This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power, performance, and reliability. All Radeon 7xxx - 8xxx - 9xxx series cards are supported and IPG 340 & 320.
Performance Improvements
As with most CATALYST releases performance has increased in various situations. This release of CATALYST provides performance gains to the ATI DX8 product family. These products include the RADEON 9200, 9000, and 8500 series. Performance gains are noticed throughout the following software:
- Framerates in Unreal Tournament 2003 is up by 15%
- A performance gain of between 5 and 10% is noticed in Aquamark3
- A performance gain of between 2-3% is noticed in ShaderMark scores
- Framerates in Halo is up between 3-4%
- A performance improvement of 2% is noticed in Tomb Raider
This section provides information on CATALYST driver issues that have been resolved in the latest release of CATALYST. These include the following:
- Logging on as an Administrator under Windows XP and doing a fast user switch to limited user no longer results in display corruption when playing a DVD using WinDVD version 4 or 5
- User defined colour setting are now retained when exiting a 3D game or application
- The ATI Control Panel no longer fails to launch when attempting to enter the Advanced options of the primary display adapter after disabling extended desktop support
- The Cancel button found in the ATI 3D tab is now working properly when switching between a user defined profile and the default setting
- Enabling the CRT as the primary display and turning the TV off in the Display page no longer results in a general protection fault under Windows ME
- The Anisotropic Filtering custom setting is now retained under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 7200 installed
- The D3D panel now retains the user defined AA/AF setting under Windows XP when a RADEON 8500 series is installed and the main setting is set to High Quality
Resolved Game Issues
This section provides information on game issues that have been resolved in the latest release of CATALYST. These include the following:
- Launching the game Tron 2.0 under Windows XP no longer results in the game failing to respond after the game introduction is loaded
- Launching the game Line of Sight: Vietnam and setting the graphics option to 800x600 16bpp no longer results in the game failing to respond when selecting a new game
- Running the game Armed and Dangerous under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 9200 series installed no longer results in the display image appearing corrupted when selecting Storm the Base mission in the game
- The game Half-Life is now displayed properly under Windows XP when the game resolution is set to either 320x240 or 400x300
- Playing the game Serious Sam 2 under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON&tdrade; 9500/9800 series installed no longer results in the game failing to run when the game option is set to OpenGL
- Playing the game Unreal Tournament 2003 under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 9600 series installed no longer results in texture corruption being displayed on the flag surfaces in the DM-Tokara Forest
- Selecting the Optimum Quality setting in D3D control panel no longer results in a frozen frame when launching the game HALO
- Setting the resolution in the game SpyHunter to 1280x1024 along with having the Use Recommended Settings slider set to balanced in the ATI 3D tab no longer results in some background images being missing while the game is loading
- Setting the display option to 640x480 or 800x600 in the game Splinter Cell no longer results in the game menu flickering
- Returning to the main menu in the game Counter-Strike no longer results in the game's refresh rate reverting back to 60Hz when resuming game play