Posts tagged with DirectX 10.1
ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 Driver – What’s New?
Posted by Jay Marsden in 1:45 PM
(18 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
Loading ...It’s that time again for the ATI Catalyst™ driver update! We have been getting great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site. Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.
*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.
ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver – Everything you want to know
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 5:23 PM
Do you regularly update your graphics drivers?
With four months of ATI CatalystTM 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 CrossfireXTM 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 CatalystTM features with current ATI RadeonTM HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 series of products.
Marketing sound bite: ATI CatalystTM 9.7 – ATI CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 9.7 – ATI Video Converter update – support for Windows 7
With the introduction of CatalystTM 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 RadeonTM HD 4800 and ATI RadeonTM HD 4600 series of graphics cards can now take advantage of the video conversion tool found in the ATI CatalystTM Control Center under Basic View. Using this video conversion tool, users can benefit from substantial performance improvements when transcoding video files.
Game Optimizations: ATI CatalystTM 9.7
Our test system configuration is:
| AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0GHz) |
| Asus M3A79-T(790) |
| 4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 |
| Windows VISTA Ultimate SP1 64bit |
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 CatalystTM 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.
ATI Catalyst 9.6 Driver – Everything you want to know
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 1:51 PM
Loading ...
With three months of ATI Catalyst™ 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 ATI Catalyst 9.6!
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.*
Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst™ 9.6
Our test system configuration is:
|
AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0GHz) processor |
|
Asus M3A79-T(790) |
|
4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 |
|
Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit |
This month we are seeing a further performance increase with Company of Heroes and some significant performance increases for Crysis Warhead, Crysis and World in Conflict, compared with last month’s ATI Cataylst 9.5 driver. Following are some of this month’s highlights. Detailed release notes are available here.
- Company of Heroes – performance gains of up to 25% for the ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series, and performance gains of up to 10% for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
- Crysis Warhead – performance gains of up to 11% for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual configuration.
- Crysis – performance gains of up to 13% for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual configuration.
- World in Conflict – performance gains of up to 30% for high settings that were previously CPU limited with the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series.
Of course, your performance may vary, depending on your particular system configuration.
And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI Catalyst™ 9.6 Driver
This month’s release has support for the following new operating systems:
· SLED and SLED 11 production support
· RHEL 4.8 early look support
ATI MultiView™ for Consumer users
· Allows users to render applications using a multiple GPU configuration with a unified workspace
· Enables Xinerama in single or multiple GPU configurations
· Supported on any combination of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000, ATI Radeon™ 3000 Series and ATI Radeon™ 2000 Series of graphics cards
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.
Why would anyone buy just a DX10 GPU
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 3:06 PM
Developers are embracing DirectX 10.1
Gamers are faced with a tsunami of marketing, specs, features and supposed benefits. They have companies — both hardware and software — telling them “to buy”, “not to buy”, that this “feature” is a must have and “that” feature is a must have only to be confused with “when to buy” and what is the right “time”.
Now, I am a product marketing guy, I have been on both sides of what I outline above. I do have to say that at AMD we try to be as transparent as possible. A case in point is DX10.1 support. AMD’s Reigning King of Content Richard Huddy clearly outlines the advantages of DX10.1 here!
This Microsoft API has been widely understood for some time; it is part of Windows Vista SP1 and is meant to be supported as the full implementation of Windows Vista. We first introduced support for DX10.1 in our ATI RadeonTM HD 3000 series of graphics cards. This API was the latest and greatest available to the industry and being “gamer centric” we did not even question the resources to implement it, we just did it!
This has proved to be a major competitive advantage for ATI Radeon graphics cards over our competitor NVIDIA’s GeForce as they have chosen not to implement DX10.1 in any of their G92 based GPUs (this includes the G92-based “rebranded” cards). You may be asking yourself “Why would NVIDIA not want to support DX10.1?” and my answer is simply, “I don’t know”. Best to ask them.
The industry has heard NVIDIA downplay the importance of DX10.1, there was even a public issue with a certain game that launched as a DX10.1 game but then the publisher patched the game back to being a DX10 game even though it significantly reduced the gaming experience for ATI Radeon GPU based gamers. (i.e.: by reverting to only a DX10 performance/experience level, thus eliminating all the DX10.1 goodies)
So, this takes me to my point, Developers are embracing DX10.1 as an opportunity to deliver exceptional performance and visual experiences unlike anything the gaming world has seen before.
Artem Kulakov the renowned game designer recently was quoted in http://www.pcgameshardware.com/ as saying:
“From day one Stormrise has been designed as a new type of RTS for next generation consoles and PCs. Stormrise has been designed for DirectX 10 and Vista only right from the start. Integrating DX10.1 was an opportunity to increase performance and improve visual quality even further.”
You can read the full interview here.
