Catalyst 7.8 proves a mixed bag

THE LATEST RELEASE of ATI's Catalyst driver, version 7.8, hit the streets on Monday. It seems, however, that the driver is a mixed bag.

On the plus side, it sure does deliver on its promise of increased performance for the Radeon HD 2x00 series of cards. The chaps at Tweaktown discovered that performance increased significantly on the HD 2600, taking it over and above the previous capabilities of the card.

On the minus side, those of you with older cards may find a few problems. We've been hearing reports of glitches with AGP performance which may cause instability, to the point of needing to roll back to 7.7. Some initial investigation suggests that there may be some SmartGart issues in the driver which are causing the AGP problems. Check out NGOHQ for further details.

Let us know your 7.8 experiences in the usual manner and we might just publish a compendium of the most interesting.

Or we might not. µ