New ATI Catalyst 3.7 Drivers

**legacy-Captain Sarcastic** · 09-04-2003, 05:19 PM

For all the UT2K3 players with ATI cards, there are new Catalyst 3.7 Drivers at www.ati.com

**legacy-KittyFantastico** · 09-04-2003, 05:43 PM

Originally posted by Captain Sarcastic
For all the UT2K3 players with ATI cards, there are new Catalyst 3.7 Drivers at www.ati.com

Cool! Thanks for the news.

And what I would really appreciate seeing is some before and after benchmarks using benchmark.exe in the Systems directory. Any volunteers?

**legacy-191** · 09-04-2003, 05:44 PM

ATI is working up the sweat. They are going for the nvidia tactics and i like it ! thanks for the heads up !

**Absynthe** · 09-04-2003, 05:57 PM

Unreal Tournament 2003 performance is up considerably for DX9 products running with Anti-Aliasing enabled. This is due to improvements in the driver code for rendering character shadows. For example, the Anubis botmatch test gains as much as 23%
Note: The UT2003 FlyBy tests do not contain any characters, and therefore will not show this effect. Real game play, however, will certainly benefit.

Unreal Tournament 2003 highlight corruption is no longer seen when the pull down menu bar is used to choose a selection

looks like we get a couple of tweaks this time through, won't be able to install them until later though

**legacy-Captain Sarcastic** · 09-04-2003, 06:00 PM

Originally posted by KittyFantastico
Cool! Thanks for the news.

And what I would really appreciate seeing is some before and after benchmarks using benchmark.exe in the Systems directory. Any volunteers?

I ran a quick set of benchies and didn't notice much difference, so it's probably mostly fixes and tweaks. I get 115 flyby/65 botmatch at 1024x768x32 with 4xAA & 16xAF on an AMD 2600+ .

There are some release notes on the Cat download pages if you want to see what they've done.

Originally posted by 191
ATI is working up the sweat. They are going for the nvidia tactics and i like it ! thanks for the heads up !

ATI are going from a 6 week release cycle of official drivers to a 4 week one (ish). That's a lot better than Nvidia who have only released about two sets of official drivers since the beginning of the year (and a load of dodgy, cheating, leaked drivers). ATI's driver program is miles ahead at the moment.

**InfiniteWeird** · 09-04-2003, 06:02 PM

w00t!

**legacy-Cervantes** · 09-04-2003, 06:08 PM

I like that the Driver and the Control Panel are now integrated into one easy package, instead of two, like previous versions.

I know it wasn't difficult to install them seperately before, but it's a lot quicker, and easier now !

I'm just off to try them in the game now !

**legacy-KittyFantastico** · 09-04-2003, 11:07 PM

Originally posted by Captain Sarcastic
I ran a quick set of benchies and didn't notice much difference, so it's probably mostly fixes and tweaks. I get 115 flyby/65 botmatch at 1024x768x32 with 4xAA & 16xAF on an AMD 2600+ .

Thanks, CS. Do you remember what your numbers were before the install?

**legacy-CH405** · 09-04-2003, 11:33 PM

Cheers for the heads up.:up:

**Emmet Otter** · 09-05-2003, 12:03 AM

Yes! Thanx for the heads up aswell.
But, sadly to say for me, i havent noticed any differance for like the past 3 sets of drivers. But i guess i'll keep these anyway.

**legacy-Captain Sarcastic** · 09-05-2003, 05:46 AM

Originally posted by KittyFantastico
Thanks, CS. Do you remember what your numbers were before the install?

They were the same - about 1 fps slower maybe. However, I have just read this:

Unreal Tournament 2003 performance is up considerably for DX9 products running with Anti-Aliasing enabled. This is due to improvements in the driver code for rendering character shadows. For example, the Anubis botmatch test gains as much as 23%

The UT2003 FlyBy tests do not contain any characters, and therefore will not show this effect. Real game play, however, will certainly benefit.

The result of this optimization is also apparent in Dungeon Siege, where gains ranging from 3-10% are observed on our DX9 product line-up, when Anti-Aliasing is enabled. Other game titles may also be improved

So people may notice faster/smoother gameplay. Apparently it is a general, not an app-specific optimisation, but that UT2K3 benefits a lot from it.

