ATI Catalyst 10.3 Drivers Offer Gaming Boosts

[buzznut]

Hey brennan, nice video. I haven't thought much about eye-finity but this looks pretty sweet. Now how to buy two more monitors without my wife finding out!

I'm wondering when monitor manufacturers are gonna start making lcd;s without the bezel, or at least very small/thin.

I have a 22 inch, I've been eyeing some 24 in models, but it seems like if I'm gonna step up I should at least get a 26" or better. Getting another 22" would be ok, but I couldn't stand the bezels in the middle. But 3 monitors would be way cool!

 

[jfem]

How about the 4600 series, is it affected?

 

[jasonz001]

also works on mobility radeon HD series. works like acharm for my mobility2600xt

 

[curnel_D]

I got a free acer 22" not long back, and decided to see how much I could cut off the bezel area. Was able to remove all but a mm or 2 of space. It doesn't look pretty, but I'm not gaming to notice the visual flaws of my hardware. If I decide to or happen by a third 22", I'll probably do the same with this one and another.

 

[anamaniac]

Nic to see they're slowly fixing the 5000 series cards.
They may have released them earlier than the Nvidia 400 cards, but we've been nothing more than a test group.

The 4870 was better than the 5770 originally, I'm assuming the 5770 is now surpassing it based on driver updates alone. Too bad they crippled its memory.

Now only if retailers would stick to the MSRP. ATI doesn't benefit at all when they raise the prices, and we all know stores such as Newegg and MemoryExpress don't need any more money.

 

[FUtomNOreg]

I've seen eyefinity and it is too bad they have not included parallax compensation. As it looks right now ATI assumes all panels are laid out on a single flat plane. They really need to have someway to adjust the images when the panels are angled in a spherical or wrap-around orientation.

 

[nukemaster]

[citation][nom]welshmousepk[/nom]20 percent in Dirt2? nice![/citation]
Very nice

 

[jfem]

ATI is really trying to take away whatever reason to buy Fermi. By the time it launches next week, if the details by VR-Zone are true, the 5-10% increase of the gtx 470 and 480 over the 5850 and 5870 rexpectively will be invalidated due to this driver update.

 

[cinergy]

Unigine Heaven bench gave me +9% compared to 10.2s. Card was 5770. I'd say this driver is AMD's answer to Fermi and it might be enough to put HD5870 on par with GTX480 or at least very close to it.

 

[Onyx2291]

I am mostly concerned with the stability of my 5850, thing crashed and blue screened so much, had to go back to my Nvidia card.

 

[sarsoft]

WOW very nice boost in fps. I can see the difference in bechies and games.

With 5970 card:

10.2 drivers - 3DMark Vantage P23400-23500

10.3 drivers - 3DMark Vantage P25200-25300

 

[antemon]

No love for the 4770?

 

[nukemaster]

I am mostly concerned with the stability of my 5850, thing crashed and blue screened so much, had to go back to my Nvidia card.

Kind of funny, i switched from NV to ATI because of too many black screens(driver recovery followed by reset, i have NEVER had a driver recover cause a restart on my ATI card) that took over 9 months to fix. Ahhh so much blame on Vista back then yet NV was a big issue.

I am no fan boy, but after 6 months I had to do something. And this was AFTER the first SP for vista. The drivers ARE good now and that NV card does still run in another system.

As for your BSOD, what is the error code?

 

[sincreator]

I kinda figured that ATI were holding back a little performance. Why not I guess since they had the performance lead anyway.

For those having issues still with a 5000 series card, try updating the motherboard chipset drivers. Another thing to try is to disable dual channel mode for your ram in the bios to see if that helps. These things have been known to fix the "driver stopped responding and had to be recovered" issue for "SOME" people. I had the problem myself when I was running the Asus M3A32-MVP(790fx/SB600) motherboard. It was happening 3/4 times a day, and then when I updated my motherboard chipset drivers it went down to once/twice a week.

Then about a month ago that motherboard died, and I replaced it with the MSI GD-70(790fx/SB750) and the problem has now totally gone away. So whatever the issue is, I think it is related to the chipset or the RAM in some way. I had to switch to DDR-3 for the new motherboard, so that could of solved the issue as well.

Hope this helps someone out there.

 

[korsen]

I wonder why they always end up ignoring past and weaker cards when my single 2900PRO still plays everything at almost max (including crysis) - and I have two of them. I'm even more irritated that there's nothing there about the 3 series which shows they're too into their competition instead of their own supporting customers.

 

[Honis]

[citation][nom]t0r012[/nom]Seems to me Nvidia drivers jump in leaps and bounds and ATI are smaller incremental updates. Strange when you see a 4870x2 snuck up on the gtx295. But when you look back though the benches you see them getting closer and closer.[/citation]
That is because ATi releases drivers more often than nVidia, and with less melting amazingly.

Can we get a handful of benches reran for each driver update? I don't mean run a fully 50 games and 700 synthetic benches. Just 2-3 games and really the synthetics should die off...

 

[Pei-chen]

Tom's, could you make sure 10.3 is used when reviewing GTX 400s. I don't think you want to see the first comment on that review to be "but they are running old drivers, blah, blah.."

 

[CoryInJapan]

tight I can get a little more juice out of my 4870

 

[Guest]

+1, pei-chen.... Although in typical Tom's fashion, I expect them to use a Catalyst driver circa 9.10...

 

[rockinthepe]

dirt 2 was silky smooth with drivers as they were, looking foreword to new drivers.

 

[JonathanDeane]

I usually try to stay away from beta drivers but I did download these.... I am going to be adventurous!!! I am running a single 4870 Pro 1GB and its nice to see a driver upgrade for this hardware that boosts performance (unusual level of support in my opinion and completely unexpected at this stage)

Thank you ATI, I look forward to being a customer again in the future.

Edit: What I mean by support at a later stage is there are always drivers released but it seems rare to me that they actually improve performance on the older stuff when the new hotness is out.

 

[saaiello]

Hmm no one mentioned that Nvidias latest beta driver 197.13 also has similar increases in performance. A 10 to 30% gain in performance in Crysis, H.A.W.K, and Left For Dead and thats just with the beta I'm sure when they do release the driver it will have more games added.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]soldier37[/nom]FERMI = FAIL.[/citation]

ok, no one know crap about FERMI. give it time until we see some real world benchmarks and some nice sli setups then you can talk

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]buzznut[/nom]I have a 22 inch, I've been eyeing some 24 in models, but it seems like if I'm gonna step up I should at least get a 26" or better. Getting another 22" would be ok, but I couldn't stand the bezels in the middle. But 3 monitors would be way cool![/citation]

Todays 24" are now wider than the older ones so they are now HD 1080 high, rather than 1200. I think its a bit too narrow for PCs. So you may check out the 26~27" LCD monitors. Samsung has a 26" model that does 1920x1200 with HDTV tuner, remote for about $350.

 

[belardo]

What about improvements to 4600s? But yeah.... the 5~20% (avg 5~7%) improvement will hurt fermi/gf100/480 whatever-the hell it is. You can bet the GF480 will actually have a street price closer to $600+ because of limited quantity and that rabid nvidia fans will buy anything. We'll know in about 2 weeks, but I betcha!

So why spend $600 for a card that is no faster, but bigger, hotter, more power requirements than a $400? Of course PhyX will always be a selling point. ATI needs to have their own version someday.

Side note: Even those with 3800 cards should remember they should update drivers for newer games and bug fixes.