ATI Catalyst 8.7 Windows Vista 64-bit

ATI released their July 2008 update of the Catalyst driver suite for radeon graphics cards. We have a thread open on these drivers right here. Please share your experiences.

Performance Improvements

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™.

• 3DMark Vantage: Performance increases of up to 20% is noticed in the Performance Preset on single card configured systems when using ATI Radeon™ HD 36xx or ATI Radeon™ HD 34xx products
• Company of Heroes DX10: Performance increases of 3% to 12% is noticed in specific maps on single card configured systems when using either an ATI Radeon™ HD 48xx, ATI Radeon ™ HD 38xx, or an ATI Radeon™ HD 36xx product
• Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases of 4% to 15% is noticed in specific maps on single card configured systems when using either an ATI Radeon™ HD 48xx, ATI Radeon™ HD 38xx, or an ATI Radeon™ HD 36xx product
• Call Of Duty 4 DX9: Performance increases of up to 4% in specific maps is noticed on single card configured systems when using an ATI Radeon™ HD 48xx product
• Lost Planet DX9: CrossFire™ scaling improves up to 1.7x and performance increases up to 80% across all Radeon™ products when AA and AF is enabled

ATI's Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project designed by the Stanford University. The application performs intensive simulations of protein folding. This simulation will help researchers uncover how certain diseases develop. Folding@Home uses distributed computing to simulate protein folding, the workload is broken up into small work units and distributed across hundreds of thousands of computers over the internet. You can help find the cure to many different diseases! To join Folding@Home, follow these steps:

1. Download ATI's Catalyst™ software suite
2. Download the Folding@Home GPU client application

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:

• Assassin's Creed: Attempting to launch the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product and running the Windows Vista operating system (32 bit version) no longer results in the game exiting to the desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35804
• Crysis: Edge detect is now working when playing the DX9 version of the game with UBM enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35765
• Frontlines Fuel of War: Setting the in-game option to 1152x864 and AA to N/A no longer results in corruption being noticed when playing the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 38x0 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35861
• Hellgate London: Setting the display resolution to 2560x1600 no longer results in the game failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35886
• Mahjongg Artifacts: Launching the game on a system running Windows Vista no longer results in the operating system failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35873
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Flickering is no longer noticed when switching between the game and the Windows desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35818
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Setting AA to 8x no longer results in AA failing to be applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35823
• World In Conflict: Setting the video quality to high no longer results in corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35884
• World of Warcraft: The game's log-in background is no longer blank when using OpenGL mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35767
• ZT: Attempting to play the Asian game in a windowed mode or at a display resolution of 1280x1024 no longer results in the game failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-34152
• Running various games on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ X18x0 series of product no longer results in Time-out Detection and Recovery (TDR) when having Catalyst AI set to Advanced. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35828
• A black window is no longer displayed when attempting to play a DVD title using WinDVD 7 when Overlay Theater Mode and clone mode is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-34133
• Connecting an HDMI display device to the DVI port using an HDMI to DVI dongle no longer results in the display mode of 720x480 failing to be in the display mode list after hot-unplugging the HDMI display device and hot-plugging a DVI display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35105
• Clicking on the Scaling Options for the HDMI display device no longer results in the Panel Information and Image Scaling information failing for the graphics adapter failing to be restored. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35874
• Attempting to change to clone or single mode no longer fails when display number 2 is set a the primary display device. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35768
• Connecting a secondary display device no longer results in the secondary display failing to be seen in the Catalyst Control Center when using a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 series of product. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35802
• Adjusting either the gamma, brightness or contrast setting in the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in certain graphics hardware information failing to be displayed in the Information Center. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-358633
• Enabling and disabling GPU Scaling no longer results in some of the supported display resolutions no longer being available. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35047
• The OverDrive™ clocks are no longer set back to default setting when exiting the fullscreen samples if the Enable ATI OD For... option is set to Off. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35755
• Using a smart dongle no longer results in the mode of 1080i failing to appear in the display manager of the Catalyst Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-358477

Have you read our Radeon HD 4870 X2 preview ?