Spyre

New Features

This release of Catalyst™ introduces an enhanced version of ATI Overdrive for the ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series. Users can now Over-clock both GPU engine and graphics memory clock speeds in Crossfire™ mode (and over-clock single ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators as well). This version of ATI Overdrive also includes a new stress test application to verify any over-clocking speeds users may have configured (either manually or through the auto-tuning tool) on their ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators.

Performance Improvements

The following performance improvements are noticed with Catalyst™ 7.8:

* Lost Planet DX10 with anti-aliasing improves 11% or greater on Radeon™ HD2900XT products
* Radeon™ HD2600 and Radeon™ HD2400 (single and CrossFire™) show improvements of as much as 6% in 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark 2005
* Serious Sam 2 with HDR enabled improves as much as 14.5% on Radeon™ HD2900, Radeon™ HD2600 and Radeon™ HD2400 products

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:

• Call of Duty->United Offensive: Having all of the in-game settings at their maximum levels along with the Catalyst™ Control Center->3D aspect set to Optimal Quality no longer results in the Windows Vista (64 bit) operating system failing to respond after a short period of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28793
• The default audio device is no longer set to ATI HD Audio after installation of the display driver for the ATI Radeon™ HD2900, HD2600, and HD2400. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28483
• Hot-plugging a CRT to a system running Windows Vista and containing an ATI Radeon™ X1100/1150 series of product no longer results in extended desktop mode failing to be applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-25801
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by disconnecting and then reconnecting the CRT display device no longer results in duplicate video options being seen within the Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27457
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by setting AA to 14x and AF to 16x no longer results in the AA showing a setting of 0x level when disabling CrossFire™ and unchecking the AA option in the 3D aspect. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27458
• Making changes to the Color aspect found in the Catalyst™ Control Center without applying the changes no longer results in the Reactivate ATI color controls button remaining active after the Catalyst™ Control Center is closed and then re-launched. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27459
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by setting the OverDrive™ clocks to their maximum settings no longer results in the Catalyst™ Control Center failing to accurately report the requested OverDrive™ values. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27621
• Performing an un-install of the display drivers on a CrossFire™ configured system no longer results in extended desktop mode becoming active resulting in all of the desktop icons failing to appear. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28478
• Catalyst™ Control Center->3D->Anti-Aliasing: Unchecking the option to Use Application Setting found in the 3D aspect page when CrossFire™ is enabled no longer results in the maximum AA setting being 6x. This issue may also be experienced under the Windows XP operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28479
• Performing either a custom or express install of the display driver no longer results in the system possibly failing to respond and the installation of the driver failing. This issue was known to occur when using an ATI Radeon™ X1950 CrossFire™ Edition product installed on in a system containing an Intel975. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28481
• HDMI audio stutter is no longer heard when playing MPEG clip at certain resolutions on some HDMI device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28484
• The Scaling options found in the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer disappears when relaunching the Catalyst™ Control Center after applying optimized and custom formats for Component Video. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28855
• Connecting a secondary display device (CRT) and enabling extended desktop mode no longer results in invalid refresh rates being available in the Display Manager. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28787
• Making adjustments to the Gamma, Brightness, and Contrast and not applying the changes no longer results in the desktop image failing to return to its default color values when performing a hot-reboot of the system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28787
• All supported display resolutions are now available in the Display Manager when connecting a secondary display device and enabling extended desktop mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28789
• Performing an un-install of the display driver no longer results in the display entering an extended desktop mode and the desktop icons failing to be displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28478
• Setting the Avivo Video Brightness to less than 0 within the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer results in a white frame being created in the Windows Media Player when fullscreen mode is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28790
• The Enable ATI Overdrive clocks for 3d applications is no longer available on non supported products such as the ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product. Further information may be found in topic number 737-28477
• Setting the Avivo Video De-interlacing setting to auto, motion adaptive or vector adaptive no longer results in certain DVDs, menu videos and some special features failing to benefit from the options. Further information on this issue may be found in topic number 737-27196
• The color depth no longer changes to 8bpp when enabling or disabling CrossFire™ for the first time. Further information may be found in topic number 737-28485
• Connecting a TV followed by removing the display resolution of 640x480 from the mode table no longer results in the both the TV and LCD failing to display an image. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28490
• An unhandled exception no longer occurs when running an OGL application and resuming from S3 under Vista on various ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1200/1250/1300 series products. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27960
• Windows Media Player: Playing a DVD in full screen mode no longer results in vertical bar corruption being noticed during playback. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28497
• DVD display no longer blinks in red when Overdrive is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28794

