Catalyst 3.8 release notes

Gonna have to try them out on my AMD rig. P4 is out, waiting on mushkin lvl 2.
 
not too impressive I think, the detonator 52.14 are way more impressive :D
 
endorphin: what are you basing this off of? the release notes? Generally the purpose of drivers is to allow the card to run faster and more efficently...
 
Sidewinder, Im basing it off reviews (benchmarks) and peoples thoughts.
 
lost 500 3dmarks with these new drivers on my 9800 pro, games seem about the same.. the new effects aren't worth playing games with.. looks like this is only good for the games which it specifically resolves problems in
 
Originally posted by endorphin
Sidewinder, Im basing it off reviews (benchmarks) and peoples thoughts.
Click to expand...


what? did they make the image quality even worse?
 
I find it FAR more impressive than the latest Detonators. I havent seen that they offer anything except blurred image quality, speed and broken games, this bring some quite innovative features at least.

Some negative reviews on Rage3D seems to stuck at the fact Overdrive arent supported on older cards, but its obviously a physical limitation that cant be overcome, I dont see how that can be a drawback. Its like bashing down Riva TNT for not supporting PS2.0 improvements in 5X Detonators. And another bunch at the fact that it doesnt improve performance very, but I also see that as something that really cant be done with the core anymore, its as fast as it can get, the current drivers are VERY good. No one knows except ATI though. On the contrary, if performance went up 20% or so across the board, I would immidietly start dissecting image quality, as it shouldnt be possible to do so (as we all know ;)).

I dont really get this from Anandtech: "Unfortunately, we didn't see the image quality fixes for TRAOD and Neverwinter Nights that we wanted"
It says it fixes the fogging bug with NWN, and that is all I know that was missing, everything else looks lovely. Except a global OpenGL bug that inverted settings (high performance textures was high quality). In TRAOD I havent even spotted any IQ bugs.
They dont explain it further, so I dont know...

And now I gotto install it, as it was completed in the time I wrote this :p
 
I tried those smartshader things, and they did produce some fun results, hehe... I agree that its pretty pointless though. For best effect, this should be designed with the game from the start, "support for Smartshader effects" or whatever... One of the few effects I found usable was the color stylize, it produced a pretty neat image... All about personal preference though, and I'm not sure I'd like to play with it.
 
I reverted back to Cat 3.7, the ogl/d3d settings profiles didn't really work.
 
Originally posted by Jagermeister
I reverted back to Cat 3.7, the ogl/d3d settings profiles didn't really work.
Click to expand...
You reverted just for that? Why? You dont need to use profiles anyway, I dont. I just set both to 16xAF and leaves AA to application.
 
These drivers are mostly going to improve the 9800XT.

ATI OVERDRIVE ROCKS!
 
Originally posted by Animal
These drivers are mostly going to improve the 9800XT.

ATI OVERDRIVE ROCKS!
Click to expand...
Of course :)

Concerning a similar thing, there have been many notes about them breaking the 8500 completely (and thus probably 9000, 9100 and those). And not just isolated incidents, many of them...

I havent experienced problems yet though, and I have played all my common games. I think in this release the 16bits OGL bug was fixed from the 3.7, NWN suddenly looks very pretty. Or I just forgot how it looked since the upgrade :p

Btw, anyone else tried the smartshaders? :)
Attached is something fun (and yes, it looks MUCH better in motion).
Maybe you could play all games with a cel shader?!!
 
The smartshaders are possibly the best, yet completely useless feature of any program/path/driver ever....

Oh my god i love them!!!!

Hours of fun and giggles...
 
Originally posted by pHATE1982
The smartshaders are possibly the best, yet completely useless feature of any program/path/driver ever....

Oh my god i love them!!!!

