*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new in ATI Catalyst™ 9.11:

New Features

GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format.

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduced system resource utilization, and to help preserve battery life.

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is expected to be available for download from Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com) before the end of the year. This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800, ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 and ATI Radeon HD™ 4000 Series of products.

High Quality downscaling for Video Transcoding MSE

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users Transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920×1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320×240 @30p – iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive.

Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:

• RHEL 5.4 support
• openSUSE 11.2 early look support

To download the driver, click here.

Till Next Month,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Public Relations Manager 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

A little about me: I have been working in the GPU industry for approx 16 years, with most of that time at ATI Technologies doing many different jobs, from working in a lab testing for Hardware Qualification on ATI GPUS, to Product Marketing for ATI’s motherboard chipsets, to my current role as Public Relations Manager for AMD supporting reviews of our ATI GPUs and ATI Catalyst drivers.

The ATI Catalyst driver blogs have been gaining momentum, and interest is growing each and every month. The ATI Catalyst team is dedicated to keeping users informed about any and all updates on our drivers.

Between Windows 7, DirectX 11, and the new ATI Radeon GPUs, we are taking your visual experience to the next level with DirectX 11 support and new features like ATI Eyefinity technology. ATI Catalyst drivers are at the center of this innovation, driving new features and functions, while focusing on compatibility, and stability for all.

It is the ultimate tool for your GPU!

I have made you wait long enough – on to the ATI Catalyst 9.10 driver release!

New Features:

• Official ATI Catalyst WHQL release supporting ATI Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs. ATI Catalyst 9.10 now includes full GPU support for the award winning ATI HD Radeon 5800 series GPUs!
  

• Super Sample Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. ATI Catalyst 9.10 provides support for a new Anti-Aliasing method on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series.  Users can now experience the high level of anti-aliasing image quality using Super Sampling anti-aliasing while maintaining good performance levels.
  

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.10 release for Linux includes:

• This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems: Ubuntu 9.10 early look support

Highlights of resolved issues

• Ghostbusters video game no longer flickers between desktop and game play when anti-aliasing is set to 8X and game resolution set to 2560×1600
• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in “Riddick 2 Dark Athena” no longer causes the game to fail under Multi-GPU configurations
• Severe flickering no longer observed while running 3D games/samples on specific HDMI displays with configurations using ATI CrossFireX™ technology in tri and quad modes
• Desktop flashing no longer observed after driver installation and reboot with systems configured with Radeon ASIC in the primary PCIe slot and ATI Fire Stream™ ASIC in the secondary PCIe slot
• “Combat Mission Shock Force” no longer fails after a duration of game play
• Underscan/Overscan settings for TV can now be applied from the ATI Catalyst Control Center – TV Properties Adjustments page
• Changes to the “All Settings” and “Basic Quality” pages in ATI Catalyst Control Center - Avivo™ Video will now be retained after reboot

To download the driver, click here.

Discuss Catalyst 9.10 in our Forums.

See you Next Month!

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Public Relations Manager 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM9.9 Driver
With last month’s release of the ATI Catalyst^TM 9.8 driver, we saw huge game performance increases, given that, this month the driver team focused on other applications and optimizations.

ATI Catalyst^TM 9.9 Driver has no new features but does have the following resolved issues:

Anti-Aliasing support for Ghostbusters
ATI CrossFireX^TM support for Resident Evil 5
Graphics corruption fix for Sims 3
ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center – Basic mode now responds appropriately after exiting Quick Adjust Video Settings
Edge enhancement and de-noise sliders in ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer lags or appears out of sync with mouse movement
Launching Hotkeys Manager in ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer causes an unhandled exception error
The “Desktop Rotation” page in ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer shows additional information for the second display when the secondary adapter is connected
HDMI is now detected properly as DTV (HDMI) instead of DTV (DVI) when the HDMI display is hotplugged for the first time
ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer displays error message when specific HDMI displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back
Intermittent failures no longer occur with Cyberlink MediaShow Espresso once a transcoding process has been completed

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.9 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:

• openSUSE 11.1 production support
• SLED and SLES 10 SP3 early look support

To download the full release notes, click here.

