ATI, now being as AMD part, already for few years follows the tradition when releasing video cards drivers. It supposes one release per month. From one side such periodicity does not allow to bring in cardinal changes within the frame of a few updates, but innovations and corrections of errors are made not immediately, but gradually. And it is possible to look after this process very intently.
Changes are in next Catalyst can touch both the correction of errors, addition new useful functions and increase in performance in certain games and tests.
The new version of AMD Catalyst 10.9 driver was presented the other day. List of its changes for Windows looks like the following:
New Features:
- Introduction of AMD Catalyst Accelerated Parallel Processing ("APP") technology Edition. There will now be two variants of the AMD Catalyst package available: AMD Catalyst and AMD Catalyst plus the OpenCL driver.
- Video accleration for WMV HD video content. This release of AMD Catalyst provides video acceleration support for WMV HD (Microsoft video codec) under Windows 7. Compatible with the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series of products.
- Enhanced Dynamic Contrast video controls. This release of AMD Catalyst enhances the Dynamic Contrast setting found in the Catalyst Control Center by adding histogram based detection.
- Blu-ray 3D Support. This release of AMD Catalyst enables Blu-ray 3D playback. Requirements include Blu-ray 3D player software, 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses. Compatible with the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series.
- Stereo 3D Gaming Compatibility. This release of AMD Catalyst enables Stereo 3D gaming via 3rd party Stereo 3D Conversion Software from Dynamic Digital Depth (DDD) and iZ3D. Requirements include 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses. Compatible with the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series.
Performance Improvements:
- Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 Benchmark
- Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series
- BattleForge
- Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
- Crysis Warhead
- Performance increases up to 9% on Single ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products with anti-aliasing enabled
- Far Cry 2
- Performance increases up to 7% on Single ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
- Metro 2033
- Performance increases up to 7% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series in DirectX 11 and 10 modes
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series in DirectX 11 and 10 modes
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series in DirectX 11 and 10 modes
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Call of Pripyat Benchmark
- Performance increases up to 7% on single ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
- Unigine Heaven
- Performance increases up to 9% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
- Performance increases up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
- World in Conflict
- Performance increases up to 9% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
- Performance increases up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
New Catalyst Linux driver contains following changes:
- openSUSE 11.3 support (production)
- Ubuntu 10.10 support (early look)
