NEW CATALYST DRIVERS have been released, and the amount of changes they're bringing is nothing to be sneezed at.

In fact, the list of improvements that is coming with this release reminded us of Nvidia Detonator drivers, that were "detonating" performance of cards on the market. That tradition somewhat disappeared into thin air, especially with older cards, but now ATI is coming with "Catalysing" performance on not just new cards, but on the older ones as well - a welcomed move indeed.

During the past couple of days, we've talked with ATI and AMD guys about this driver, and now the software pack has been released for owners of Windows XP and Vista operating systems. Linux version will follow shortly, but the list of improvements for this release is quite significant.

First and foremost, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing has been enabled for Radeon X1K series of graphics cards. If you're one of numerous owners of X1950Pro boards, your card can now do the same AA modes as HD2000. This is a welcomed look back on the older product line, and we hope that this is the end of "forgetting" on older series of cards once that new generation comes to life.

Second improvement is the fact that you don't need to use two connectors in order to enable CrossFire, starting from RV570 and above. When it comes to HD2000 series, now you will be able to daisy-chain up to four graphics cards, by using the same number of cables that you previously used to connect two. Software Crossfire is also enabled for HD2400 and HD2600 series of graphics cards.

Also, one pretty important fix with this release of Catalyst drivers was so-called "CrossFire Undo", known mostly on P35 and X38 motherboards. Basically, there was an issue where CrossFire mode would disable all on its own, even if everything was ok. Now, Catalyst drivers are able to detect is something wrong with the CrossFire cable, and if everything is ok, Crossfire mode will be activated.

Third interesting part is the performance boost. This driver was internally know as performance one, and the list of potential improvements is quite impressive. ATI lists "possible improvements" and "at least" improvements. CrossFire scaling issues have been resolved, and the list of boosts goes as follows:

• BioShock DX10 performance improves at least 70% on Crossfire configurations on ATI HD2000 Series
• World in Conflict DX10 performance improves 14-67% on Crossfire configurations; single card performance improves by 20% or more with ATI HD2000 Series - DX9 performance improves 70% or more on ATI HD 2000 in Crossfire mode
• Lost Planet DX10 performance improves at least 20% on ATI HD 2000 in Crossfire
• Call of Juarez DX10 performance improves up to 42% on Crossfire configurations and single card performance improves up to 34% on the entire ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series
• Company of Heroes DX10 performance improves up to 80% on ATI Radeon HD 2000 in Crossfire configuration and single card performance improves as much as 31% on the ATI Radeon HD 2600/2900
• Battlefield 2142 performance improves 5-23% on Crossfire configurations using the ATI Radeon HD X1300/X1550/2400/2600
• Call of Duty 2 performance improves up to 6.7% on both single card and Crossfire configurations using the ATI Radeon HD 2400/2600
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars performance improves on Crossfire configurations as much as 23% on the ATI Radeon X1000 Series and single card performance improves as much as 23% on both the entire ATI Radeon HD 1000/2000 Series
• F.E.A.R. performance improves as much as 16% on Crossfire configurations using the ATI Radeon X1300/X1550/X1650XT/X1950XTX and all HD2000 Series
• Supreme Commander performance improves on Crossfire configurations up to 30% on the entire ATI Radeon X1000/HD2000 Series. Crossfire configurations using the ATI Radeon X1300/X1550/X1650 see improvements of 82% or more.

This is rather aggressive performance promise from ATI guys here in Canada, but we cannot confirm or guarantee these scores (list compiled from release notes).

You can download the driver from ati.amd.com. µ

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