See you next month!

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.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. 
Have you wondered what all the hype around Microsoft Windows 7 and DirectX 11 is all about? We will shed some light and answer some of those questions in this blog.

Let’s start with Windows7, everyone, including my own mother, is talking about this amazing operating system. Microsoft is rumoured to be launching the successor to Windows Vista in late October. What does it mean to you the PC user?

I cover my experience with Windows 7 in this blog; in a nutshell, the experience has been fantastic. It seems that Microsoft has worked out all the kinks and quirkiness of Windows Vista and are about to launch an incredible OS for the PC. Windows 7 (when compared to Windows Vista) is designed to offer the user a much more refined experience, smaller footprint, faster response times, long battery life and a much more visually intense and enjoyable PC experience.

Wrapped up in all the new Windows 7 OS splendour is a new API (Application programming Interface) called DirectX 11. Basically, the API allows developers to program software that uses a standard set of terms to communicate with the libraries and the OS. Think of it as game developers have some new toys to play with inside Windows to allow them to deliver better software.

DirectX has been around since 1995 with the launch of Windows95, a full history can be found here.

Let me break down the features and benefits of DirectX 11 -- the main features being:
-Tessellation  -- Multithreaded Rendering  - DirectCompute

Tessellation is a technology that has been around for a few GPU (graphics processing unit) generations. AMD has had Tessellation support since 2001, which was then called Truform; we also implemented Tessellation in the XBOX 360 GPU, then codenamed “Xenos”. Tessellation is a feature which increases the number of polygons in an image. Basically, Tessellation enables a more lifelike image, both of objects and landscape. Back in the day characters who were CG (computer generated) looked very blocky, almost cartoon like; with the use of Tessellation, developers are now able to significantly increase the number of triangles to draw an image, thus creating a more lifelike quality in games.

Multithreaded Rendering is a feature which allows DirectX to be processed via multiple CPU threads. This means that a dual-, triple- or quad-core CPU can have a higher utilization across all cores than DirectX APIs in the past. Historically the OS would load up a single core for commands to the GPU, in essence creating an overload on the first core and under utilizing the additional cores. With only one core issuing commands to a GPU, we have seen CPUs hold back the potential performance of the GPU. With Multithreaded Rendering, DirectX will take better advantage of all the available cores. This should result in a better experience for the multi-core user because of a faster processing pipeline and increased scaling.

DirectCompute is a feature which allows access to the shader cores/pipeline for Stream Computing (graphics acceleration) type applications and physics acceleration. One of the biggest technology breakthroughs of the past 5 years has been the notion that processing can be moved from the traditional CPU to the much more parallel GPU. Simply put, the CPU manages tasks sequentially; it accomplishes a task then moves on to the next task in a very orderly fashion and with tremendous speed. Today’s CPUs can work at speeds of up to 108.8 GigaFLOPS (Floatingpoint Operations Per Second).

A GPU is designed to work with many slower cores in parallel, giving a much wider vector -meaning a wider road for more cars to travel on -- than a CPU. This allows tasks to be completed faster if the program or software is developed to take advantage of many-many cores, albeit slower ones. Today’s GPUs can work at speeds up to 1.36 TeraFLOPS, giving the GPU a significant (almost 11 times faster) advantage when the proper software is run. This advantage truly delivers on the processing capabilities of Stream Computing. DirectCompute allows easier access to the GPU’s many cores for parallel processing; if the user is running applications that take advantage of Stream Computing then the performance experience increases considerably. We are seeing transcoding as the first type of task that is seeing tremendous benefit using Stream Computing. This means if you are an avid HD video or music user you will benefit when converting files to play on your laptop or iPod type devise; Stream Computing can significantly cut down the wait-time for enjoying your converted media.

