- ATI Catalyst 4.8 Drivers Released

ATI have made available their official 4.8 Catalyst drivers today which naturally bring quite a number of enhancements and resolved issues over previous releases. For full details of what can be expected with the new driver set, head over to ATI's website and check out the release notes.

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.

- Quakecon hardware news roundup

The guys at Tech Report have forwarded on several links today which highlight some tasty hardware news tidbits gathered from QuakeCon 2004 on the weekend :-

- Creative pushes enforcement on Carmack's reverse
- Abit intros Fatal1ty motherboard
- AMD lets slip a few tidbits about new CPUs
- NVIDIA hints at SLI chipset plans
- VIA to segment chipset line

- Articles and Reviews from around the Web

- Acer Ferrari 3200 Athlon 64 Notebook @ Trusted Reviews
- Workstation showdown: Xeon vs. Opteron @ InfoWorld
- Corsair Memory TwinX1024-3200XL Pro Series Give Away Contest @ Extreme Overclocking
- Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO @ Explosive Labs
- Intel Pentium 4 LGA775 DIY Guide @ Hardware Zone
- Intel Socket 775 LGA Take 2 @ Lost Circuits
- HP Power Supply Swap @ OCIA
- Xmod 3D Thumb Screws @ MetkuMods
- Silverstone LaScala LC-04 HTPC Case @ Silent PC Review