Half-Life Fallout: Official ATI Catalyst Update Thread - Half-Life Fallout

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System
This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:

Call of Juarez: Enabling AA no longer result in occasional corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28455
Doom3: Flashing is no longer observed when loading the game, or during some of the cinematic, or during game play when Catalyst™ AI is disabled, AA is set to 8x, and CrossFire™ is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28460
Lost Planet: Corruption is no longer noticed after a short time period of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28456
Monsters.Inc: Enabling DXVA no longer results in certain scenes being choppy. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28465
Pacific Fighters: Corruption is no longer noticed when enabling superAA. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28448
Prey: A blank screen is no longer displayed when trying to load game if AA is set to either 4x or 8x and filter wide tent is used. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28461
Quake 3 and 4: Resuming from a standby state no longer results in the display image appearing too bright. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28437
Quake 4: Playing the game with CrossFire™ enabled no longer results in corruption being noticed after a short time of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28459
Playing a DVD under the Windows Vista operating system using the Windows Media Player no longer results in the DVD failing to play when switching between display devices using the hot-key function. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24472
The desktop shortcut to the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer disappears after performing a Windows Anytime Upgrade on some hardware configurations running Vista. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27078
Playing a DVD using the Windows Media Player and enabling subtitles no longer results in the playback of the DVD flashing. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28417
The button sizes found in the Catalyst™ Control Center (Japanese version) are no longer displayed as different sizes than the previous versions of the Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28432
The Avivo preview video no longer appears blank when changing from extended desktop mode to single desktop mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28433
The SuperAA values found in the Catalyst™ Control Center->All Setting->3D aspect page are no longer reset to zero when rebooting the system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28434
Catalyst™ Control Center: Connecting a secondary display device no longer results in the display device failing to be selected in all of the aspect pages of the Catalyst™ Control Center where the Graphics Adapter drop down menu exists. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28435
The select a skin aspect page found in the Catalyst™ Control Center is now localized for all supported languages. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28438
Making changes to the Avivo aspect, but not applying the changes no longer results in OverDrive™ becoming unlocked. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28439
Capturing video to AVI format no longer results in the recording function failing to work. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28440
HDMI audio stutter is no longer heard when playing MPEG clip at certain resolutions on specific HDMI device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28444
The display resolution of 2048x1536 60Hz. is now available within the Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28449
The edges of the subtitles no longer appear transparent when playing a DVD using DVD 8.0 or Windows Media Player 11. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28450
Playing HD DVD content followed by attempting to hot unplug a display device and then hot-plugging the same display device to a different port no longer results in the HD DVD playback failing to resume. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28451
Catalyst™ Control Center: Attempting to change the Core clock settings within the OverDrive™ aspect no longer results in the new setting failing to be applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28452
Connecting two display devices and performing a mode change no longer results in the change taking an extraordinary long time to complete. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28453
Connecting a Lenovo 19" Wide Slim LCD display device to either an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 or 2400 and setting the display resolution to 1440x900 60Hz. no longer results in an image failing to be displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28454
The cancel button is now translated to Chinese-Traditional within the ATI Catalyst™ Install Manager. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28457
Connecting a secondary display device and enabling extended desktop mode no longer results in the Catalyst™ Control Center->Avivio Basic aspect options failing to be applied when watching a DVD using either WinDVD or PowerDVD on the secondary display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28458
Setting the display resolution to 1600x1200 or 2048x1563 no longer results in line flicker being noticed when resizing the media player. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28462
Blinking video is no longer observed when using PowerDVD to playback 1080i content in the 30 FPS mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28463


Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System
This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite for Windows XP. These include:

Call of Duty 2: Setting the in-game resolution to 640x480 no longer results in visual static and interrupted audio during cinematic and within the menus. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28468
Google Earth: The fog is displayed in the image no longer has a checkered effect. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28467
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide no longer exhibits missing textures on characters under some circumstances on some hardware configurations. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28471
Enabling CrossFire™ on a system containing the Radeon™ HD2900 XT no longer results in an error message and CrossFire™ not being enabled. Further information can be found in topic number 737-28188
Launching the release notes under the Japanese or Chinese version of Windows no longer results in the release notes displaying a blank page. This issue may also be experienced under the Windows Vista operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-26749
Pixilated corruption is no longer observed while running the game Prey while hovering over the health packs from a distance on some hardware configurations running Win XP. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27091
The system no longer become unresponsive when randomly moving the Video Player window from primary to extended desktop under certain hardware configurations. This issue was known to occur when the second adapter is an ATI Radeon™ X1200/1250/1270 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27092
Corruption is no longer noticed when playing certain DVD titles when hardware acceleration is enabled on ATI Radeon™ HD 2900 XT product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27624
Connecting a TV using an S-video cable and a CRT display device using a dual VGA adapter cable no longer results in intermittent noise being observed when playing a video using the Windows Media Player or a DVD using PowerDVD. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28469
Playing a Blu-ray or HD-DVD no longer results in corruption being noticed if several application windows are open and the application windows are dragged around the desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28470
Connecting an HDTV using the Component Video connector no longer results in a double image being noticed when pressing the ALT+Enter keys. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28473
Jittering is no longer noticed in cinepak video playback when using the Windows Media Player and having the desktop resolution set to 1280x1024 75Hz or higher. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28474

Oh I see, thanks for keeping things up to date, Trooper.
I'll let everyone know once some performance figures show themselves.

Hushh now Trooper.
Tweak Town's Catalyst 7.7 Performance Analysis is here.

I'm disappointed with this analysis, not for performance but for the coverage.
They didn't go into the new AA modes for the HD series or check out performance on FarCry. :<

As you can see, nothing changes except for CoH, just so happens it happens in a bad way.