Now, if you are a gamer you undoubtedly will be asking me “What games are going to support DirectX 11″? This is always a tightrope to walk for us as we are unable to pre-announce our technology partners titles and the specs around those titles; still, we want to give the consumer confidence that we’ve been assured there will be substantial titles in the market that take full advantage of your ATI Radeon DirectX 11-compliant graphics card. So, as this blog is published, here are the future DirectX 11 games we can talk about:

Dirt2 by Codemasters
BattleForge by EA
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat by GSC Game World

- Check out this early spoiler for Dirt 2 -

Some industry folks have stated that we will see more titles that support DirectX 11 then we did for DirectX 10. Some even say that DirectX 11 is the full implementation of what DX10 should and could have been, but that is subjective opinion and conjecture.

Game developers discuss the benefits of DirectX11

Windows7 and DirectX11 are right around the corner, as is the newest ATI Radeon family of graphics cards. As always, it’s our goal to blur the lines between reality and what is rendered. I believe we have made a major leap towards crossing that chasm with our ATI RadeonTM HD 5000 series products and their support for DirectX 11.

Tessellation - Minimized

With Tessellation - Maximized!

Between now and the launch of Windows 7 and DirectX 11, we will continue to uncover the technical details, as well as the visual implications, for the user experience.

At the time of this blog, AMD will be the first GPU vendor to market with a fully compliant and enabled DirectX 11 graphics product. So don’t be fooled by claims in the market about DX10 GPU’s supporting DirectX 11….

My good friend Tim Smalley from bit-tech.net has a great in-depth article on DirectX 11: A look at what’s coming – Check it out.

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.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM 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 CrossFireX^TM 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 GL^TM 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 Catalyst^TM 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^TM 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.

“Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn’t take Lorraine out that he’d melt my brain”. – George McFly

PMS Clan and a future gaming superstar on our Quakecon booth

Well, its day 2 at Quakecon 2009 and my brain hasn’t melted, but I have seen a Darth Vader or two… In thinking about the ‘right’ title for my blog, “The Future” was an obvious choice seeing as how we have packed up #Area64 and transported it all the way to Dallas.

What is #Area64 you ask, well, it’s the secret place in Austin where AMD has all of its unreleased products, engineering secrets and where we keep the flux capacitor. As one can imagine, we need to keep such a place heavily guarded and hard to find, so, what do a bunch of AMD gamers do, we packed it up and rebuilt it in the Gaylord Hotel for Quakecon. I am currently writing this blog from the heart of our mobile #area64, the sounds of next generation technology humming away behind me!

Pete and Chris from AMD showcasing our Quakecon shirts...

Wait a minute, Doc. Ah… Are you telling me that you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean? – Marty McFly

No, we didn’t bring our time machine but I am not going to comment on if AMD has built a time machine, that’s a completely different blog. But, we did bring what we expect will revolutionize the way you play games on PC’s in the future.

How does one gain access into #area64 and who gets access, great questions, here is what you have to do:

AMD will be limiting access to #Area64 to 100 almost random gamers, meaning anyone and everyone has a fair shot at “Seeing the Future”, just follow these AMD’ers on Twitter;

@IanMcNaughton – @Tweetoe – @Catalystmaker - @AMD_Unprocessed & @Caseygotcher

We will be tweeting hints and actions during Quakecon, it could be as simple as “The first 5 gamers who meet us at XX, gain access” or “Make a short video about Why you need or should have access to #Area64 and post to Youtube, gain access”.

Or, you could simply track us down and ask for an “on the spot action for access”.

Here are the shirts we are giving away, they are unique and numbered from 1-100, if you see anyone wearing them in the halls or BYOC, you know they have “SEEN THE FUTURE”!

The Future is Awesome!

As a special treat to all the readers of my blog, via this blog, you will be the first to download the latest ATI Catalyst 9.8 driver here:

XP

XP 32

Xp 64

Vista and Win7

Vista/Win7 32

Vista/Win7 64

[Update: Official ATI Catalyst 9.8 Drivers are available here]

Enjoy!

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.