Known Issues Under the Windows Vista Operating System

This section provides information on known issues associated with the ATI Catalyst™. These include:

• City of Heroes: Attempting to play the game on a system with a dual link panel connected to it may result in the Windows Vista operating system failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28495
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter: Pressing the Alt+Tab keys when playing the game may result in the Windows Vista operating system failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28491
• Day Watch: Playing the game on a system running Windows Vista may result in the flickering being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28825
• Gods: Land of Infinity (demo): Having the in-game options set to 1920x1200 32bpp, Shadows on High, and Texture Quality set to High may result in only the mouse pointer being visible. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28810
• Lost Planet: Setting AA to either 4x or 8x may result in the game failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28492
• Rainbow Six Vegas: Setting the display resolution to 1600x1200 and applying the in-game settings to high may result in corruption being noticed when using an HDMI display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28826
• World of Warcraft: Playing the game with wide or narrow tent Anti-Aliasing filters may result in wireframe flashing. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28807
• Catalyst™ Control Center->OverDrive™: The OverDrive™ setting are not retained for individual accounts. This issue may also be experienced under the Windows Vista operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-25805
• The Record function currently fails to work when using an ATI All-In-Wonder X1300 and time shifting is enabled. Further information can be found in topic number 737-22014
• A blank screen may be displayed after unchecking all the Component Video formats except when the 480i30 custom mode is applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27620
• A green or black screen may be displayed when configuring MCE to ATSC mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27622
• The 3D aspect may appear blank when launching a second instance of the Catalyst™ Control Center™. This issue may also be experienced under the Windows XP operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28482
• The Catalyst™ Control Center version number may fail to be updated after the installation of a newer Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28493
• Dragging player window to secondary display while playing back HD content and moving it back to primary may result in blank player window. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28496
• Attempting to enable CrossFire™ on a secondary display device no longer results in CrossFire™ failing to be enabled. Further information on this issue may be found in topic number. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28844
• Creating a secondary user account and switching from the secondary user account to the primary user account may results in CrossFire™ failing to be enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28786
• Connecting a secondary display device and enabling CrossFire™, followed by disabling CrossFire™ no longer results in CrossFire™ pages in the Catalyst™ Control Center showing that it is enabled. Further information on this issue may be found in topic number 737-28845
• Windows Dream Scene Content: Corruption may be noticed when attempting to run the preview for the chosen clips. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28856
• The ATI resolution and color text "mouse over" dialog box may contain a mix of English and Arabic. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28811
• The composite video slider values may be automatically applied without clicking on the Apply button. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28812
• Setting the language option to any of the supported languages other than English may result in the help page for Advanced Color failing to be displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28822
• Using live TV on a system containing an ATI HD 2900 XT product and running the Windows Vista operating system may result in the application failing if the Catalyst™ 7.6 driver is installed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28823
• When running certain OpenGL samples, the ATI Radeon™ graphics adapter may not be running at the requested clock values on a CrossFire™ configured system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28824
• Resuming from an S3 state may result in a longer than expected time for the Windows Vista operating system to resume. Further details can be found in topic number 737-25798
• The Catalyst™ Control Center version number may fail to be updated after the installation of a newer Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28493
• Playing an HD-DVD title using the Cyberlink player may result in corruption or the Windows Vista operating system failing to respond after a short period of playback time. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28827
• Setting the display resolution to 1680x1050 and playing either an MPEG 2HDi/p, VC1, or H.264 interlaced content may result in the content not being accelerated and resolution restrictions being applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28828
• A Windows error message may occur when game settings are set to their highest levels. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28830

Th3_VVr41th

Again, alot of focus on the "HD 2xxx" series of cards, nothing mentioned about slightly older hardware...

Installation was flawless, as usual, but on restart I got a BSOD that didn't repeat itself on reboot. (I did another fresh install of vista and it did the exact same thing, quick bsod, and never happened again after reboot, strange...)

