Changelog - New FeaturesCrossFireX™ (Quad) Support 3 or 4 GPUs in CrossFireX™ Mode
Users with any combination of a ATI Radeon™ HD 3870, ATI Radeon™ HD 3850, and ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 X2 graphics accelerators running with 3 or 4 GPUs will be able to run in CrossFireX™ Quad mode (when used in a CrossFireX™ compatible PC). CrossFireX™ Quad will deliver significant performance improvements in a number of applications.
Users can expect to see further DirectX 10 QUAD CrossFireX™ performance improvements in future Catalyst™ releases.
Hybrid™ Graphics delivers a significant 3D performance boost for systems featuring an AMD 780G integrated graphics motherboard and an ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 series graphics accelerator.
Users can simply disable Hybrid™ Graphics to run in power saving mode (the ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 series features PowerPlay™ technology, which reduces power usage during low GPU activity). This feature provides support for up to four independent displays.
This release of Catalyst™ introduces WHQL certified support for the DirectX 10.1 API found in Microsoft's Windows Vista Service Pack 1 update for all ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series products.
This release of Catalyst™ introduces anti-aliasing support for all Unreal Engine 3.0 based games (running in DirectX 9 mode). Users can enable Anti-Aliasing for titles such as Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 by simply enabling Anti-Aliasing within the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center.
This release of Catalyst™ allows users to enable narrow tent and wide tent Anti-Aliasing custom filters while running in the CrossFire™ Super Anti-Aliasing modes, (for DirectX9 applications) providing an improved image quality experience.
This release of Catalyst™ introduces HydraVision support for the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center under Windows Vista. HydraVision enables users to more efficiently organize multiple applications across single or multiple displays.
High-lights include:- HydraGrid - A new feature found in HydraVision that divides the Windows Vista desktop into user definable areas helping users to more easily move and organize multiple applications
- Hydravision Hotkeys - The ATI Catalyst™ Control Center Hotkey Manager can be used to quickly setup and define their HydraVision specific hotkey commands
- HydraVision Virtual desktops - Users can configure up to 9 virtual desktops, enabling users to manage and group multiple applications across user defined desktops. Application positions, desktop associations and display settings can be saved for every virtual desktop
- HydraVision Wizard - Using the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center Wizard, users can very quickly configure their HyrdaVision settings
This release of Catalyst™ introduces a new setting that allows users to enable GPU accelerated scaling for Wide aspect LCD displays. The new setting Maintain aspect ratio improves the display resolution image quality when scaling is enable by maintaining the wide panel aspect ratio (stops the image from looking distorted)
Catalyst™ Control Center: Advanced Video Quality Controls
This release of Catalyst™ introduces new advanced video quality controls which include:- Edge enhancement, which adjusts the level of sharpness of video content
- De-noise, which removes ghosting artifacts while preserving details of the original video
This release of Catalyst™ introduces Tessellation support in the Catalyst™ driver for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3800 Series of products. Tessellation has the potential to simplify development efforts and improve application performance by creating high polygon models from low polygon models all within the GPU.
The following performance improvements are noticed with Catalyst™ 8.3:- Call of Juarez: Up to 20% improvement is noticed on ATI CrossFireX™ configured systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD38x0 series of product
- Company of Heroes DX10: Up to 17% improvement is noticed, especially at lower resolutions, on ATI Radeon™ HD38x0 products
- Crysis DX10: Up to 15% improvement is noticed on all supported ATI Radeon™ products
- Lost Planet DX9: Up to 36% improvement is noticed across all supported ATI Radeon™ products and in ATI CrossFireX™ configured systems
- Shadermark 2.1: Performance scores increased up to 35% across all supported Radeon™ products and in ATI CrossFireX™ configured systems
- Unreal Tournament 2004: Up to 10% increase in performance is noticed on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD2400, HD2600, or HD3400 series of products on ATI CrossFireX™ configured systems