Back in the early nineties, there was a game that truly defined all video games that followed, do you remember? Well, for those readers who were not born yet, the game was called Wolfenstein 3D and its introduction was a defining moment.  Some believe that Wolfenstein 3D defined the FPS as we know it. I would have to completely agree! 

If you were a Doom player then you can thank Wolf 3D for blazing the trail for what was, is, and continues to be an amazing gaming franchise.  Fast forward to August 2009 and transport yourself to Dallas, Texas and you can relive those original Wolf 3D experiences with AMD at Quakecon 2009.

id Software has teamed up with Raven Studios to develop a new game called “Wolfenstein”.  In the new game you play the original character William B.J Blazkowicz who just happens to be a super metalled out member of the Office of Secret Actions (OSA).  Come on, how cool would that business card be?

Ian McNaughton
AMD
Office of Secret Actions

Will need to print some of those up for Quakecon!

The new Wolfenstein looks fantastic, I was able to score an early copy to hone my skillz in preparation for this weekend’s festivities and the game is awesome so far…

AMD will be showcasing Wolfenstein on our booth as well as in #area64. 

We will also be providing live updates via Twitter and vlogs via blogs.amd.com.

#Area64 will be exclusive access only, meaning, you can try to find it, but its hidden and being kept secret.  AMD will be showcasing what we lovingly refer to as “The Future”, if you want to see the future, follow me as well as @AMD_Unprocessed ,  @Catalystmaker, @caseygotcher and @Tweetoe for ways to get invited.

Strap in and hold on, Quakecon 2009 is about to begin!

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.

With four months of ATI Catalyst^TM driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a steady engagement from the community via this blog site.  Please keep up the comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can.  So, without further ado – let me introduce the ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver Release!           

 Please report all driver related issues here. 

*If you are having technical issues with your graphics card or are in need of driver support, please use the proper channels to submit those issues here.*

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst 9.7 – AMD’s first official unified Windows 7 / Windows Vista Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for the Windows 7 RTM

ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver is AMD’s first official unified WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified graphics driver designed for Windows 7 RTM (Release to Manufacturing) as well as Windows Vista.  Being able to have a single unified driver can enable power users to continue to support their existing OS while also experiencing the great new features of Windows 7 while running dual OS’s.

In a previous blog I highlight my own personal experience but for the purposes of this blog here are the Windows 7 highlights:

• Superior gaming performance when compared to previous Microsoft OS’s using either a single GPU configuration or ATI  CrossfireX^TM technology configurations
• Superior stability via AMD’s WHQL certified and unified Windows 7/Windows Vista graphics driver
• Leadership in Innovation with support for all the Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 features and ATI Catalyst^TM features with current ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 series of products.

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7 – ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center – Enhanced user interface

When our customers provide feedback, we listen! Case in point, we have received feedback that the Catalyst GUI needed a refresh, some parts of the GUI were not efficient and required a makeover, AMD listened and delivered. 

In this new beta version of Catalyst^TM Control Center we have a newly redesigned user interface to enhance usability and end user efficiency, which includes a newly designed Desktops and Displays Manager which will enable users to quickly configure and arrange their displays.  Most of us power users have multiple monitors and as such, this will help with the frustrations of multi monitor management, especially with scenarios where a laptop is removed from a docking station prior to sleeping and returned prior to sleeping.  ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7 has full support for Hydravision under Windows 7.

We have designed in a new streamlined look where the settings and controls are now found in the new “Graphics” and “Options” drop down menus allowing users to very quickly select different tabs and adjust the desired settings.

All of the above enhancements to ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center are supported under Windows 7 and Windows Vista. This beta version is the first in an exciting transition for CCC and we await feedback!

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7 – ATI Video Converter update – support for Windows 7

With the introduction of Catalyst^TM 9.7, we are introducing support for the ATI Video converter under Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit versions. 

With the massive explosion of mainstream consumption of HD video, owners of ATI Radeon^TM HD 4800 and ATI Radeon^TM HD 4600 series of graphics cards can now take advantage of the video conversion tool found in the ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center under Basic View.  Using this video conversion tool, users can benefit from substantial performance improvements when transcoding video files.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7

Our test system configuration is:

This month we are seeing a further performance increase with Crysis and Lost Planet Colonies as compared to ATI Catalyst 9.6.  Following are some of this month’s highlights. Detailed release notes are available for most of the game optimizations; I have simply picked a few to highlight in this blog.