DX10.1 is a supported API in all ATI Radeon graphics cards, it’s like a bonus to the consumer. AMD is committed to delivering exceptional value in all its products while still embracing the latest and greatest innovations, both software and hardware.
Until we have DirecX11 likely sometime in 2010, I believe all gamers should not limit themselves to just a standard DX10 experience, but rather embrace DX10.1 in all its visual splendour for the best gaming experience.
Check out some of these recent DX10.1 games:
TOM CLANCY’S H.A.W.X -- Download the demo here:
Check out our DX10.1 “Frobblins” demo. (253MB)
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.
DirectX 10.1 and all that…
Posted by Richard Huddy in 1:27 PM
Sometimes I just think people should be over-whelmed by all the goodness in the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series.
In it, we have:
- DirectX 10.1
- Horsepower that crushes the competition
- Astonishing value for the money
…but I guess not everyone understands what DirectX 10.1 is yet and why it’s such a big deal. So, let’s take a closer look at DirectX 10.1.
What does it bring?
Well, it’s a pure industry standard – that’s the first thing. And why does that matter? Well, with industry standards, the gaming ecosystem is in good shape and moves forward in a consensual way. Having a standard way of asking for features means game developers know what’s what and can target the important different levels (important different levels? Not sure what you mean) of hardware. DirectX 10.1 has everything that DirectX 10 has and more. It offers a handy list of technical features which typically allow games to run faster and look better than under DirectX 10. It often means gamers get both at once.
On top of that, it’s the way of the future – at least it would appear that way for the next five years or so. DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 are both required features for DirectX 11. That means that all DirectX 11 hardware has to support DirectX 10.1. It’s not optional – it’s required. So industry players can say what they like, but everyone knows that sooner or later they’ll have to support DirectX 10.1. And that’s important because it means that they too will have a reason to want games ported to what is now the most modern of graphics APIs…
We know from looking at games that DirectX 10.1 has the power to make games run faster and make them look better. Assassin’s Creed ran an astonishing 25% faster when it used DirectX 10.1 and while I can’t claim that this will always be the case, it certainly points to a very significant technical advantage.
Last week, two more pieces of PC software arrived which show the power of DirectX 10.1:
- There’s a very pretty little demo from a game engine company called Unigine. It uses DirectX 10.1 to improve the quality of its imagery quite dramatically. It does so by anti-aliasing foliage. What used to look like a twinkling sparkly mess of plant life now suddenly becomes graphically pure and smooth. The difference is quite extraordinary – and very welcome. Unigine’s CEO, Denis Shergin, said simply, "That’s given us our first ever chance to get perfect anti-aliasing on foliage, something which has been on our wish list for far too long." Check out this screenshot.
- And there’s an important game update that arrived this week too. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky has been updated to use DirectX 10.1 and it makes quite a difference! The patched game runs faster using DirectX 10.1 than it does when using DirectX 10, and this version also looks better than ever before. It has softer more realistic shadows. It too has near perfect foliage, all of which gives it a realism rarely found in games. The new patch is available to all players of the game, and we’ve worked hard with GSC Game World to make sure that all gamers get the best experience possible, but the finest improvements have been possible only on DirectX 10.1 hardware.
The difference is striking, and like the first introduction of anti-aliasing, it’s most obvious when the scenery is moving in subtle ways. As players, that’s when we tend to be most critical of image quality. On top of that, the additional quality will give a tangible advantage to gamers using AMD’s ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series – because in my opinion, AMD hardware is the only hardware which is able to truly realize the game designer’s original vision. It’s not that we’re giving an "unfair" advantage – it’s just that games played on AMD hardware just look great. Gaming on AMD hardware will often mean you can pick out your enemies more easily and sooner that you can on alternative hardware. Superior image quality represents a fair advantage.
Plus having higher frame rates is always good news. Play at 20 frames a second against someone gaming at 30 fps and you’ll soon see what I mean – though the differences don’t have to be that large to be significant. Higher frame rates represent a fair advantage. DirectX 10.1 typically gives higher frame rates than DirectX 10, and the 10% speed up that we’ve seen represents a significant advantage for users of AMD’s ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 series and ATI Radeon HD 4000 series.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky patch represents another step in the development of game technology towards perfect image quality – and I’m proud to have been involved in the team that made it happen. Kudos to Holger, Nick, Jon and Eric all from AMD who helped make it happen! And kudos to Igor and the others from GSC Game World for producing the first ever PC "Deferred rendered game to fully support anti-aliasing." These are amazing achievements for a game which had already won Voodoo Extreme’s "Best of E3 2008" awards for best graphics!
I started this blog with a question, "What does DirectX 10.1 bring?" I hope the answer is clear:
- It brings games players closer to reality
- It brings faster, prettier graphics
- It brings realism to life
It’s no wonder I love my job! Take a close look at the ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 to understand why…
Richard Huddy is the Worldwide Developer Relations Manager at AMD and an evangelist for graphics and gaming. 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.