MIG-31

This month we are seeing a massive performance increase with a whole host of games as compared to the ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver. Detailed release notes are available for most of the game optimizations; here are the highlights:

• Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance improves of up to 50% with the largest gains in configurations using ATI CrossFireX™ technology.
• Company of Heroes DirectX 10 performance improves of up to 77%.
• Crysis DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 10% and quad mode performance improves of up to 34%.
• Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 7% and quad mode performance improves of up to 69%.
• Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 50% and quad mode performance improves of up to 88%.
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 40% and with quad mode performance improving of up to 60%.
• UnigineTropics OpenGL performance improvements of up to 20%.
• UnigineTropics DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in quad mode improvements of up to 20%.
• World in Conflict DirectX 10 performance improvements of up to by 10%.

It’s fitting that last weekend AMD was in attendance at Quakecon 2009 in Dallas,Texas where the world’s most prolific OpenGLsupporters gathered for 4 days of ‘peace, love and rockets,’ that we are announcing support for OpenGL 3.1 and the following details:

This release of the ATI Catalyst driver provides OpenGL 3.1 extension support. The following is a list of OpenGL 3.1 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.8:

• Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40.
• Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced).
• Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer).
• Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the Nvidia extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens. o At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders.
• Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object).
• Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle). o Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object).
• SNORM texture component formats.

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 driver for Linux!
Support for new Linux operating systems
This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:

• RHEL 4.8 production support
• Ubuntu 9.04 production support

ATI Catalyst™ Control Center - Linux Edition support for RandR 1.2 This release of the ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces ATI Catalyst Control Center - Linux Edition support for the RandR 1.2 extension API. The following new features are now available in the ATI Catalyst Control Center - Linux Edition Display Manager:

• Display rotation
• Multiple display arrangement and desktop sizing

Download for Windows Vista: 32 Bit / 64 Bit

Download for Windows 7: 32 Bit / 64 Bit

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BlueMak

What is this dual mode? 50% increase of Far Cry 2 looks amazing, but will my 4870X2 suffice?

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Chaos

Dual mode is 2 cards as compared to tri or quad XFire and yes a 4870X2 will suffice

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BlueMak

Thank you, I guess I will give it a go.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

TB_

I was previously running the 9.4s, upgraded to the 9.8s. Not good. * Drop in frame rate (upto 50% or more) * Blurry (TF2) * Smoothness gone. After that and originaly posting this I went back to 9.4s which im on now. All is good and back to normal tho I will point out it took 3 tries to get 9.4 on. "Attempts" shouldnt be a part of driver install. Is it just me or do other people feel perhaps ATI should stop releasing unstable drivers every month and instead go back to releasing stable drivers ever quarter? Its just so hit and miss. While I greatly appreciate ATIs moves to improve the CCC and keep their drivers bleeding edge, at the end of the day I want to be able to download and install a new driver set without feeling like Im playing Russian roulette.

Chaos

Something must be wrong somewhere if you are having so much trouble getting drivers to install correctly. Have you tried a driver cleaner to remove old registry entries?

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Stratman

Is there anywhere I can find the 9.8s? If i go to ATIs site, there is no link for "older" drivers, no link for anything but 9.9s for Windows 7 64 bit. I have not heard anything good about the 9.9s, but a lot of good about the 9.8s.

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Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P
A64 7850 BE Kuma
HIS HD4850
PC Power and Cooling 610 watt PSU
4 Gigs G-Skill DDR2

BlueMak

Hmm, it looks like they are no longer linked here as far as I can tell.

Here

Previous Catalyst? Drivers

ATI Catalyst? Legacy Display Driver

the top is 64bit OS

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.