What's New: AMD's Catalyst 10.2 & 10.3 Drivers
by Ryan Smith on February 16, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
While we were at CES, AMD briefed us about several things. We’ve already had a chance to tell you about the Redwood chip behind the Radeon HD 5670 and 5570, and the Cedar chip behind the Radeon HD 5450. There was one last thing we haven’t had a chance to tell you about yet, and that’s drivers. Along-side our briefings about AMD’s new cards, they spent some time discussing what would be happening with the Catalyst 10.2 and Catalyst 10.3 drivers.
The Catalyst 10.2 drivers come out today, while the Catalyst 10.3 drivers will be next month’s release. We’ll just jump right in to the heart of things and list what’s coming with each release:
Catalyst 10.2
- Crossfire profile – Per-game Crossfire profiles are being moved out of the drivers, so that AMD can distribute out-of-band profile updates.
- CrossfireX rearchitecture - Certain parts of AMD’s multi-GPU code has been moved from the 3D driver to another driver component; this segmentation is largely to benefit Fuzion integrated CPU/GPUs later this year.
- Ultra Low Power State – This feature for lower-idling on Crossfire slave cards has been in the entire 5000 series. However it’s only being enabled across the board starting with this release.
- Crossfire Eyefinity – Eyefinity now works with all Crossfire configurations, not just on the 5970..
- DisplayPort Audio – The 5000 series is now capable of outputting audio over the DisplayPort in accordance with the DisplayPort standard.
Catalyst 10.3
- Catalyst Mobility – AMD will once again be releasing Catalyst drivers for most Mobility GPUs.
- Eyefinity Bezel Correction – Eyefinity setups can finally be adjusted to compensate for the space occupied by monitor bezels.
- Eyefinity Per Display Controls – Per display color correction, particularly useful for mismatched monitors.
- Eyefinity Multiple Groups
- Eyefinity Display Configuration Switching
- 3D Stereo driver hooks – AMD is implementing some low-level hooks to help 3rd-party 3D displays work with Radeon cards.
For today’s 10.2 release, much of what AMD is enabling has already snuck out in earlier driver releases in some form or another. December’s 9.12 Hotfix enabled Crossfire Eyefinity, DisplayPort Audio, and Ultra Low Power State, so it’s best to think of the 10.2 driver as the shipping version of what we saw with the 9.12 hotfix.
10.3 on the other hand has not been released in a hotfix form, so everything here is brand-new.
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bhaberle - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
I found a download for ATI Catalyst 10.2, and the release notes...http://www.geekmontage.com/ati-catalyst-10-2-downl...">http://www.geekmontage.com/ati-catalyst-10-2-downl...
BelardA - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
2D performance under Windows is horrible.Older cards and even something as weak as intels GMA 4500 is better at AERO than a 5870 card.
Stan Zaske - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Good article explaining new features, except it seems clear that being miffed about your communication with AMD over the years clearly shows. This is a MAJOR driver update and Eyefinity is the greatest feature to come along for gamers since Nvidia released Riva 128 with the first onboard 3d hardware. Chill out dudes!jamadaia - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Any news or at least indication that there is possibility of better hybrid crossfire support on IGPs.Am thinking of the possibilities, if the HD4200, forthcoming HD4290 and Fusion IGPs could have more options as to what they can be paired with.
Not expecting the world, but a bit more options like pairing my 785G IGP (HD4200) with something better than a HD3470.
Before anyone says it I know it is not a n ideal thing to crossfire such IGPs, but I like the idea of having a small simple, lower power GPU running 90% of the time and then having a secondary modestly powerful discrete GPU kick in when i occasionally play games the rest of the 10% of time.
And with the on board IGP clocked up, a free say even a modest 10% - %20 boost to the discrete GPU is surely not a bad thing?
iamezza - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
When the performance delta between the onboard and discrete graphics becomes too large, it becomes near impossible to gain any benefit from the extra 10-20% of theoretical performance boost the IGP could provide. In most instances performance will actually go down.legoman666 - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Hook us up with a link to the 10.3 beta, Jared. ;) They have the two features I want most: bezel management and per monitor color profiles in eyefinity.AznBoi36 - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Now we just need support for mixed monitor setups.I would love to flank my two DELL 2007FPs in portrait mode with my DELL 3007WFP-HC centering them.
BernardP - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Despite ATI's current lead in graphics card, I can't buy their product because ATI drivers don't allow creation and scaling of custom resolutions. With NVidia drivers, I can instantly create and scale any custom resolution. With ATI, I am stuck with default resolutions on my monitor's .INF file, or I can try to fiddle with Powerstrip.I'm currently running my 24-inch widescreen @ 1536x960: much easier on the eyes. Try to get this resolution with an ATI card.
Please ATI, give me this feature, and I will switch on my next upgrade.
leexgx - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
set your monitor to 1920x1080 (or what ever your default monitor settings are) use the DPI option to 125% or 150% (125% is more then enough for short sited people)BernardP - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
Wait until you get to be my age and start squinting at microscopic 1920x1200 icons and fonts ;-)Playing with DPI is only a partial fix and doesn't work with all apps, or works only partailly in some apps.
With Nvidia drivers, lower-than-native-resolution scaling is excellent and results are not blurry. No need to even enable Clear Type.
My point is that ATI doesn't offer this feature.