Hours of fun and giggles...
Click to expand...
Lol, yeah I agree... No one will use it, but it brings so many possibilities, like that type of cel shading I mentioned in ANY game (type meaning, it doesnt exactly have to be that, as long as it looks cartoonish and cool)... Now that would be a VERY large feature to brag about... Hell, it would beat Nvidia anytime, with any card! The concept is so cool its beyond many peoples comprehension I think, they just say its stupid. Which it kind of is. Hehe :)
 
Originally posted by dawdler
I find it FAR more impressive than the latest Detonators. I havent seen that they offer anything except blurred image quality, speed and broken games, this bring some quite innovative features at least.

Some negative reviews on Rage3D seems to stuck at the fact Overdrive arent supported on older cards, but its obviously a physical limitation that cant be overcome, I dont see how that can be a drawback. Its like bashing down Riva TNT for not supporting PS2.0 improvements in 5X Detonators. And another bunch at the fact that it doesnt improve performance very, but I also see that as something that really cant be done with the core anymore, its as fast as it can get, the current drivers are VERY good. No one knows except ATI though. On the contrary, if performance went up 20% or so across the board, I would immidietly start dissecting image quality, as it shouldnt be possible to do so (as we all know ;)).

I dont really get this from Anandtech: "Unfortunately, we didn't see the image quality fixes for TRAOD and Neverwinter Nights that we wanted"
It says it fixes the fogging bug with NWN, and that is all I know that was missing, everything else looks lovely. Except a global OpenGL bug that inverted settings (high performance textures was high quality). In TRAOD I havent even spotted any IQ bugs.
They dont explain it further, so I dont know...

And now I gotto install it, as it was completed in the time I wrote this :p
Click to expand...

Have you even checked the latest beta detonators? They have perfect image quality (from the reviews so far atleast) and they Improve performance ALOT.

I much rather see performance than stupid features, the overdrive is a nice function, I can agree to that, alltho most people that feel the need to gain a few FPS by overclocking knows how to and doesnt need a simple function. The smartshaders are a fun feature, but useless, I doubt anyone will use it in a week.
They're good drivers, but I got the idea they were supposed to be so much more, like ATi saying it was the biggest Catalyst release in a long time, just because It had so much new stuff.

And about TRAOD and NWN, in NWN I know ppl have been having problems with flickering shadows and stuff, its a known problem, in TRAOD anandtech got some flickering walls in their latest test too (atleast I think thats what their referring to).

Anyways, I think you're right about the Radeons performance being pushed to the limits, which is interesting, when nVIDIAs new drivers matured enough to be as optimized as Catalyst 3.8s I think we'll have a nice fight between ATi and nVIDIA again.
Exciting times for videocard enthusiasts :)
 
Originally posted by endorphin
Have you even checked the latest beta detonators? They have perfect image quality (from the reviews so far atleast) and they Improve performance ALOT.

I much rather see performance than stupid features, the overdrive is a nice function, I can agree to that, alltho most people that feel the need to gain a few FPS by overclocking knows how to and doesnt need a simple function. The smartshaders are a fun feature, but useless, I doubt anyone will use it in a week.
They're good drivers, but I got the idea they were supposed to be so much more, like ATi saying it was the biggest Catalyst release in a long time, just because It had so much new stuff.

And about TRAOD and NWN, in NWN I know ppl have been having problems with flickering shadows and stuff, its a known problem, in TRAOD anandtech got some flickering walls in their latest test too (atleast I think thats what their referring to).

Anyways, I think you're right about the Radeons performance being pushed to the limits, which is interesting, when nVIDIAs new drivers matured enough to be as optimized as Catalyst 3.8s I think we'll have a nice fight between ATi and nVIDIA again.
Exciting times for videocard enthusiasts :)
Click to expand...
I have heard about the latest BETA (53.x something) (they cant be reveiwed) leaked.

It stops the fan from time to time, causing card damage when entering 3D mode! :p

Check this out on http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/detonator_52.14/index2.php
Shows a very clear difference. They are cutting corners when doing AF, making the border much clearer, instead of a smooth transition. That is called cheating in AF.

BUT I havent seen live game images of 52.14, if you have a link I would want it...
 
