ATI Releases 10.8 Drivers for 3xxx 4xxx 5xxx Series

I don't know how many of you use ATI cards, but given the cost/performance compared to the top nVidia I decided to pick up a shiny new 5870, and it sure hasn't disappointed in its ability to give me those massive framerates, and it seems the windows 7 related bugs and crashes get less and less every time a new patch comes out. so it comes with little surprise that I am pleased to hear about the release of the 10.8 drivers. If you have an ATI card I would suggest updating as well.


"GPU accelerated web browsing, Quad-CrossFireX improvement




In its usual cycle of monthly driver updates, ATI has just released the Catalyst 10.8 for Radeon HD 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 series users, bringing the version display driver version up to 8.762. Surprisingly, it appears these drivers are dated August 3, 2010 meaning ATI's driver development team have been testing these for over three weeks.






ATI Catalyst Control Panel displaying Catalyst 10.8 drivers installed


The drivers features a unique variety of new features, including full support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification, Video Quality default options, AA support for Starcraft II, and most importantly, a long-awaited performance boost for Quad-CrossFireX users.


The inclusion of support for OpenGL ES 2.0 enables fully 3D accelerated webpage graphics on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP and should be considered an important milestone in the road to fully GPU accelerated web browsing.


The Default video options for ATI Catalyst have also been expanded to allow individual customization options for desktop video as well as Internet video. In the "Advanced Color" menu, new default settings have been adjusted for Color Vibrance (default = 40), Flesh Tone Correction (default = 50) and Brighter Whites. In the "Advanced Quality" menu, new default settings have been adjusted for Edge-Enhancement (default = 25), De-Noise (default = 64), Mosquito Noise Reduction (default = 50) and De-blocking (default = 50).


ATI has also stated in its Catalyst 10.8 Release Notes that Quad-CrossFireX users running EyeFinity can expect a noticeable performance boost in comparison with previous driver releases. Although we aren't sure if the performance enhancement also applies to Quad-CrossFireX users who are not using EyeFinity, we are in the process of testing and benchmarking our two Radeon HD 5970s in order to quantify the performance changes.


The new Catalyst 10.8 driver release can also be expected to improve performance in Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Stormrise.






The driver release also resolves several issues on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP, all of which can be found in the releases notes.


ATI Catalyst 10.8 drivers can be downloaded here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx