Graphic Drivers

Re: Graphic Driver Update

ATI has released a new Catalyst 10.7 graphics driver specifically designed to provide OpenCL 1.1 support for the HD 4000 series and above, as well as selected FirePro and Embedded GPUs.

GPU-76: ATI Catalyst
 
Re: Graphic Driver Update

NVIDIA 3D Vision Driver 258.96 BETA




This is an updated NVIDIA 3D Vision driver CD that was included in the box.

New Features

Updated 8-6-2010 – Post new CD with updated 3D Vision driver v258.96 which updates the following 3D Vision game profiles
Mafia II – updated profile settings for 3D Vision-Ready rating
StarCraft II – fixed profile to properly recognize the retail game executable name and match the 3D Vision rating of “Good”
TRINE – new profiles fixes that allow the game to be rated”3D Vision-Ready” when used with the TRINE patch v1.08, available via Steam.
Adds support for NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround technology. Learn more about this technology including the hardware and software requirements here .
Adds support for GeForce GTX 460 GPUs.
Adds support for Optoma GT720 , Optoma HD67, and Optoma HD66 projectors.
Installation Instructions

Download the NVIDIA 3D Vision driver
Remove all old GeForce 3D Vision drivers as outlined in the Quick Start Guide.
Ensure you have the latest GeForce Graphics driver v258.96 installed
Launch the NVIDIA 3D Vision driver file by double clicking on it
After the driver is installed, the 3D Vision Setup Wizard will automatically launch and guide you through setup of your 3D Vision system.
Minimum system requirements

Microsoft® Windows® Vista 32-bit/64-bit or Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit
Intel® Core™2 Duo or AMD Athlon™ X2 CPU or higher
1GB of system memory. (2GB is recommended)
100 MB free disk space

Download: NVIDIA 3D Vision Driver 258.96 BETA download from Guru3D.com

Ref: NVIDIA 3D Vision Driver 258.96 BETA
 
Nvidia has released the 9.10.0513 PhysX drivers for Nvidia PhysX-capable GPUs. Note that this version is newer than the 9.10.0512 PhysX drivers included in the Mafia 2 Demo.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 9.10.0513
 
Just as promised, AMD has today let loose the Catalyst 10.8 WHQL-certified drivers which come with support for the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000 and HD 5000 series graphics cards, and the Radeon HD 3000 and HD 4000 series IGPs (a Mobility Radeon release is available for mobile chips).

The Catalyst 10.8 includes the following updates:

New features

OpenGL ES 2.0 support

- ATI Catalyst 10.8 delivers full support for OpenGL ES 2.0 specification

- Enables 3D accelerated graphics within a web browser that supports OpenGL ES 2.0

- Supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7

Video Quality default options

- The Default video options for ATI Catalyst have been greatly enhanced to deliver the best quality video viewing experience. Users can also choose to apply these settings to Internet Video via a new checkbox control within the ATI Catalyst Control Center

Performance enhancement for Eyefinity Quad ATI CrossFireX configurations

- Performance has been greatly improved for users running with ATI Eyefinity on a Quad ATI CrossFireX configuration

Anti-Aliasing support for StarCraft II

Performance Improvements

Far Cry 2

- Performance increases 2-6% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations

- Performance increases 2-4% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations

- Performance increases 3-8% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations

Left 4 Dead 2

- Performance increases 3-5% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 series and CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 series configurations

Stormrise

- Performance increases 5-10% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 series and ATI Radeon HD 5500 series configurations

To download the new AMD graphics driver simply see this page:

Drivers & Support | GAME.AMD.COM
 
Crossfire Application 10.8a

In our recent SLI and CFX testing lately we have been disappointed in CrossFireX performance scaling, particular in two games that we felt should be exhibiting better performance scaling. This all started back when we did our round of GTX 460 SLI testing and discovered the GTX 460 SLI configuration blowing away even 5850 and 5870 CrossFireX ATI GPU video card configurations. Since then, we have been working with AMD to get to the bottom of performance issues with CrossFireX with the previous Catalyst drivers and CrossFireX Application Profile (CAP) software.