Originally posted by crabcakes66
ATI's DRIVERS SUCK MAN!!!! :p
Click to expand...
But you havent really lived until you have played a game in Green ASCII (aka Matrix Style) :D
 
Hehe I tried those smartshader effects... so useless :p

I was hoping it fixed my 9800pro+CS problems but it didnt :/
 
Originally posted by dawdler
I have heard about the latest BETA (53.x something) (they cant be reveiwed) leaked.

It stops the fan from time to time, causing card damage when entering 3D mode! :p

Check this out on http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/detonator_52.14/index2.php
Shows a very clear difference. They are cutting corners when doing AF, making the border much clearer, instead of a smooth transition. That is called cheating in AF.

BUT I havent seen live game images of 52.14, if you have a link I would want it...
Click to expand...

Havent heard about 53.xx's but Ive heard about 52.14 and 52.13, when saying it stops the fan, where did you hear this? Some moderator or something at Guru3D had this problem with 52.13's, so when uploading them he wrote by the download link that they were not safe and he had had fan problems, however, none of the people that tried the driver on their forum had this problem so thats like 1 out of 10. This however isn't something we need to discuss, its a BETA driver, not perfect and the fan failing is not what Im interested in, that will surely be fixed in the final version.

And about that german article, do you know german? I never really understood those colored photos (I know their different quality AA/AF fields) but I've heard alot of people saying that the new drivers suck because of that article, but Ive also heard from a person that speaks german that they were happy with the result and didn't have the problems 51.75's had.

Oh and Anandtech has images from 52.14's.
 
Originally posted by endorphin
Havent heard about 53.xx's but Ive heard about 52.14 and 52.13, when saying it stops the fan, where did you hear this? Some moderator or something at Guru3D had this problem with 52.13's, so when uploading them he wrote by the download link that they were not safe and he had had fan problems, however, none of the people that tried the driver on their forum had this problem so thats like 1 out of 10. This however isn't something we need to discuss, its a BETA driver, not perfect and the fan failing is not what Im interested in, that will surely be fixed in the final version.

And about that german article, do you know german? I never really understood those colored photos (I know their different quality AA/AF fields) but I've heard alot of people saying that the new drivers suck because of that article, but Ive also heard from a person that speaks german that they were happy with the result and didn't have the problems 51.75's had.

Oh and Anandtech has images from 52.14's.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, it was 52.13, sorry. Still its a big bug :)

Anyway, I dont know german that much (I can read it and understand like 70% of it, cant talk or write it), but I do know what the images show:
Nvidia is leaning even more towards bilinear filtering. That's what the smoothness is, trilinear is smooth transition, bilinear is hard transition.

The review at Anand does show some quite interesting results, yes. It appears the old Nvidia drivers are far more unoptimised than I though :)
Concerning the images... A quick test shows that to gain the image size and kb size they have on 90% of the images (some have fullscreen), one have to use high jpg compression, meaning low quality... So I dont trust those for a second, they show nothing.
 
Smartshader and all that are DX9 technology
I got a DX9 card (9600 pro and OCed it 130 hz core) so I could play HL2 well. Not great since it just barely pulls out 9700 pro frames when OCed that high, and cuts them a third with 4x AA and 16xAF not that im complaining....yes i am. damn XT comes out right after i get one WTF! And now either the e3 tech demo or the beta or the alpha and the source code are out on the internet but im waiting for them to release it...cuz they worked hard and its a great looking game. kudos to the genius who coded the engine :D... oh and new ati card technology has better image quality if your not some idiot who doesnt know how to mess with clocking/quality. download radclock if u wanna OC, r click desktop, display> advanced>(this part you need the ati control panel that comes with the drivers) Direct3d/OpenGl tab (this update converted into one tab) and slide bar to the right for 4xaa 16xaf or 6x aa if your card is beefy. dont mess with the compatability settings in that tab it glitches some games shadows and things :D RADEON RULEZ i have ut2003 customized so the Nvidia logo says Ati instead at the "the way its meant to be played" screen
 
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