SUMMARY: We missed a month in our monthly ATI Catalyst driver preview last month which means time around we have not only included the latest set of ATI drivers but the ones we missed last month. So you know the kind of performance increase you do get we have also thrown in the 5.2 version of the graphics drivers. Is it time to update your drivers for your ATI graphics card? Read on and find out!
We missed a month in our monthly Catalyst preview which means time around we have not only included the latest set of ATI drivers (5.4 which were released today) but the ones we missed last month. So you know the kind of performance increase you do get we have also thrown in the 5.2 version of the graphics drivers.
We have also done a slight little change to our test setup, while we are still with the PCI Express system we have moved to a GeCube X850XT. Apart from that everything else is the same so let’s have a look at the release notes before we get into the benchmarking.
Release Notes from ATI
Issues Resolved in CATALYST™ Software Suite 5.4
The following section provides a summary of the issues that have been resolved in the latest version of CATALYST™. These include:
3DMark2001: A black screen is no longer displayed when launching 3DMark2001 after launching Aquamark3 when the CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER is installed Pacific Fighters: Playing the game after playing any track for a short period of time and having the landscape detail set to perfect no longer results in the clouds becoming blocking when flying Sail Simulator 4: Attempting to play the game under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT installed no longer results in the operating system failing to respond and rebooting SolidWorks 2004: Display corruption is no longer noticed when setting the AA to 6X and AF to 16X Splinter Cell Chaos Theory: Depth buffer corruption noticed on the ATI RADEON™ X800 PRO is now resolved Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Loading the Dantooine level of the game under Windows XP no longer results in slow game performance Using the ATI Problem Report Wizard under Windows XP SP2 with an ATI RADEON™ X850 XT installed no longer results in an error message appearing when clicking the Finish button for the problem report CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: An option to select Yes or No to changes made in SMARTGART™ is now displayed when clicking the Apply button in SMARTGART™ CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: Playing a video clip in the background and entering the Overlay page found in the Video section no longer results in the default value for the Hue not being reapplied unless the CATALYST™ CONTROL™ CENTER is closed and re-launched
CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: Selecting Germany as the language no longer results in some of the text overlapping each other on the UnlCATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: Selecting Netherlands (Dutch) as the language no longer results in some of the text in the Hotkey manager being cut off CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: The Bus setting information is now displayed in the Graphic Hardware section of the Information Center found CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: The Display Manager Wizard no longer contains a Component Video single display setting message, when multi-display desktop mode is selected CATALYST™ CONTROL CENTER: Custom modes can only be applied if the display device can support the mode selected Attempting to apply a higher refresh rate to a non-DDC monitor no longer results in the refresh rate reverting to 60hz. SXGA+ LCD panel flicker is no longer noticed when the frame buffer (UMA size) is set to 32MB or 64MB
Now we know about the changes in the driver, let’s move onto the benchmarks.