Catalyst 10.8 was released yesterday, and with it, a new CAP version as well. We tested the driver and CAP and found the same performance as we had been experiencing previously, there was no change.

AMD provided us with a new CrossFireX Application Profile today that its claims fixes and improves scaling with CrossFireX performance, particular in two titles, Aliens vs. Predator and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

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This new CrossFireX Application Profile is labeled "10.8a" and will be available to the public very soon. Our results below speak for themselves.

The system setup is as follows: MSI X58 Eclipse (two x16 PCIe slots native), Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.6GHz, 6GB DDR3, Dell 3007WFP, Win7 x64. We are using Catalyst 10.7a and 10.7 CAP versus Cat 10.8 and 10.8a CAP.

ATI Radeon HD 5870 2GB CrossFireX
Aliens vs. Predator

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In Aliens vs. Predator at 2560x1600 with 4X AA the performance difference is night and day. In our previous testing with Cat 10.7a and even Catalyst 10.8 and 10.8 CAP, our performance hovered right around 32 FPS average in this game. However, with the brand new 10.8a CAP that AMD will be releasing publically, our performance has dramatically improved. We are seeing a 70% improvement in pure performance, this is incredible.

Not all is roses though as there does appear to be an image quality bug related to Motion Blur with this new CAP. We noticed that motion blur is very exaggerated with the new CAP installed, as we moved around the game there was extreme blurring and quite frankly this will be a distraction for gamers. So while performance is phenomenal now, it does appear a bug has been introduced and we know AMD will look into the issue and get that fixed as soon as possible. Turning Motion Blur off "fixes" the problem though. We are going to continue to evaluate AvP and report any issues we find to AMD.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

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In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at 2560x1600 with 4X AA we are also seeing a very noticeable improvement in performance. The difference isn’t as big as AvP, but it is certainly noticeable in-game. Here we are seeing a 44% improvement in performance in the average framerate. This is big news to BC2 players using CFX! Gamers have felt shafted by CrossFireX performance in BC2 for some time. It seems whatever was holding it back has been fixed in this new 10.8a CAP.

Of course we asked for a statement from AMD about this issue and why it has gone unattended for so long. This was what Terry Makedon had to say:

"In our internal benchmarking we did not see CrossFireX scaling issues. With HardOCP’s initial articles on the topic of scaling we were alerted that something was not right. We immediately engaged with Brent and asked for information to be able to reproduce his results. It took some time for us to reproduce them and once that happened we had to give it to our performance tuning engineers to investigate. We truly did put the highest possible priority on it as we did want to ensure everyone had the best performance possible. What we did to resolve the scaling issue in the end was to tweak the driver to use the available CPU cores more efficiently (we were hitting a CPU limitation on that particular map you guys used)."

It will be very interesting to see what kind of overall feedback we get from BC2 players.

The Bottom Line
The issues holding back performance in these two titles has now been fixed thanks to the new CrossFireX Application Profile. This is what the CAP system was intended for; to provide performance and compatibility updates to CrossFireX without having to wait between driver versions. Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite worked out this way, with CAP updates coming about as frequently as driver updates. It has been months with these CrossFireX performance issues present, and we are only now seeing it get fixed. AMD needs to stay in tune with its customers a bit better in the future, because honestly, these CFX issues were even voiced in AMD's own forums months ago.

At any rate, this new CrossFireX Application Profile will be available online shortly, and you will want to grab it if you are running a CrossFireX configuration.

Ref: CAP 10.8a - ATI CrossFireX Application Profile 10.8a Performance | [H]ard|OCP




Download: Link Removed - Invalid URL
 
ATI has released the Catalyst 10.8b Hotfix graphics driver for the HD 4870 X2 and 4850 X2 cards under Windows Vista and 7. This driver is designed to ensure that both GPUs on these cards are used for improved performance, and that the performance of forced Anisotropic Filtering (AF) in H.A.W.X 2 is also improved.

Link Removed - Invalid URL
 
Nvidia GeForce 260.52 driver leaked


Here's a refreshing thing for GeForce card owners, a new leaked driver to keep them occupied until next week when Nvidia will most likely have something official and (probably) WHQL-certified to release. In the mean time, there's the Windows Vista/7 64bit version of the GeForce 260.52 up for grabs.

