Catalyst 8.6

[cadaveca]

Catalyst 8.6 is live. Get it here:

AMD GAME Drivers & Tools

New Features
Catalyst™ 8.6 introduces the following new features:

•OpenGL Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support

•OpenGL CrossFireX™ (QUAD) support – 3 or 4 GPUs in CrossFire™ mode

•Catalyst Install enhancement – No reboot required after Catalyst upgrade

install

OpenGL Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support

This release of Catalyst™ introduces Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support

for OpenGL applications for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series, ATI
Radeon™ HD 2000 Series of products. Using the Edge Detect Custom Filter,
users can enable 12X and 24X Anti-Aliasing. Selecting 4X Anti-Aliasing plus
selecting the Edge Detect filter delivers the equivalent of 12X Anti-Aliasing.
Selecting 8X Anti-Aliasing plus selecting the Edge Detect filter delivers the
equivalent of 24X Anti-Aliasing.
OpenGL CrossFireX™ (QUAD) support – 3 or 4 GPUs in
CrossFire™ mode
This release of Catalyst™ introduces CrossFireX™ QUAD support for OpenGL
applications. Users with any combination of a ATI Radeon™ HD 3870, ATI
Radeon™ HD 3850, and ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 X2 graphics accelerators running
with 3 or 4 GPUs will be able to run in CrossFireX™ QUAD mode (when
used in a CrossFireX™ compatible PC).
Users are also able to run in CrossFireX™ QUAD mode while running in
extended desktop mode on the Windows Vista desktop.
Catalyst Install enhancement – No reboot required after
Catalyst upgrade install
This release of Catalyst™ introduces an enhancement to the Catalyst installer.
Users are no longer required to reboot their system after Catalyst has finished
installing (as long as the installation is an upgrade from a previous Catalyst
install).
Performance Improvements
The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™.
•3DMark Vantage:10 to 15% gains across all Radeon™ HD 3xxx and HD

2xxx products, with larger gains in specific cases.

•Call of Duty 4: Performance increases across all Radeon™ HD 3xxx and HD

2xxx products, with gains as large as 35% in specific maps.•Call of Juarez DX10: Performance increases between 2 and 9% across all HD
3xxx and HD 2xxx products

•Company of Heroes (DX10 version): Performance increases between 4 and

10% across HD 36xx and HD 34xx products.

•Lost Planet (DX10 version): Performance increases by 1 or 2 fps across all

HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products, creating in some cases up to 20% increase.

•Lost Planet (DX9 version): Performance increases between 2 and 20% across

all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products

•Prey OpenGL: 3-5% gains across HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products.

•Quake 4 OpenGL: Up to 8% increase across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products.
•Shadermark 2.1: Minor improvements across all HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products,
with the largest gains appearing on HD 3650 (up to 9%)

•ViewPerf 10: Substantial performance improvements across several of the

sub-tests, with the largest gains in ugnx (up to 55%), catia (up to 17%) and
tcvis (up to 10%) across all of the HD 3xxx and HD 2xxx products.

[Synth]

Hope they play well with Vista 64bit ...

[cadaveca]

they do, I'm on Vista64. For 3870x2's anyway, they work.


Actually one of the best drivers for some time...IMHO...just support for GRID is missing(only uses one gpu in Crossfire)