ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite Version 8.5

This release note provides information on the latest posting of AMD's industry leading software suite, Catalyst™. This particular software suite updates both the AMD Display Driver, and the Catalyst™ Control Center. This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power, performance, and reliability. The AMD Catalyst™ software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability.

This release note provides information on the following:

• Web Content
• AMD Product Support
• Operating systems supported
• Performance Improvements
• New Features
• ATI's Folding@Home
• Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System
• Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System
• Known Issues Under the Windows Vista Operating System
• Known Issues Under the Windows XP Operating System
• Known Issues Under the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
• Installing the Catalyst™ Vista Software Driver
• AMD Customer Care
• Catalyst™ Crew Driver Feedback

Web Content

The Catalyst™ software suite 8.5 contains the following:

• Radeon™ display driver 8.493
• Multimedia Center™ 9.16 (Windows XP only)
• HydraVision™ for both Windows XP and Vista
• HydraVision™ Basic Edition (Windows XP only)
• Remote Wonder 3.04 (Windows XP only)
• WDM Driver Install Bundle
• Southbridge/IXP Driver
• Catalyst™ Control Center Version 8.5

Caution:

The Catalyst™ software driver and the Catalyst™ Control Center can be downloaded independently of each other. However, for maximum stability and performance AMD recommends that both components be updated from the same Catalyst™ release

Caution:

The Catalyst™ Control Center requires that the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 be installed. Without .NET version 2.0 installed, the Catalyst™ Control Center will not launch properly and the user will see an error message.

Note:

These release notes provide information on the Radeon™ display driver only. For information on the ATI Multimedia Center™, HydraVision™, HydraVision Basic Edition, WDM, Remote Wonder™, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, please refer to their respective release notes found at: https://support.ati.com/

AMD Product Support

The Catalyst™ Vista driver for both the 32bit and 64bit versions of the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system is supported on the following ATI Radeon™ products.

Note:

As of Catalyst™ 8.3 Hybrid Graphics has been supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series for the Windows Vista operating system. Hybrid Graphics delivers a significant 3D performance boost for systems featuring an AMD 780G Hybrid CrossFire™ compatible integrated graphics motherboard and an ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series or ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series graphics accelerator. This provides support for up to four independent displays.

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Note:

ATI All-in-Wonder™ boards operate with AMD's Windows Vista ready display and capture drivers under the Windows Vista operating system. However, the Windows Vista Media Center application does not support TV/Capture functionality provided by the ATI All-in-Wonder™. TV/Capture functionality is qualified to function with Snaptream's BeyondTV 4.6 for Windows Vista. Other third party solutions (such as Arcsoft's Total Media 3) may support TV/Capture with the ATI All-in-Wonder™, but these applications have not been fully tested by AMD.

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AMD Chipset Product Support

AMD Chipset Product Support
ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Series	AMD 580X Series Chipset
ATI Radeon™ HD 3100 Series	ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1150 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 2100 Series	ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1100 Series
ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1250 Series	ATI Radeon™ Xpress 200 Series
ATI Radeon™ X1250 Series	AMD 690 Series Chipset
ATI Radeon™ X1200 Series

Operating systems supported

The latest version of the Catalyst™ software suite is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

• Windows Vista (32 and 64 bit versions)
• Windows XP Professional
• Windows XP Home Edition
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Note:

When installing the Catalyst™ Vista driver for Windows Vista, the user must logged on as an Administrator or have Administrator rights in order to successfully complete the installation of the Catalyst™ Vista driver.

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.

New Features

Catalyst™ 8.5 introduces the following new features:

• Catalyst™ Control Center Component Video
• ATI Graphics Driver Un-install Enhancement
• SECAM TV Out Support
• 1080p HDTV custom mode
• HDMI Audio for non-standard TV modes
• Adaptive AA on OpenGL for Catalyst™ Control Center
• 1080p24 Mode Support
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 support

Catalyst™ Control Center Component Video

This release of Catalyst™ introduces 480i and 480p support. These formats will be found in the pre-defined component video format list found in the Catalyst™ Control Center->Component Video->Advanced page.

ATI Graphics Driver Un-install Enhancement

This release of Catalyst™ introduces an update to the ATI un-install utility. The utility now pop up dialogue box to show two options to the end user,

• Remove ATI Radeon™ graphics software, leave chipset software (RECOMMENDED).
• Completely remove all ATI/AMD (Graphics/Chipset) software.

SECAM TV Out Support

This release of Catalyst™ introduces support within the graphics driver to enable TV output adhering to the SECAM standard.

1080p HDTV custom mode

This release of Catalyst™ 1080p HDTV display mode. This feature will be available for display devices that use an HDMI connector and is available under the Windows XP and Vista operating systems.

HDMI Audio for non-standard TV modes

This release of Catalyst™ introduces HDMI audio support for all TV timing modes and non-standard (CEA 861b) TV modes. If a non-standard mode is used, on initial connection to the TV, a pop-up notification should let the user know that the audio may be out of sync. A UI allows for the audio to be disabled by the user if desired. The UI in Catalyst™ Control Center would show the list of TV timing modes (both standard and non-standard) and the capability to enable audio for a given mode.

Adaptive AA on OpenGL for Catalyst™ Control Center

This release of Catalyst™ introduces Adaptive AA for Orca Driver, geometry for alpha tested objects are now submitted multiple times to the hardware using the multi-sample mask feature to update one sample at a time in the frame buffer using centroid sampling. With each pass of the sampling position for textures is shifted to be at the location of the sample that is being updated in that pass.

1080p24 Mode Support

This release of Catalyst™ introduces 1080p24 mode support This feature will be available for display devices that use an HDMI connector and is available under the Windows XP and Vista operating systems.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 support

This release of Catalyst™ introduces WHQL certified support for Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 3 update for all ATI Radeon™ Series products.

Performance Improvements

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™.

• Call of Juarez DX10: Performance increases up to 12% on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 3xx0 series of product
• Halo: Performance increases by 10-30% across all of the supported ATI Radeon™ series of products
• Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases from 5 to 35% on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 3xx0 series of product
• Stalker DX9: Performance increases by 20-50% when HDR is enabled in the game; across all ATI Radeon™ HD38x0 series of products
• World in Conflict DX10: Performance increases up to 25% on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD36x0 and/or an ATI Radeon™ 38x0 series of product. Higher performance gains are noticed on systems contianing an ATI Radeon™ 3870x2 series of product

ATI's Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project designed by the Stanford University. The application performs intensive simulations of protein folding. This simulation will help researchers uncover how certain diseases develop. Folding@Home uses distributed computing to simulate protein folding, the workload is broken up into small work units and distributed across hundreds of thousands of computers over the internet. You can help find the cure to many different diseases! To join Folding@Home, follow these steps:

1. Download ATI's Catalyst™ software suite
2. Download the Folding@Home GPU client application

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   Note:

   The latest GPU client supports the ATI Radeon™ HD 3xx0 series of products only.

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3. Enter the ATI team number 51394 and start folding!

For more information on Folding@Home visit: http://ati.amd.com/technology/streamcomputing/folding.html

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:

• Clive Barker's Jericho: Corruption is no longer noticed when playing the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 38x0 series of product and running the Windows Vista operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-34260
• Colin McRae: DiRT: Setting the display to 1024x768 with AA set to 4x, and CrossFire™ enabled no longer results in lower performance being noticed. Fur