ATI releases Catalyst 6.8

[Alpine]

Open GL performance gains all round

ATI has managed to improve some things drastically with its brand new driver.


The graphics firm has been lacking in OpenGL performance but this new driver improved Doom 3 scores by as much as 6.5 percent and Quake 4 by as much as eighteen per cent. The driver adds a round twenty percent to the performance numbers of the Chronicles of Riddick and Prey boasts a performance boost of up to sixteen percent. You can expect the performance increases on all X1000 series cards.

The new driver improves the memory handing of games that need more than 256MB of memory. ATI reckons 3Dmark06 scores will be improved by up to 22 percent in a single card test with 256MB of memory at 1280x1024 and anti-aliasing enabled. The largest gains are expected on X1800 and X1900 series of cards.

The performance of Call of Duty 2 improves as much as thirty percent on a single X500 or higher card with 256MB at 1280x1024 with anti-aliasing enabled, again the largest gain is on X1800 and X1900 cards.

The new Linux Catalyst 6.8 (8.28.8) supports Pairmode the new feature to enable two desktops with two resolutions. The new driver supports Xpress 1200, 1250 and X1300 products and works under both 32 and 64 bit Linux and CPUs. You can download it here.