Forums | MacLife

Well, this is pretty cool. Haven't had time yet to fine-tooth the release notes...

AMD's graphics division has released ATI Catalyst 9.3 drivers with full support for Windows 7, including Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.1 compliance for ATI Radeon HD 4000, 3000, and 2000 series of graphics cards.

All future ATI Catalyst postings will deliver one single unified driver for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista, allowing Windows 7 beta testers the convenience of swapping back and forth between the two operating systems without the hassle of multiple drivers which may have differing builds.

Gaming performance has also been improved for Windows 7, increasing its lead over Windows Vista. Catalyst 9.3 supports the Direct2D API introduced in Windows 7, which could improve everything from ClearType text rendering to hardware-accelerated vector graphics. Improved Folding@Home scores are also promised for ATI Radeon HD 4000, 3000, and 2000 series of graphics cards.

AMD also noted that the Windows Vista HDMI audio driver is now automatically included in the ATI Catalyst 9.3 package, but will only be installed if the AMD graphics accelerator has an HDMI display connector and there is no 3rd party HDMI audio driver installed.

It does not feature support for DirectX 11 as there are no cards to support it. However, DirectX 11 is built using DirectX 10.1 as a foundation, which AMD has a lot of experience with. DX11 is expected to be a major focal point for game developers, riding on the popularity of the unreleased Windows 7 operating system. 64-bit gaming is also expected to increase, since the majority of Windows 7 shipments will be of the 64-bit variety.

Previous Catalyst releases this year have included OpenGL 3.0 support and a 20% improvement in Crysis.
..

Direct2D? Whoda thunkit? And better F@H perf.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14621

Last edited by Bat (2009-03-19 4:52 pm)

If for some reason the whole package doesn't work for you, you can still likely do better by installing the basic display driver, unless you need higher-level functions. (You forgot to specify the OS, too, but separates seem available for all. I'd think the 9.3 W7 driver is better than December's). I also don't know your hardware, but I see a Catalyst Hotfix for Intel i7 / X58.

As a general reminder apropos: not much, DX11 isn't final, let alone out yet.

There are also some good things findable from the homepage http://game.amd.com/ , including Linux stuff in one or more of the blogs.

Multipart installation is a more complex, in-order, tricky deal. Better to just go Suite or basic driver in my experience, and remember to uninstall the prior stuff first. A lot of difficulties come from avoidable causes.

Bat wrote:

If for some reason the whole package doesn't work for you, you can still likely do better by installing the basic display driver, unless you need higher-level functions. (You forgot to specify the OS, too, but separates seem available for all. I'd think the 9.3 W7 driver is better than December's). I also don't know your hardware, but I see a Catalyst Hotfix for Intel i7 / X58.

As a general reminder apropos: not much, DX11 isn't final, let alone out yet.

There are also some good things findable from the homepage http://game.amd.com/ , including Linux stuff in one or more of the blogs.

This is on a Q8200/MSI G31M3 and a 4550 running Windows 7 32.

The video driver is 8.56.1.4 from 12-10-08. I will just stick with what works for the time being as I can play games ans see what is going on.