I still have the same problems I always have since the 7.2's

Fan control is fubar, ATIKMDAG errors every few seconds unless I run the fan up to 100% with ATI Tool...

Unsure at this point if it will ever get fixed since ATI say they can't figure out what is wrong, that it may be Vista, and MS says that its ATI's drivers...

Doesn't make sense, any game i run i have no problems at all visually or with gameplay, just the damn ATIKMDAG errors when I leave the fan control up to the drivers...

One other thing I have noticed, under the Avivo section, I actually have moving video with the sample image again, that has been broke since 7.2's as well, so apparently they fixed something...

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X1800XTTOP

Very welcome increase of performance with AdaptiveAA. Its funny they refuse to mention such a thing in the release notes. After all its a 400% performance increase...

Hitman Blood Money still doesnt detect CCC settings. Forcing AA from CCC disable any AA ingame. This means i cannot get 12xAA or 24xAA (wich is what i want), as well as AdaptiveAA is not working in this title (forcing 8xAA ingame and enabling Adaptive in CCC does not make adaptive work!).

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 can hardlock or often just crash to desktop every 10-15 minutes of gameplay. This makes this game compleatly unplayable and is very annoying.

Armed Assault is not working in Vista. After 10 minutes of gameplay textures will colapse totally and you cant see anything. You see the beginning of the effect as soon as you load up any map as textures get very slow in loading (you see them blurry).

Other than those im very happy with these drivers.

vf-

I've been plagued with this a lot since 7.5 but I was caught with blue screens on every restart. To this day I'm still using the drivers that came with Vista. As ATI's drivers have really knocked my confidence since they wiped out my install.
Sounds like that same problem will end up a loop for me.

Just for the sake of it... have you ever tried turning the glass aero UI off and run the aero basic UI?
Some people I have read said after they turned off the glass UI, this problem stopped.

cuke2u

Hi, it seems that these drivers have the same issue that the beta's had with PowerDVD Ultra, you go through all of the menus when playing a HD DVD, it then crashes upon trying to play a film. As the 7.7's don't have this problem I will have to go back to those....
ChrisC

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Asus P5B Premuim Vista Edition Intel Core 2 Duo 6600
Crucial Anniversary
(2x1gb)
2x Samsung 3200g
ATI X1900XT-X

Spyre

The Hitman Blood Money thing is a game issue not a driver one.

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Th3_VVr41th

I need to revise my comments about the 7.8's. Apparently ATI has in fact broken more...

Oblivion hard locks and/or crashes within minutes of starting. No changes to any settings affect the problem.

Warhammer40k Dark Crusade hard locks or becomes a slide-show of about 2 fps when there are several units moving on screen. This only happens with AA on @ 6x. (never happened with prior releases, game was always liquid smooth)
Also setting the Catalyst A.I. to anything other than OFF results in complete text, as well as some texture corruption in the game.

COD2, same as oblivion, crashes or hard-locks the system within minutes of running, nothing makes it better or worse.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. drops to the desktop with no warning, (exe has been patched with the large memory access fix, so that isn't the problem as it once was. Anyone with a large amount of memory,Vista, and this game should know/knows about the fix)

I'm still testing more of my library of games, but apparently, ATI has changed something, and not for the better. I never had a single problem with any games at ANY settings (usually maxed out) until now (except for my obvious fan issue). So it's back to 7.7's for me.



I have tried everything possible, nothing resolves the issue I have with the fan not working properly under vista unless I go back to using cat 7.1, which is not going to happen, since those drivers were about as good as these new ones...

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Kizo

Hi,
I have tried these drivers and they crashed in F.E.A.R., Lost Planet DX10 and Tomb Raider - Anniversary. After that I lowered to stock clocks and tried again. They were playable, but GPU sensor showed 84 C. With 7.7 it never went beyond 64 C. So I thing that the fan control is s***wed in these Cats. (Atleast in my case)
Since ATT isn't recognizing HD 2600XT yet, I can't check the fan %.
For now I'm sticking to Cats 7.7, and will be waiting for further releases.

Cheers.