• Crysis – performance gains at ‘very high’ quality presets increase by up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 series products. 
• Lost Planet Colonies – performance increase of up to 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing  is used on the ATI Radeon HD 4800  series products

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7

This month’s release has support for the following new operating systems:

• RedFlag DT 7.0 production support

To download the full release notes, click 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.

With 2 months of ATI Catalyst^TM driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a steady engagement from you guys in the community via this blog site.  Please keep up the comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can.  So, without further ado – let me introduce ATI Catalyst 9.5!

Please report all driver related issues here. 

*If you are having technical issues with your graphics card or are in need of driver support, please use the proper channels to submit those issues here.*

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5 – Unified Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista®

WHQL is the word of the month for this blog; AMD was the first to introduce a fully certified single unified WHQL approved graphics driver for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista®.  By meeting Microsoft’s WHQL certification requirements in ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5 driver for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista, we clearly showcase our continued focus on delivering an extremely stable and robust Win 7 experience.  First to market is important, but best to market first is how we roll at AMD in terms of graphics driver support for new operating systems.  AMD led the market with early support for Vista and now continues that graphics driver leadership with the launch of Catalyst 9.5.

All ATI Radeon^TM GPU users with an ATI Radeon HD 4000, 3000 and 2000 series product will enjoy WHQL certified support under Win 7 with ATI Catalyst 9.5.

Marketing sound bite: ATI Stream update:

<Insert Drum roll here please>

The comments section of my blog has been filled for 2 months with questions on when we were going to deliver 64-bit support for ATI AVIVO^TM technology under Windows Vista, today is the day!

With today’s release of ATI Catalyst 9.5 a number of issues that you may have previously experienced using the ATI Video Converter have been resolved! Also, ATI AVIVO technology is now supported under Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit.

Using ATI Stream technology, users of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of new optimizations in this video conversion tool (found in ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center Basic View) for a better experience when transcoding video files.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5

One of the items I want to cover each month is optimizations in games and highlighting those for you in this blog; now, I want to be honest and upfront, I intend to highlight the top games and/or optimizations but not all of them! All of the details and minutia are listed in the release notes of each ATI Catalyst Driver and that can be viewed here.

 For this month the highlights are:

• Unigine Tropics DirectX® 9 – enables performance gains for single GPU and ATI CrossFireX^TM configurations with anti-aliasing enabled. 
• Company of Heroes - enables performance gains for both single GPU and ATI CrossFireX^TM configurations. 
• BattleForge- enables performance gains for ATI CrossFireX^TM configurations. 

 And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5

No new features this month but a host of fixes included in this month’s release.

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.

 Hot on the heels of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 launch complete with astounding reception from journalists, customers, gamers and winning over 40 awards to date, Terry Makedon and his team have a Catalyst update to launch as well!  The ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 driver was only released 22 days ago, so don’t expect a lot of optimizations, but the driver team has built in a few goodies for ATI Catalyst 9.4 that are worth the update.

[NOTE:  Some readers took advantage of my last blog to raise some driver support issues  - I wanted to remind readers that this blog is not meant as a driver support page, and ALL driver support issues should be communicated through the proper channels so we can capture them correctly and fix the issues. So please report all driver related issues here.  I am happy to read and comment on some of them that you feel are relevant to this blog, but no support will be given via this blog, sadly I am not a driver engineer!]

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst™ 9.4 - New ATI OverDrive™ auto-tuning application*

ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive™ auto-tune application finds over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive supported ATI Radeon™ Graphics accelerators. This new added support is designed for the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series of GPUs. 

We work hard to deliver the best platform solutions that consist of CPU and GPU. As the only company in the industry that can deliver both we have the unique opportunity to develop free software to optimize performance across AMD-based platforms.

