Driver

[arrrgh]

New features include:

ATI Catalyst™ support for ATI Mobility Radeon™ Premium Graphics solutions

* This release of ATI Catalyst™ introduces support for the production version of Windows® 7 and Windows® Vista for notebooks featuring the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2000 Series, ATI Mobility™ Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 Series, and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of products.

* Supported by most major OEM and ODM notebook manufacturers

For Desktop Graphics

* 64-bit Windows 7/Vista

* 32-bit Windows 7/Vista

For Notebook Graphics

* 64-bit Windows 7/Vista

* 32-bit Windows 7/Vista

ATI Catalyst Control Center - ATI Eyefinity technology enhancements

* Display Bezel Compensation

o 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

o Individual Color, Brightness and Contrast controls

* Multiple ATI Eyefinity Groups

o Create more than one ATI Eyefinity group from multiple displays

* Improved Display Configuration switching

o Support for ATI Eyefinity groups and the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center profile manager

* Easy to toggle between cloned and extended desktop modes

ATI Catalyst™ support for 3D Stereoscopic glasses

* AMD has updated it's 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)

Download: http://sites.amd.com/us/underground/tips/Pages/catalyst-10-3-preview.aspx

Performance gains:

3DMark Vantage

* 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

Note: This list is not exhaustive and more improvements are possible

I have been playing around with the drivers for a while, seems like a solid set so far. These drivers are also newer than the the yet to be released 10.3 drivers so looks like I'll be sticking with these for a while.

[Nagisan]

These drivers are also newer than the the yet to be released 10.3 drivers so looks like I'll be sticking with these for a while.

Fixed :P

And yes, they seem great so far, been using them since they released them and they seem great.

[x-byte]

Nice to see some improvements on the 48xx-series as well.

[ThisSiteHasLostItsCharm]

no BC2 fixes in these though, spawn screen, death screen texture flickering.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Basically, it's the same as 10.3 plus improvements for Alien vs. Predator and some eyefinity stuff. I was hoping they would fix the loading issues in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

[Nagisan]

Basically, it's the same as 10.3 plus improvements for Alien vs. Predator and some eyefinity stuff. I was hoping they would fix the loading issues in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Yup....what loading issues are you having with BF:BC2? I didn't have any problems with it when I had it installed but I only ever play singleplayer (only multiplayer game I like even with all these new games out is TF2)....

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Yup....what loading issues are you having with BF:BC2? I didn't have any problems with it when I had it installed but I only ever play singleplayer (only multiplayer game I like even with all these new games out is TF2)....

Maps take longer to load for people with ATI video cards. It's a known issue. I believe it's MP-only though.

[Nagisan]

Maps take longer to load for people with ATI video cards. It's a known issue. I believe it's MP-only though.

Couldn't that also be an issue with the game and not the drivers?