Spyre

@ Th3_VVr41th

Warhammer Dark Crusade works fine for me in Vista at 6x with the 7.8 drivers etc

Oblivion does too.

Havent bothered with checking out Stalker as I dont like that game.

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ChaosMinionX

All games ive used run fine.... as well as noticeable performance increases...


BF2142
CS:S
HL2
FEAR
Company of Heroes
STALKER
and all Warhammer 40k games.

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X1800XTTOP

You usually know what youre talking about but is this 100% confirmed? I could force AA/AAA just fine in XP with my X1800..

Also STALKER stutter much more on my HD2900 compared to my friend with 8800GTS640mb. At first I thought it was because he had the 640mb version, then a friend with the 320mb showed me the game and he had no stuttering at all compared to what I am having. I had this much stuttering with both X1800 and this HD2900 - while fps always remains over 60... All systems had 2gb of RAM. The game is almost unplayable.. Load a savegame and look left/right and you have huge stuttering, while on the nvidia cards its as fluent as any normal game.

Other than that i think this driver is awesome. Using AdaptiveAA in all my games without performance issues. Also 12xAA is my standard option in all games where i can force AA and that with very good performance. I simply love this

initialised

I'm getting MOM errors when I try and launch CCC. Need to reinstall .NET 2.0

vf-

Well so far after installing these, I can now say a bit of faith has been restored in me from ATI.

There was no BSOD on restart and no washed out colours. Which was plagued with me from 7.5.

Lord Dave

I'll give you something else to think about. I've got an MSI Radio HD 2600 XT, fanless. Yep, one of those huge heat grates. I've got a monster cooling case so its not overheating but I get the same errors. So if it IS the fan control then its present no matter if you have a fan or not.

Buddahpest

After installing these, I keep getting the "You do not have permission to change Catalyst Control Center settings" message. This only happened after I installed these. Uninstalling - use Driver Cleaner - and reinstall - has no effect. This is with Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

Reverting back to the 7.7's fixes the problem.

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thunderclap

Games load and play fine for me. Still can't boot into Vistas through the DVI port and am forced to use the VGA adapter. *sigh*

Spyre

Most likely a monitor issue since the display drivers aren't even loaded til near the end of bootup.

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thunderclap

Once Vista has loaded I can plug the DVI cable in and everything is fine. It's just during boot. And the error report that Vista generates says it's an ATI issue, not a Hyundai (monitor) issue.

But we are talking Windows here. You could be right. Wish it would boot properly though.

Lord Dave

I've seen something similar to this. On Dell computers with integrated video AND an add on card, you have to disable the onboard video manually otherwise it will show video from the onboard until you get to windows, then it'll use the add-on card.
Normally they should produce the same signal, but if you have some setting that lets you chose which one to use, I'd see if you can find it.

thunderclap

My motherboard doesn't have onboard video so that isn't the issue. A good thought though. Thanks.

zuffox

Everything seems fine except that my display has obtained a grayish filter effect, so that everything seems just a bit more ... well, gray.

Lord Dave

zuffox, sounds like your sturation is set too low.

Spyre

To fix the gray effect as you call it, goto CCC advanced view, and the colour section, then use the scrollbar to see the 2nd part of the tab and change the level to the other one than its set to at the moment.

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junka

Have you all seen the hotfix for 7.8 to fix issues with Bioshock?

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GeorgeP

My problem is very similar to Wraith´s. Config: OS: W Vista Home Premium, new Gigabyte MoBo(chipset P35), 1GB RAM, Core 2 Duo 2.13, Radeon 1950 Pro Ultimate (Driver Catalyst 7.4-7.8) all is brand new.
After starting any game - time from start to crash depends mostly on graphic demands of the game. (resolution, effects AA and so on) picture on screen fallapart and than the are 2 scenarios: game ends and in Windovs I see ...atikmdag... error, or PC just reboot.
At the time there is apparently no soution to this problem in Catalyst 7.2 - 7.8 (7 month - Bravo ATi, Bravo Microsoft !!!!!)
So I see 2. posibilities:

1. To install Catalyst 7.1 - that didn´t suffered this problem and wait until the solution will come out
(or is it bad idea and I´ll cause myself even more troubles with the old driver) ???

2. To hell with Vista and I go back to old good XP...