I don’t think we say enough about our gaming software, here are links to download all of our recent applications:

• AMD Fusion for Gaming Utility*
• AMD Overdrive Software*
• ATI Catalyst™9.4 Drivers with ATI OverDrive™ auto-tuning application*

Some of the other notable highlights in ATI Catalyst 9.4 are that this driver is optimized for the upcoming highly anticipated game The Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena. Catalyst 9.4 also supports the new ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 as well as fixes a load of bugs; please check out the release notes for full details.

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst™ 9.4 for Linux

We will have support (once the driver is available on or about April 17th) for new operating systems:

• RHEL 5.3 production support
• Ubuntu 9.04 early look support

So, what does this all really mean to you, the gamer?  It is further commitment to the enthusiast community that overclock or want the ability to tweak their systems.*  That is, you own an AMD processor and an ATI Radeon GPU, you will be enabled to have a superior PC experience with our gaming software products, and of course, if you are a Linux user, a broader set of platform support.

See you next month!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

*AMD product warranty does not cover damage caused by performance tuning, even when enabled using AMD software.

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.

• AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition (2.8GHz)
• Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H (AMD 790GX-based mobo)
• ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 X2 (single card without ATI CrossFireX™ technology enabled)
• 4G Corsair Memory DDR2
• 150G WD HDD
• Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit

The test system

WEI and 3DMark System Specs

After the install and boot up was complete, I did what ALL gamers should do (on a monthly basis) and updated my ATI Catalyst^TM GPU software drivers… The idea of triple core was a novel approach for CPUs, normally, or better, historically we (the industry) went from 1…2…4… etc, always in multiples of 2x. AMD broke this trend as we had the world’s first native quad-core processor for desktop PCs which allowed us to offer the market a triple-core processor. The significance of this is that now consumers had more choice, OEMs and the channel had more differentiation and AMD offered a product that its competitor could not replicate. But I digress, moving on to gameplay. The FarCry 2 play test:

DELL 30" monitor displaying FC2

I loaded a fresh copy of FarCy 2 and proceeded to crank the settings: 2560×1600, AA 4x, DirectX10 (would have elected DirectX10.1 if available) all other settings were on High or Ultra High. The load time was quick; the game play was smooth, no hitches, no visible issues, a solid great experience. The GPU did not have ATI CrossfireX^TM technology enabled as I wanted to play the game with the equivalent of a performance mainstream card such as the ATI Radeon HD 4870. The picture above does not do the experience justice but it looked beautiful, 30 inches of monitor in all its splendor powered by a $145 CPU, unbelievable. But, it’s not a magic trick; I played a few more games to make sure this experience was not an anomaly.

Crysis - Advanced settings on HIGH, 1600x1200 AA 4x - picture taken right before I died

The AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition was a champ, the game experiences were awesome, and why is that you ask? The answer is quite simple, the system I built was a balanced system, I invested more in graphics, which allowed me to have the ultimate gaming experience while not having to invest in a $1000 CPU. Oh, did I mention that these processors are DDR3 AND DDR2 capable, meaning you can use them in your existing AM2+ socket motherboard as an upgrade OR in our new AM3 DDR3 socket motherboards. One of the things I give AMD huge credit for is their continued support of past generation infrastructure, this means cheaper alternatives for consumers and gives YOU the gamer the choice when you want to upgrade.

Enemy Territory-Quake Wars, All settings on HIGH, Shader Lvl Ultra and AA 8x

The old school belief was that to get the best PC experience, one must invest as much as possible in the CPU; this is now a myth, tales of long ago, fallacy, make believe! Don’t believe the Blue hype in the market, you can have a brilliant multi-core gaming experience with overclockability for less than $145. This little triple-core processor is proof of that!¹ The GPU and the chipset have become vital decisions when building a PC, the old adage of “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” holds true in PCs today. I was thoroughly impressed with this product, especially when you take into account its price point, its headroom and the market leading chipsets it gets slotted into. Harness a system like this with the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility² and the AMD OverDrive software and you have the makings of a fantastic mainstream gaming system. Check out these 3^rd party reviews to see for yourself: Bjorn 3D: “Phenom 2 X4 940 BE, X4 810 & X3 720 BE

”

• AWARD:  “Seal of Approval”

HardOCP: “Phenom II Gets Affordable with DDR3 & AM3 ”

• AWARD: “Editors Choice Gold Award”

Firing Squad: AMD’s AM3 CPUs: Phenom II X4 810 and Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Hot Hardware: AMD Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720 BE Processors Also check out this video and these photos.