Dated September 1st, the 260.52 has support for GeForce 8, 9, 100, 200, 300 and 400 series cards (including the upcoming GeForce GTS 450), seems to bring a new graphics setting (Dynamic tiling) and is bundled with the PhysX 9.10.0514 software (3D Vision driver is available too).

To give the GeForce 260.52 a try see here: GeForce 260.52 beta | TechConnect Magazine

Ref: Nvidia GeForce 260.52 driver leaked | VR-Zone | Gadgets | PC Enthusiasts
 
Thanks to TorrentG for the tip.. :)

GeForce Forceware 260.61 Windows XP VISTA and 7


NVIDIA just outted a new ForceWare driver, supporting pretty much any GeForce and Tesla graphics cards. Right now we do not have a specific changelog available but will post this as soon as possible.

ForceWare 260.61 Windows XP (32-bit): http://downloads.guru3d.com/ForceWare-260.61-Windows-XP-(32-bit)-download-2615.html
ForceWare 260.61 Win 7 | Vista (64-bit): http://downloads.guru3d.com/ForceWare-260.61-Win-7-|-Vista-(64-bit)-download-2614.html
ForceWare 260.61 Win 7 | Vista (32-bit): http://downloads.guru3d.com/ForceWare-260.61-Win-7-|-Vista-(32-bit)-download-2613.html
 
Nvidia has released the Beta Forceware 260.63 driver for Windows XP, Vista and 7. This driver is for the GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400 and ION series cards. It adds support for the new GTS 450 card, has performance increases for the GTX 400 series in various games, improves compatibility for older DX7 - DX9 games, has Blu-ray 3D, HD Audio, Nvidia Surround and Nvidia 3D Vision improvements, and contains a range of bug fixes. The driver package also contains the 9.10.0514 PhysX drivers.

NVIDIA Driver Downloads - Advanced Search
 
Catalyst 10.9 available for download


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Gather round Radeon owners cause what we have here is the new Catalyst 10.9 driver which includes support for the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000 and HD 5000 series graphics cards and the Radeon HD 3000 and HD 4000 series IGPs, and brings performance boosts, fixes, but no new features.
The performance gains promised by the Catalyst 10.9 include:
STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark
- Performance increases up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and anti-aliasing enabled
- Performance increases up to 12% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and anti-aliasing enabled
Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series single and CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series single and CrossFire configurations

Download: Graphics Drivers & Software

Alternative download: http://www.tcmagazine.com/tcm/downloads/30418/catalyst-109

Ref: http://www.tcmagazine.com/tcm/news/software/30419/catalyst-109-available-download
 
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AMD Catalyst 10.9 Windows 7 Driver Analysis


Introduction
As we roll into the end of September which marks a few things like the end of the third quarter, the start of the new HD 6000 series coming, a new Catalyst driver suite and what could be an end to NVIDIAs very short reign on the mid range video card market, we find ourselves excited about October.
From next month onward we should begin to see what we really only know at this point as "Bart", being offered from AMD. I've been practicing the whole AMD thing, trying to get ATI out of my vocabulary, as no doubt the release of the HD 6000 series will almost mean the end of the ATI name, a name we've grown to love (and sometimes hate).
That's next month, though, which will mark the release of the always weird sounding .10 driver; in this case, the 10.10. For now we've got the new 10.9 driver. Let’s see what AMD are offering us and then get straight into the benchmarks.

Performance Improvements
STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark
- Performance increases up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and
anti-aliasing enabled
- Performance increases up to 12% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and
CrossFire configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and
anti-aliasing enabled
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and
CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series single and
CrossFire configurations

Ref and full article: AMD Catalyst 10.9 Windows 7 Driver Analysis Introduction :: TweakTown USA Edition
 
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I have updated mine, and although I don't play those Call of Prpat, the Catalyst 10.9 feels perfect, good fps and no lags. : )
 
Now when you log on to your steam account it will automatically update your graphics driver if you want it to, I'm kinda leery about that though.
 
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