ATI Catalyst™ 9.8 Driver – Everything you want to know and why you should care
Game Optimizations: ATI CatalystTM 9.8 Driver
Our test system configuration is:
| AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0GHz) processor |
| Asus M3A79-T(790) motherboard |
| 4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 memory |
| Windows VISTA Ultimate SP1 64bit |
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 CrossFireXTM 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%.
Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst 9.8 – Open GLTM 3.1 Support
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.
- 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).
- Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object).
- SNORM texture component formats.
And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 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
To download the full release notes here.
Please report all technical support issues here.
See you next month!
Cheers!
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
You should kick your beta testers Ass’s, because since Catalyst 9.4 , there is NO WDDM 1.1 support for the HD2900XT in windows 7 rtm (reported by DXDIAG).
This as a result make crash every DirectX10 Application in less than 30 sec. (you wont even pass the first benchmark test).
3dmark Vantage benchmark I mean.
Hi. I have a problem with 9.8 playing video files on my 4870X2 in Windows 7 RC 64 bit, so I’ve back to 9.7 Drivers and there is no problem on that. Eariel I had the problem in 9.4 and 9.5. I hope the 9.9 will not get me a problem. Thanks.
Jakub
Hey Ian, I was one of the last guys at area 64 to win one of the 965′s (I used to have a phenom 9600). Now that I’ve finally got the 965 and overdrive installed, what’s a safe temperature for it if it’s cooled on air? I meant to ask Sami, Vince or Aaron at the Overclocking booth, but I totally forgot.
I desperately need 9.8 version for my ATI Mobility Radeon x1600…
@kristan,
Hello, I am also “desperate” for now I use the radeon driver and it works, but blocked everything with googlearth 3D, for example. kuriosko#hotmail.com thanks
Why there is no auto-update with this graphics driver? I have to manually check weekly or monthly if there is a new version available. That is annoying.
Or have I missed something again?
Hello Ian,
I’ve been an ATI fan since I bought my Gateway FX 6800-01e. I’ve upgraded this PC with a 700 Watt PSU, 8 GB of Corsair DDR 3 RAM, and another 1 GB 4850 card (XFX). I’ve crossfired the XFX with the Sapphire that came with the FX-6800 and I’ve installed CCC 9.3 through 9.7. I have had nothing but problems with the CCC versions when I play games such as Crysis, Warhead, Sins of a Solar Empire, Mass Effect, etc., in fullscreen mode with Cat AI enabled. The problem I get are jagged lines running up my monitor (Samsung T260 Syncmaster 25.5″) in fullscreen mode however when I play in windows mode, the games run fine. From what I understand (info from posters, i.e. Spyre, on the forum) you need Cat AI enabled to get the full benefits of crossfire. Is there a fix for this problem. FYI, I’ve enabled VSync, changed refresh rates, etc but to no avail. GPU-Z show that both cards are under 90% load when I play in windows mode (Cat AI enabled) however when I play these games in fullscreen and CAT AI disabled (only way I can play these games in fullscreen), only my primary card is under a 90% load while my secondary card is only under a 4 – 5% load. I’ve haven’t compared this with FRAPs yet to determine if my FPS change with CAT AI enabled vs. disabled and fullscreen vs. windows mode. Any suggestions. Thanks in advance, Ian!
Have you called the helpline? http://support.amd.com/us/contacts/Pages/GraphicsTechnicalSupport.aspx
I asked our lab guys to try Crysis on CF and all is well…We don’ have that specific monitor though, let me know what the root issue ends up being please.
@Ian McNaughton, Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I have not tried calling your support people. I will do that next. As for the root cause, I’ve played with everything under the DTV settings, e.g., specifically under attributes…changing aspect ratio on and off, centered timings, image scaling to no avail. Oh, I’m currently using CCC 9.6.
I had the FX- 6800 hooked up to a Sony Bravia XBR and had the same problems so I don’t think it’s the monitor. Also, CCC 9.6 was cleanly installed on my rig. I also tried to play with LCD overdrive but that didn’t work either. I really don’t have a clue as to what to do. I will upgrade to CCC 9.8 this weekend and will hope this will fix the problem however I think it may not be an ATI problem as it is a gateway motherboard problem. I’m going to play with the motherboard drivers and see if I can upgrade them. Hopefully this will work. I can’t think of anything else to do except for calling your support guys. Thanks again!
@Ian McNaughton,
Ian, Please see this ATI thread:
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=262&threadid=112627
Very similar problem as mine. This individual bought two Visiontek cards and solved his problem on the gateway fx 6800. I’m thinking about flashing the original Sapphire card that came with the fx 6800 with the newer XFX bios (my second card). I just hope I don’t brick the card! Have your tech guys specifically tried an XFX and Sapphire cards when they tested my problem? GPU-Z shows the Sapphire core ranges from 500 – 700 MHZ while the XFX ranges from 625 – 750 MHZ…..Thanks. Hope you get back to me. I really don’t want to flash the Sapphire or buy another XFX 4850.
@Ian McNaughton,
Problem resolved. Since I had two different manufacturer’s video cards installed (both 4850, though), this caused the conflict because the bios for the cards were different. I flashed the XFX bios on to the Sapphire card. Both bios are identical…..problem solved. IT seems that either AMD needs to let their customers know that some HD48xx series cards will not work together if their bios is different or it’s just a gateway problem where the Sapphire 4850 needs the same bios as the other 4850 someone may install in their fx 6800 rig to crossfire their video cards.
I am glad its all working again…
Catalyst 9.8 still doesn’t fix the Guitar Hero games. They’re broken since 9.5. nVidia users are laughing at as already…
Please push physics implementation into games. This was promised years ago.
I hope a 3d solution is in the works, as well.
As a previous poster stated, per game profiles please.
Since 9.8 I’m not able to use PowerXpress! It tolds me that it will switch GPUs, but nothing happens! How can I get my PowerXpress functionality back? (without going back to an old driver)
Vista Ultimate SP2 x64
When can we expect ATI Stream support in older graphics cards?
Its no secret that nVidia offers CUDA on all the 8 9 and 200 series cards, yet ATI only offer Stream on the 46XX and above.
This is a bit harsh to all the people, like me, who have 3870s and such like with 320 stream processors and nothing to run on them!
e.g. the AVIVO video convertor only supports hardware accel via 46xx +