¹AMD warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, even when using AMD OverDrive™ software.

² THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING 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.

“Plug ‘n’ Pulverize” gaming graphics upgrade for notebook PCs

For millions of notebook PC users, it’s been nothing more than a frustrated wish. A portable performance possibility never realized. A mobile multi-monitor dream unfulfilled. An unreachable itch that laptop-toting PC gamers could never scratch -until now.

Thanks to AMD, notebook buyers will finally get what they have wanted for so long: “Plug ‘n’ Pulverize” graphics performance that transforms a thin-and-light laptop into a gaming powerhouse. AMD’s new ATI XGP™ technology is a PCIe 2.0-compatible external graphics platform that adds desktop-class graphics performance and multi-monitor muscle to compatible notebook PCs. The idea is to deliver both long battery life and a great gaming experience -two features long considered mutually exclusive – making XGP a potential breakthrough innovation that gives notebook gamers the best of both worlds.

Supercharge gaming for CRYSIS-worthy frame rates with multi-GPU ATI CrossFireX™ technology, mating the ATI XGP’s ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 GPU with the notebook PC’s internal ATI Radeon HD 3000-series graphics card. Enjoy ultra high quality HD graphics for demanding multimedia and video editing tasks, HD video and Blu-ray decoding and playback, integrated HD audio output over HDMI, and more.¹

Rabah and Ron (the AMD brains behind the scenes)

ATI XGP™ technology features an ATI Radeon HD 3870 GPU with 512 MB DDR3 video memory inside a small portable enclosure with standalone power and cooling. It connects to a compatible AMD-based notebook PC with a special eight-lane PCI Express 2.0 external cable, enabling the ATI XGP to simultaneously drive up to three external high-resolution displays with HDMI and DVI connections. A couple of powered USB 2.0 ports also enable easy external mouse and keyboard docking.

This kind of solution has been the long-sought holy grail of every notebook user who suffered buyer’s remorse after discovering the limitations of their latest lightweight wonder. Our lead ATI XGP technology OEM partner is Fujitsu Siemens Computers and together we have been able to bring to market their FSC Amilo Graphics Booster, one of the “coolest” external consumer devices ever offered in the gaming/consumer electronics space. My exalted “insider” status enabled me to actually kick the tires and take it for a spin!

The FSC Graphics Booster: a half-kilogram of full desktop-class performance

We hooked-up a FSC Graphics Booster to a ATI XGP-ready notebook and big-screen HDTV at our UK AMD Live! lab. Addled gamers that we are, we loaded fresh installs of CRYSIS and FRAPS to put the FSC Graphics Booster to the ultimate FPS test.

The plant is fake – but the FPS are real

Our first impression? The FSC Graphics Booster is a great solution to play today’s most demanding PC games at mainstream resolutions on a thin-and-light laptop, yet avoiding the bulk, weight, heat, and battery power consumption of built-in single or dual discrete notebook graphics.

From left: playing GRID, watching HD video, tweaking Twitter, digging DIGG

Next: a multi-monitor experiment to try something other notebook users can only wish they could. Even with dual-core CPUs and multitasking operating systems, today’s notebook PCs are typically productivity-hobbled by the lack of true support for multiple high-resolution displays. The FSC Graphics Booster with AMD’s XGP technology changes all of that, simultaneously driving three external monitors along with the notebook’s screen.

