Grafikkartentreiber Catalyst 4.6 veröffentlicht

9.6.2004 22:27 Uhr

Am Abend hat ATi den monatlichen Treiber veröffentlicht. Der sechste Treiber in diesem Jahr hört logischerweise auf den Namen Catalyst 4.6 und beinhaltet neben dem üblichen Bugfixing und leichten Performanceverbesserungen auch zwei neue Features.

Diese stellen sich unter dem Namen „User Defined Component Video HDTV Modes“ und „OpenGL Hardware Acceleration for ATI Rotation“ vor. Was genau diese leisten, steht ausführlich in den Release Notes. Erstmals mit diesem Treiber werden offiziell die neuen Karten vom Typ X800 Pro und X800 XT PE unterstützt. Ein Blick sind auf jeden Fall die Performance-Improvements wert, die vor allem der X800-Serie zu einigen Punkten mehr verhelfen sollen:

Pixel Shader compiler improvements bring significant performance gains to PS 2.0 applications such as Halo (2-3%), Tomb Raider (4-5%) and Mother Nature (4-5%). ShaderMark 2 shows numerous gains in the 3-6% range. The High Dynamic Range scenes in ShaderMark (Tests 20 & 21) gain 10-15%.

RADEON X800 driver tuning improves performance for several Vertex-Shader-heavy tests. For example, Battle of Proxycon, Troll's Lair and Mother Nature gain 9-15% on the RADEON X800 PRO.

Improvements in our surface allocation and texture management code have increased performance for resource-challenged cases. Re-Volt scores improve 25% at 1600x1200 across several RADEON configurations. ShaderMark Test 14 (Veined Marble) improves dramatically (up 380% at 1600x1200) on some 256MB products.

Improvements in OpenGL driver efficiency bring numerous small gains (1-3%) in Call of Duty, Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory, Star Trek - Elite Force II, Serious Sam, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake III Arena.

X800 memory tuning improves Anti-Aliasing performance in a number of games and benchmarks. For example, at 4xAA, 3DMark2001 gains 4-7%, UT2003 Antalus and Asbestos Flybys improve 2-7%, and the CodeCreatures score rises 15%.

Ob dies nun normale Optimierungen sind, oder einmal mehr ein Versteckspiel angezettelt wird, bleibt hier abzuwarten - dies werden erst Tests zeigen. Anbei im Klapptext noch die komplette Liste der Änderungen. Wie zuletzt auch schon, gibt es den Treiber nur für Windows 2000 und XP. Windows 98 /ME-User schauen also weiterhin in die Röhre und sitzen bei Version 4.3 fest.

Fixed in this Driver

Display corruption is no longer seen when rotating the primary desktop 90 degrees or 180 degrees under Windows 2000 with extended desktop enabled
Display corruption is no longer seen when running the ATI demo Dolphin v1.1 with the Truform option set to Application Preference
The operating system no longer fails to respond when doing a monitor swap while running an overlay image on the secondary display
Rotating a display of 1024x768 60Hz followed by entering standby mode no longer results in display corruption being seen briefly when resuming
Using the ATI icon in the system tray or using a hotkey stroke to rotate the display image no longer results in the operating system intermittently failing to respond for approximately 90 seconds
Playing a DVD with DXVA enabled and attempting to rotate the display 90 degrees no longer results in the operating system failing to respond
Moving an OpenGL window around the Windows desktop no longer results in the operating system intermittently failing to respond
While playing the game Halo, under certain conditions, images that should be hidden behind solid foreground objects are no longer showing through
Starting a game of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON 9000 PRO installed and the display set to 1024x768 and the graphics quality set to high no longer results in flickering textures
Display corruption is no longer seen when using particular air craft in "Century of Flight" games found in Flight Simulator 2004
Textures are now applied correctly in the game Silent Storm when setting the resolution to 1024x768 32bpp and the quality option set to high
Enabling AF to 8x and running the game Battlefield Vietnam with the graphics set to high and the display set to 1280x1024 32bpp no longer results in display corruption being seen at a certain point of the game
The display menu for the game 4x4 EVO 2 is now available when the rotation option is used to set the display to 180 degrees
Circular grid corruption is no longer seen when launching World Fables under Windows XP with Anti-Aliasing enabled at 4X
The Windows XP operating system no longer intermittently fails to respond when restarting the game Homeworld 2
Adobe Gamma and other colour calibration software now have the ability to adjust their independent gamma values. Note: In certain situations when closing the application, the default desktop gamma is not restored.
The wireframe in edit UVWs is now drawn correctly after zooming in on an object in 3ds max
Running Solidworks 2004 under Windows XP and dragging the grapicstest2004.sldprt window to a secondary display no longer results in the planes being highlighted after the mouse is moved off the plane
The Solidworks 2004/SP3 application no longer fails to respond when opening the shaderstest.sldasm test with Real View enabled
Enabling extended desktop followed by setting the display resolution to 1280x1024 on the secondary display adapter no longer results in the application ProEngineer terminating