ATI Catalyst 8.7 Windows XP 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 XP Operating System

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

• City of Heroes: Character stretching and double character reflection is no longer noticed when the in-game resolution is set to 2560x1600. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35757
• Enemy Territories Quake Wars: Flickering is no longer noticed when playing the game with CrossFire™ enabled on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 38x0 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35788
• Lost Planet: Corruption is no longer noticed when switching between the game and the Windows XP desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35782
• Google SketchUp: The Push/Pull tool no longer fails to select some faces. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35800
• World of Warcraft: Enabling AA in the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in the user failing to log on to the game. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35816
• Installing the display driver from an installation CD no longer results in a warning message indicating that the Catalyst Control Center is not supported by the driver version installed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35120
• Playing a standard definition DVD using the Windows Media Player (hardware acceleration enabled) no longer results in the operating system failing to respond when attempting to rotate the display. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35875
• Intermittent flashing is no longer noticed in the right portion of the display when playing a 720p or 1080i media file when using the Windows Media Player v10. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32666
• Playing a DVD title and selecting the option to use basic color setting to default in the Catalyst Control Center now results in the option being applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35803
• Playing an MPEG2 video clip on a display that is rotated no longer results in corruption being noticed when rotating the display back to landscape mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35805

Have you read our Radeon HD 4870 X2 preview ?