Fog bug set to disappear in August

IN THE PAST couple of releases of Catalyst drivers owners of Radeon HD 2000 cards got quite a lot of bug fixes, but there was one major bug that plagued the gaming experience of good part of those 13 million people hooked up on Valve's Steam on-line distribution service.

The bug in question was causing fog to be rendered incorrectly in all games based on the Source Engine, the most notable ones include Half Life 2 and its variants. Therefore, the bug was rather annoying to massive amount of people.

We talked with Terry Makedon, father of the Catalyst drivers, and learned that ATI was well aware of the fog bug and it had a priority in sorting out the problem. After using a lot of magic, Mackedon's team managed to squash the bug that plagued games based on Source Engine (and there is a sizeable number of them).

We are still waiting for a fix for World of Warcraft Wireframe bug that happens to owners of 2900XT cards, though.

Drivers are expected to hit the websites around the second week of August. As we all know, ATI is not limiting distribution of its software to preferred websites. µ

THERE IS A VISTA exploit called Purple Pill that targets Vista through graphics drivers. It made a lot of news last week among the security and hacker communities, but how the affected companies responded is quite illuminating.

....

The problem centres on the installer rather than the driver, about 4MB of the approximately 35MB package. In a day or so, the flaw was found, patched, tested and posted. [Edit: It looks like the Catalyst 7.7s are now up, so I guess it is Monday] Since the drivers themselves are not changed, only the peripheral programs, they will still be labeled Catalyst 7.8, and scores should not change.

New Features

This release of Catalyst™ introduces an enhanced version of ATI Overdrive for the ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series. Users can now Over-clock both GPU engine and graphics memory clock speeds in Crossfire™ mode (and over-clock single ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators as well). This version of ATI Overdrive also includes a new stress test application to verify any over-clocking speeds users may have configured (either manually or through the auto-tuning tool) on their ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators.

Performance Improvements

The following performance improvements are noticed with Catalyst™ 7.8:

* Lost Planet DX10 with anti-aliasing improves 11% or greater on Radeon™ HD2900XT products
* Radeon™ HD2600 and Radeon™ HD2400 (single and CrossFire™) show improvements of as much as 6% in 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark 2005
* Serious Sam 2 with HDR enabled improves as much as 14.5% on Radeon™ HD2900, Radeon™ HD2600 and Radeon™ HD2400 products

Talk about one extreme to the other - the 7.7driver set did very little for us in just about every way but the 7.8 drivers have knocked the ball out of the court. These are an absolutely fantastic driver for anyone who has or is thinking about adopting a new HD 2600 card from AMD.

This could be the driver we need to get the performance up and above the Nvidia competition. We will be looking at this shortly in separate articles as the HD 2600 review samples are piling up and it’s time to see what they can really do.

Something else that is worth noting that wasn’t mentioned was the fact that this driver includes full support for the HD 2400 XT, we would have tested the card but with the 7.7 drivers not supporting it, we didn’t really have the opportunity, we will look at it though next month.

A great driver from AMD and the chances are you will find yourself upgrading straight away, at least you should!

Until next month, Happy Gaming!

Yeah, they don't give an analysis of previous generations now...

Caution: Installing the Catalyst software suite 7.8 or 7.9 on a system containing the ATI Radeon™ X1950 AGP series of product may result in either the desktop failing to be drawn properly or the operating system failing to boot. It is recommended to continue using Catalyst 7.7 for this product at this time.

Caution: Once the driver installation is completed under the Vista operating system (32 and 64 bit), the driver log file may report that the ATI T200 Unified AVStream Driver failed to install. A reboot of the operating system resolves the issue.

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

* Bioshock: Missing, blackout, and flashing surfaces are no longer noticed in the game. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29549
* Bioshock: Random polygons shooting up in the sky are no longer noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29551
* Gods: Land of Infinity (demo): Having the in-game options set to 1920x1200 32bpp, Shadows on High, and Texture Quality set to High no longer results in only the mouse pointer being visible. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28810
* LostPlanet: Display flicker is no longer noticed when playing the game under the Windows Vista operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29560
* Monsters.Inc: Enabling DXVA no longer results in certain game scenes appearing choppy. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29546
* Prey: Texture tearing is no longer noticed in certain areas of the game. This issue was known to occur on ATI Radeon™ HD 2x00 series of products. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29563
* Quake3: Moving the mouse pointer over the options listed in the System Setup no longer results in the option being highlighted and the option being overdrawn by the highlight. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29531
* World of Warcraft: Playing the game with wide or narrow tent Anti-Aliasing filters no longer results in wireframe flashing. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28807
* Attempting to enable CrossFire™ on a secondary display device no longer results in CrossFire™ failing to be enabled. Further information on this issue may be found in topic number. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28844
* There are more...

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

* Adobe After Effects 8.0: The Fragment Shader no longer fails when rendering shadows. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29565
* Bioshock: Frame stutter associated with time spikes in random components of the render stats is no longer noticed as the character walks around. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29041
* City of Heroes: Attempting to play the game on a system running Windows XP no longer results in the game failing to launch when using an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 XT. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29567
* City of Heroes: Enabling CrossFire™ followed by attempting to launch the game no longer results in the game failing to launch and the operating system failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29568
* PowerDVD: Playing a DVD on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 series of product no longer results in missing pixels being noticed on the DVD menu selection. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28511
* PowerDVD: Playing a DVD on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 series of product no longer results in missing pixels being noticed on the DVD menu selection. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28511
* World of Warcraft: Intermittent flashing is no longer noticed when enabling AA. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29569
* Setting the display device to 1280x1024 and attempting to playback a VC1/h.264 title using the Cyberlink player no longer results in choppy playback. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28832
* Corruption is no longer noticed when playing wmv files with WinDVD when CrossFire™ is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-29566