ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.8 XP

New Features:

* OpenGLâ„¢ 3.1 extension support

OpenGLâ„¢ 3.1 extension support:

* Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40
* Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GLARB draw instanced)
* Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer)
* Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the NV extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens
* At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders
* Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object)
* Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle)
* Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object)
* SNORM texture component formats

Performance Improvements:

* Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - performance improves up to 15-50% in CPU limited settings with the largest gains in CrossfireX configurations
* Company of Heroes DirectX 10 - performance improves by up to 10-77% in CPU limited settings
* Crysis DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 10% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 34% in CPU limited settings ATI Catalystâ„¢ Release Note Version 9.8 5
* Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 7% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 69% in CPU limited settings
* Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 50% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 88% in CPU limited settings
* Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves up to 40% in CPU limited settings with Quad CrossfireX performance improving up to 60% in CPU limited settings
* UnigineTropics OpenGL - performance improves 5-20%
* UnigineTropics DirectX 10 - Quad CrossfireX performance improves 5-20% in CPU limited settings
* World in Conflict DirectX 10 - performance improves by 5-10%

Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating Systems:

* Catalyst Control Center: Diagnostic warning message now appears in CrossFire aspect when the only display is removed from the CrossFire chain
* Catalyst Control Centre will now launch properly with CrossFire disabled on multiadapter enabled/configured systems
* Catalyst Control Center: Some of the missing "Monitor Attributes" options in the Displays tab are now available
* Refresh rates are now applied properly for standard and optimized HDTV modes in Catalyst Control Center
* Catalyst Control Center: Missing update for Windows 7 localized help content is now available
* TV Properties tab now properly displays "Image Quality" instead of "TV Properties" for Catalyst Control Center user interface

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System:

* Display and mouse rotation now functions properly after reboot with 3 or more displays in clone mode
* “Unreal Tournament 3” no longer fails to respond after performing a taskswitch to desktop
* Hotplugging a secondary display during HD playback with WinDVD no longer causes desktop to go blank
* Intermittent block noise no longer visible during MPEG2-TS content playback with Windows Media Player
* Windows 7 logo no longer displays flickering distortion during Windows 7 loading screen (system reboot up)

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System:

* “Call of Duty: World at War” no longer exhibits flickering water corruption when Software CrossFire is enabled

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System:

* Catalyst Control Center: Predefined and custom HDTV formats can now be applied via HDTV support
* Intermittent video artifacts no longer visible when playing a DVD in stretched desktop mode