Quad-displays = sweaty-palmed excitement

The FSC Graphics Booster with ATI XGP™ technology offers an unbeatable combination of desktop-class graphics power, ATI CrossFireX technology-enabled, and multi-display support. Thin-and-light notebook users can now have it all – mobile computing when you need it, multi-monitor productivity when you want it, and ATI CrossFireX graphics performance when your in-game survival depends on it. Check out some early reviews on We Got Served and here Notebookcheck.com

Watch this space for more notebook PC gaming, because I’m planning to take the awesome Alienware M17 for the ultimate test drive!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

1. HD monitor required. Additionally, a Blu-ray drive is required for Blu-ray playback.

Ian McNaughton is senior manager of product and platform marketing EMEA 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.

I think best way to start my new AMD blog is to introduce myself beyond my brief bio and official photo. I manage AMD’s product marketing for all of EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). I feel that I have one of best jobs in the world. Why? Because I’m a gamer guy.

I’m a grass-roots, down-and-dirty, unashamed-to-admit-it gamer guy. I’m a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, tell-it-like-it-is-and-ask-no-forgiveness gamer guy. I have one of best jobs in the world because I get to have my way with the latest, fastest, and most extreme PC gaming technology ever created – every single day. The tough part is pretending to be unexcited by it all while working around normal folks.

At home, it’s different. Surroundings recede to darkness, and vision stretches to the vanishing point of a pixel. The moment dissolves through 64-bit quantum foam, and my awareness teleports to an AA-rendered reality. I create worlds, save worlds, and conquer them. My altered state reaches a fevered peak—then my wife calls me to dinner.

Which proves that I’m actually just a regular guy. Canadian grown, I prefer hot dogs and beer to brie and wine. However, I prefer the very best when it comes to PC gaming. My first computer was a Commodore 64, and my first game title was the highly addictive “Summer Games.” Upgrading annually since, my home PC today is a mighty AMD Phenom™ X4 9950-based AMD platform housed in a Cooler Master chassis, with a 10,000 RPM 150GB Raptor system drive, dual 500GB storage drives, and dual ATI Radeon HD™ 4870 X2 cards using ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode driving a 30” Dell 2560×1600 monitor. My current definition of sheer bliss: 4.1 megapixels of Crysis!

For the record, I am not a FPS guy. I am an avid RTS gamer (Chris Taylor is my hero and CDN buddy), with a “never-say-die” style honed in 1997 playing Total Annihilation. When all was lost and there was no chance of capturing the enemy commander, I always mowed through the enemy’s city intent on eliminating any chance for my opponent to win the game. They say your status in Valhalla depends on the size of the enemy honour guard you take along. Hey, if you’re going to go down—take as many with you as you can.

But I’m more than just an addled enthusiast. I’m also a PC gaming industry activist, and a staunch advocate for the millions of gamers who depend on AMD to help ensure the future of PC gaming. Issues of rampant piracy, buggy and busted DRM copy protection, and hardware requirements escalating beyond affordability are among many recent industry trends that do not bode well for the PC faithful. I’m committed to exploring these issues, and tackling the truly tough topics of our time.

Is PC gaming threatened by publishers planning to release PC versions of new games only after console versions have peaked in sales and popularity? Or is PC gaming endangered by the pirates who are forcing this to happen? Is WoW bigger than anyone actually realizes, and is hurting the industry because the millions of WoW gamers play nothing else? Do too many players cheat in CS and deserve to be hung (virtually, that is) if caught? Is playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” on medium setting truly impossible on GH3? These are among the deep questions that gnaw at the soul of today’s PC gamer.

What is the best bang-for-the-buck AMD gaming solution? What is the ultimate PC gaming experience today? What do I think PC gaming will be like in five years—or a decade from now? It’s said that telling the raw truth is a crime punishable anywhere on the planet. In this blog, I will strive to deliver unfiltered, unvarnished, unhallowed candor about gaming, gear, and hot-buttered groat clusters. Join me here for ride-the-line commentary, insightful Q&A—and almost anything else that you want to discuss, curse, or compliment.

Stay tuned!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager of product and platform marketing EMEA 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.