**legacy-xbmod** · 09-05-2003, 06:00 AM

Very nice

And I agree ATI really knows what it's doing

I remember back in my Nvidia days you got updates once a while after 5 leaked versions but rarely knew what they actually did..

**legacy-RipTheJacker** · 09-05-2003, 07:11 AM

new drivers

i hope these fix my probs

:sour:

**legacy-Cervantes** · 09-05-2003, 07:15 AM

Not sure if it's just my eyes playing trickson me, but my graphics seemed a little more crisp and defined, when I was playing the game, last night. I didn't check to see if my FPS altered in any way.

I have my card set to "application sets AA"

**legacy-st_trooper** · 09-05-2003, 07:29 AM

My 2k1 score remained the same, my UT2k3 went up a few FPS.

I installed the "low bandwidth" version (drivers and contol panel split into different files) and half the settings in the control panel were gone (ie. vsync, refresh rate override, trueform, and more).

Thought that was intentional but it's not, downloading the one file brought the settings back.

**legacy-tired** · 09-05-2003, 10:01 AM

Originally posted by st_trooper
I installed the "low bandwidth" version (drivers and contol panel split into different files) and half the settings in the control panel were gone (ie. vsync, refresh rate override, trueform, and more).

Thought that was intentional but it's not, downloading the one file brought the settings back.

This is why http://www.futuremark.com/news/?news...309/2003090506

These are my favourite Catalyst drivers thus far of all Catalysts - they just seem to hit that sweet spot for me (I downloaded the full package for high bandwidth user's).

**legacy-191** · 09-05-2003, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by Captain Sarcastic
ATI are going from a 6 week release cycle of official drivers to a 4 week one (ish). That's a lot better than Nvidia who have only released about two sets of official drivers since the beginning of the year (and a load of dodgy, cheating, leaked drivers). ATI's driver program is miles ahead at the moment.

Everything ATI is doing with their driver program they took that from Nvidia. They even use one unified driver file. They didn't have that before. But who cares, as long as they pump out the good stuff i dont care where they get their ideas from.

**legacy-Keith_C** · 09-05-2003, 10:56 AM

Bloody hell these drivers are good. Added some 400 to my 3D Mark score (now get 5400), and made the game *much* smoother. Even holy **** settings at 1280x1024 are lovely and smooth with no slowdown

Vast improvement over the 3.5's I had.

Still not fixed the issue with the control panel and remote desktop though >:( Means I can't install the control panel :weird:

**legacy-KittyFantastico** · 09-06-2003, 08:35 PM

Originally posted by Captain Sarcastic
So people may notice faster/smoother gameplay. Apparently it is a general, not an app-specific optimisation, but that UT2K3 benefits a lot from it.

FYI, I got a big performance boost with 4X Anti-Aliasing:

Before, with 3.2 Catalyst & 4x Anti-Aliasing:
1024x768
Flyby: 142
Botmatch: 55

After, with 3.7 Catalyst & 4X Anti-Aliasing:
1024x768
Flyby: 157
Botmatch: 55

15 frames faster on the Flyby! Which is great, since I always have 4X Anti-Aliasing on. Obviously my CPU is the bottleneck when it comes to botmatches. My non-Anti-Aliasing benchmarks didn't change at all:

1024x768
Flyby: 180
Botmatch: 55

My basic setup:
Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
1024 MB Corsair 333MHz PC2700
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Windows XP

**legacy-IQ454** · 10-20-2003, 09:51 PM

Just as a side note, the upcoming CATALYST 3.8 will be the most innovative and significant CATALYST release ever, so keep your eyes out for that one!

http://www.futuremark.com/news/?arch...309/2003090500

Woot?

My cat version is 3.8?
What's with the 3.7, that's old isnt it?

**legacy-emuporium** · 10-20-2003, 10:12 PM

Originally posted by IQ454
http://www.futuremark.com/news/?arch...309/2003090500

Woot?

My cat version is 3.8?
What's with the 3.7, that's old isnt it?

thats what happens when you reply to a month and a half old thread