New Features
This section provides information on new features found in this
release of the Radeon
Display Driver. These include the following:
- OpenGL
3.1 extension support
OpenGL 3.1 extension support
This release of ATI Catalyst provides OpenGL 3.1 extension
support. The
following is a list of OpenGL 3.1 features and extensions
added in Catalyst 9.8:
- Support for
OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40
- Instanced
rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced)
- Data copying
between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer)
- Primitive restart
(NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server
state, unlike theì NV extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric
values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV
versions of those tokens
- At least 16
texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders
- Texture buffer
objects (GL ARB texture buffer object)
- Rectangular
textures (GL ARB texture rectangle)
- Uniform buffer
objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object)
- SNORM texture
component formats
Performance Improvements
The following performance gains are noticed with this release of
Catalyst 9.8:
- Battleforge
DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - performance
improves up to 15-50% in CPU limited settings with the largest gains in CrossfireX
configurations
- Company of
Heroes DirectX 10 - performance
improves by up to 10-77% in CPU limited settings
- Crysis DirectX
10 - Dual CrossfireX
performance improves as much as 10% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 34% in CPU
limited settings
- Crysis Warhead
DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX
performance improves as much as 7% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 69% in
CPU limited settings
- Far Cry 2
DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX
performance improves as much as 50% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 88% in CPU
limited settings
- Tom Clancy’s
H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - Dual
CrossfireX performance improves up to 40% in CPU limited settings with Quad CrossfireX
performance improving up to 60% in CPU limited settings
- UnigineTropics
OpenGL - performance improves
5-20%
- UnigineTropics
DirectX 10 - Quad CrossfireX
performance improves 5-20% in CPU limited settings
- World in
Conflict DirectX 10 -
performance improves by 5-10%
Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating Systems
This section provides information on resolved issues in this
release of the ATI Catalyst
Software Suite for Windows. These include:
- Catalyst Control
Center: Diagnostic warning message now appears in CrossFire aspect when the only display is removed from the CrossFire chain
- Catalyst Control
Centre will now launch properly with CrossFire disabled on multiadapter enabled/configured systems
- Catalyst Control
Center: Some of the missing "Monitor Attributes" options in the Displays tab are now available
- Refresh rates are
now applied properly for standard and optimized HDTV modes in Catalyst Control Center
- