Catalyst 6.8 Windows e Linux disponibili per il download

Nei giorni scorsi ATI ha rilasciato una versione aggiornata dei propri driver Catalyst per schede video della famiglia Radeon; siamo giunti alla release 6.8, con la seconda cifra ad indicare l'ottavo mese dell'anno cioè Agosto. Il download dei driver è disponibile in locale dalla sezione software di Hardware Upgrade, ai seguenti link:

Catalyst 6.8 Windows 2K-XP + Catalyst Control Center

Catalyst 6.8 XP x64 + Catalyst Control Center

Catalyst 6.8 per HDR e AA con Oblivion win 64bit

Catalyst 6.8 per HDR e AA con Oblivion win 32bit

ATI AVIVO Video Converter

Possono essere scaricate anche versioni dei driver specifiche per l'abbinamento di HDR e Anti Aliasing con Oblivion, meglio noti come "Chuck Patch"; questi driver non sono ufficialmente supportati da ATI e forniti solo come versione beta, a differenza degli altri. Presente anche una versione aggiornata dell'AVIVO Video Converter, da utilizzare con schede video ATI della serie Radeon X1000. I driver linux possono essere scaricati dal sito ATI a questo indirizzo.

I driver sono stati resi disponibili sia per sistemi operativi Windows che Linux; per i driver Windows sono varie le migliorie introdotte in questa release, in termini di superiori prestazioni velocistiche con alcuni titoli 3D sia Direct3D che OpenGL.

Di seguito alcune delle note fornite a corredo:

Performance improvements:

• OpenGL – Improved shader compiler and transform engine optimizations have led to many significant performance gains in OpenGL applications across the entire Radeon X1000 Series of products:
• Doom 3 performance improves as much as 6.5%
• Quake 4 (v1.2 or higher) performance improves as much as 18%
• Chronicles of Riddick performance improves as much as 20%. Average improvements of 5-10% are commonly seen.
• Prey performance improves as much as 16%.

Direct3D – Optimizations made to ATI’s graphics memory manager have led to significant gains in applications that make heavy use of graphics memory on 256MB ATI graphics cards:

• 3DMark06 performance improves as much as 22% on the Radeon X1000 Series of products in single card configurations with 256MB of graphics memory at 1280x1024 and anti-aliasing enabled. The largest gains are found on the ATI Radeon X1800 Series and Radeon X1900 Series of products.
• Call of Duty 2 performance improves as much as 30% on single Radeon X550 cards or higher with 256MB of video memory at 1280x1024 and anti-aliasing enabled. The largest gains are found on the ATI Radeon X1800 Series and Radeon X1900 Series of products.

Highlights of the Linux Catalyst 6.8 (8.28.8) release include:

New Features:

• ATI Pairmode Support (available when using Horizontal BigDesktop mode)
• This release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver introduces a new feature called Pairmode. This feature allows users to enable BigDesktop mode with two different screen resolutions. When using Xrandr, users can now dynamically switch between BigDesktop and Clone mode without having to restart the X Server.Fedora Core Package Support
  Retaining Display Device State between restarts
• This release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver now maintains the display device status between restarts. Previously, when using multiple display devices, the ATI Proprietary Linux drivers enabled all displays connected to the display adapter even if the display devices were disabled by aticonfig or Display Switching.

New Product Support

This release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver introduces support the ATI Radeon® Xpress 1200, Radeon® Xpress 1250, and Radeon® Xpress 1300 products.

Unified Linux Proprietary Linux Driver

This release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver now provides a unified driver installer for the 32bit and 64bit Linux platforms. This intelligent installer will identify which CPU architecture (IA32, and x86_64) is being used and install the appropriate driver.