New ATI Catalyst Release 4.8

[Arioch]

Normally we don't post news about driver updates for video cards (well, driver updates for anything, really) but this time I'm making an exception. ATI has posted the latest set of WHQL certified Catalyst drivers for Radeon cards versioned 4.8. Why is this one release so important you ask? Well, according to the release notes, general OpenGL performance improvements were made that improved Doom 3 performance by "as much as 12% on some product configurations".

[HackNeyed]

sweet! but what i want to know is how they stack up to the 4.9 betas... i guess its benchmark time after my downloads are done... :D

[Arioch]

HackNeyed said:

sweet! but what i want to know is how they stack up to the 4.9 betas... i guess its benchmark time after my downloads are done... :D

I'm guessing they rolled the changes from the 4.9 "hotfix" into the 4.8 finals, based on the release notes.

BTW this news post got a 10.0 score on the Doomworld nadmin post-o-meter. ph34r me

[HackNeyed]

Yep, at 1024x768 set to High Q, no AA, all second runs of timedemo demo1

9800 Pro bench's
4.9b = 40.4 (and X# frames rendered in 53.2)
4.8 = 40.5 (and X# frames rendered in 53.1)

Intel P4 HT 3.00GHz - 800Bus
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (w/ SoundMAX)
1GB Corsair DDR-SDRAM PC3200
ATI Hercules 9800 Pro 128mb
XP Pro w/ SP1, DirectX 9.0c

------------autoexec.cfg used------------
r_fullscreen 1
com_showFPS 1
com_allowconsole 1
r_swapInterval 0
image_useCache 1
image_cacheMegs 256
image_cacheMinK 3072
com_videoRam 128
cm_backFaceCull 1
com_purgeAll 1
r_vertexBufferMegs 128
r_znear 1
r_mode 5
r_useLightPortalFlow 0

[Bloodshedder]

What? .1 more frames per second? I gotta get these drivers!

[Udderdude]

I can't say I noticed much improvement .. I got more out of using Rage3DTweak and a custom DoomConfig.cfg/autoexec.cfg. Then again I've got an apparently lame Radeon 9600SE ;p

Bloodshedder: He was comparing 4.9b and 4.8, not 4.7 and 4.8. Of course 4.9b and 4.8 are going to perform similar.

[Bloodshedder]

heh, oops, I wasn't paying attention.

Since these aren't beta drivers I might as well upgrade from 4.6.

[mekka]

Beware ! Fog is broken in newer zdoomGL thanks to these drivers. Even more with colored fog (try "testfade red" and walk around...).

[HackNeyed]

mekka said:

Beware ! Fog is broken in newer zdoomGL thanks to these drivers.

as is the case with 4.9 beta. yeah it pissed me off a bit but i'd rather have the extra fps on D3... a good 10+ from 4.7 to 4.9b/4.8

EDIT: i wonder if it is caused by the openGL "hotfix" for Doom3...? i smell conspiracy!! no wait, its just pine scent

[Udderdude]

Funny, zDoomGL doesn't work for me at all now. It needs to be updated anyway, the decal clipping bug is really annoying :P

[VinceDSS]

anybody knows how to remove features like fog on ATI mobility IGP ?

It seems that some games have pretty bad fog (or transparency) code and it makes my comp go to a crawl sometimes.
Everything runs pretty smooth until some fog or smoke shows up. (not all games tho)