ATI Catalyst 4.8 drivers

Posted on Tuesday, August 17 2004 @ 1:41 CEST by LSDsmurf

CATALYST™ Release Notes Version 4.8

These release notes provide information on the latest posting of ATI's industry leading software suite, CATALYST™. This particular posting updates the ATI Display Driver to version 8.042. This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power, performance, and reliability. The ATI CATALYST™ software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability.

The CATALYST™ 4.8 Release Notes provides information on the following:

Web Content

The CATALYST™ software suite 4.8 contains the following:

RADEON™ display driver 8.042
ATI MULTIMEDIA CENTER™ 9.02
HydraVision™ 3.25.0006
HydraVision™ Basic Edition 3.25.9006
ATI REMOTE WONDER™ 2.3
WDM version 4.07

Southbridge/IXP Driver


			Note:	These release notes provide information on the 8.042 display driver only. For information on the ATI MULTIMEDIA CENTER 9.02, HydraVision™ 3.25.0006, HydraVision™ 3.25.9006 Basic Edition, WDM version 4.08, ATI REMOTE WONDER 2.3, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, please refer to their respective release notes found at: http://ati.com/

Desktop product family support

The CATALYST™ software suite is designed to support the following ATI desktop product family:


RADEON™ X800 series	RADEON™ 7500 series
RADEON™ X600 series	RADEON™ 7000 series
RADEON™ X300 series	RADEON™ 9700 series
RADEON™ 9800 series	RADEON™ 9500 series
RADEON™ 9600 series	RADEON™ 9100 series
RADEON™ 9200 series	RADEON™ 8500 series
RADEON™ 9000 series	RADEON™ 7200 series


			Note:	ATI ALL-IN-WONDER™ variants based on the above are also supported.


			Note:	All ATI RADEON™ PC Graphic cards are optimized for Microsoft's Media Center Edition when coupled with a supported video capture card.

ATI Integrated Product Support

The CATALYST™ software suite is designed to support the following ATI integrated product family:

RADEON™ IGP 320
RADEON™ IGP 330
RADEON™ IGP 340
RADEON™ 9000 IGP
RADEON™ 9100 IGP Pro
RADEON™ 9100 IGP
IXP 150
IXP 200
IXP 250
IXP 300

Operating systems supported

The latest version of the CATALYST™ software suite is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

Windows XP

Windows 2000


			Note:	As of January 1, 2004, Microsoft no longer accepted certification submissions for the Microsoft® Windows® Millennium Edition operating system. The ATI CATALYST™ CREW however is committed to all its customers and is now providing non certified WHQL software drivers for users of the Windows Millennium Edition operating system. Windows Millennium Edition users can obtain the software driver at: http://www.atitech.com/support/driver.html. Windows 98/98SE is supported through the ME driver.

New Features

This section provides information on new features found in this release of the CATALYST™ Display Drivers. New features include:

Geometry Instancing

This release of CATALYST introduces the support of Geometry Instancing. This new feature provides assistance when a game has to render many objects where the geometry is highly similar. Geometry Instancing allows the VPU to create multiple objects from a single geometric model, rather than passing an entire new model for each item on the screen. This increases the rendering speed of images such as leaves, or grass.

VPU Recover Enhancement

VPU Recover has been improved in this release of CATALYST. In most cases, VPU Recover will fully recover instead of switching to software rendering mode. This enhancement is supported under the Windows XP operating system.

EIA 861B Timing Specification

This release of CATALYST™ introduces EIA 861B Timing Specification for DVI based televisions. The RADEON™ Software Release version 8.04 will support 256 byte E-EDID and will decode CEA timing extensions. Further, it will retrieve DTV timing information. When the driver detects EIA 861B timings in E-EDID that the controller cannot handle, it will replace the EDID detail timing with adjusted timings suitable to our controller. The modes will be added as EDID detailed timing.

Common modes that are supported include:

640 x 480p at 60 Hz and 25.2 MHz pclk
720 x 480p at 59.94 Hz and 27.0 MHz pclk
720 x 576p at 50 Hz and 27.0 MHz pclk
1280 x 720p at 60 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
1280 x 720p at 50 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
1920 x 1080i at 60 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
1920 x 1080i at 50 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
1920 x 1080p at 60 Hz and 148.5 MHz pclk
1920 x 1080p at 50 Hz and 148.5 MHz pclk

This feature will be supported under the Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems.

Performance Improvements

As with most CATALYST™ releases performance has increased in various situations. The following performance gains are noticed:

Direct3D driver efficiency has improved considerably. Significant performance gains are noted in multiple "CPU-bound" cases, including 3DMark2001, Aquamark 3, Comanche4, Dungeon Siege, and Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004. Typical improvements are in the 1-5% range.
OpenGL driver efficiency is also improved. Older OpenGL games such as Quake III Arena and Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory show small improvement (1-2%) at low resolutions. Call of Duty framerates are up approximately 4%. Doom3 improves considerably more (as much as 12% on some product configurations) as a result of the same software efficiency improvements.

Issues Resolved in CATALYST™ Version 4.8

The following section provides a summary of the issues that have been resolved in the latest release of CATALYST™ 4.8. These include:

3D Mark03: Display corruption is no longer noticed when running the Trolls Lair test 3 under Windows XP
Beyond Divinity:Playing the game with FSAA set to 2x no longer results in display corruption when scrolling the display by moving the mouse to the left of the display
High Heat Baseball 2003: The display no longer loses sync when exiting or changing player characters in the game High Heat Baseball 2003 under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON X800 series installed
Madden NFL 2003: The game no longer fails to respond under Windows XP when an ATI RADEON 9800 XT is installed and attempting to set the Truform slider to Application Preference
Need for Speed Underground:Playing the game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 9000/9200 installed no longer results in the road ahead not being lit up by the car's headlights
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow:Display corruption is no longer noticed when launching a multiplayer game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ 9200 installed
Thief 3:Inconsistent lighting and shadow flicker is no longer noticed when playing the game under Windows XP
Unreal Tournament 2004: Playing the game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON X600 series installed no longer results in game corruption being displayed when setting Anti-Aliasing to 4x and having the display properties set to 1600x1200 32bpp

Known Issues

The following section provides a brief description of known issues associated with the latest version of CATALYST™. These include the following:

City of Heroes: Specular lighting issues and incorrect textures is noticed when playing the game under Windows XP. Further information on this issue can be found at: www.ati.com/support/infobase/4561.html
F1 Challenge: A performance decrease is noticed under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ X800 PRO installed. Further information on this issue can be found at: http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4578.html
Indian Jones and the Emperors Tomb: Display corruption and missing polygons are noticed in the game. Further information on this issue can be found at: http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4563.html
PainKiller: missing textures is noticed on the ground and light artifacts are noticed when moving around within the game or when moving in and out of the light. This issue is known to occur under Windows XP when an ATI RADEON X800 XT is installed. Further information on this issue can be found at: http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4579.html
Attempting to play a Java based game or visit a Java based website results in display corruption under Windows XP when either an ATI RADEON 9800 SE or RADEON™ X800 XT Platinum card installed and AA is enabled. Further information on this issue can be found at: http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4570.html

For further information and general help on driver or software installation, game issues, and more, visit the ATI FAQ website.