ATI Catalyst 4.8 released

ATI has released version 4.8 of it's Catalyst drivers for ATI graphics cards.

Performance Improvements

• Direct3D driver efficiency has improved considerably. Significant performance gains are noted in multiple "CPU-bound" cases, including 3DMark2001, Aquamark 3, Comanche4, Dungeon Siege, and Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004. Typical improvements are in the 1-5% range.

• OpenGL driver efficiency is also improved. Older OpenGL games such as Quake III Arena and Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory show small improvement (1-2%) at low resolutions. Call of Duty framerates are up approximately 4%. Doom3 improves considerably more (as much as 12% on some product configurations) as a result of the same software efficiency improvements.

Issues Resolved

• 3D Mark03: Display corruption is no longer noticed when running the Trolls Lair test 3 under Windows XP

• Beyond Divinity: Playing the game with FSAA set to 2x no longer results in display corruption when scrolling the display by moving the mouse to the left of the display

  High Heat Baseball 2003: The display no longer loses sync when exiting or changing player characters in the game High Heat Baseball 2003 under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON X800 series installed

• Madden NFL 2003: The game no longer fails to respond under Windows XP when an ATI RADEON 9800 XT is installed and attempting to set the Truform slider to Application Preference

• Need for Speed Underground: Playing the game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 9000/9200 installed no longer results in the road ahead not being lit up by the car's headlights

• Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow: Display corruption is no longer noticed when launching a multiplayer game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ 9200 installed

• Thief 3: Inconsistent lighting and shadow flicker is no longer noticed when playing the game under Windows XP

• Unreal Tournament 2004: Playing the game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON

• X600 series installed no longer results in game corruption being displayed when setting Anti-Aliasing to 4x and having the display properties set to 1600x1200 32bpp

Download: Windows XP

Download: Windows 2000

News source: ATI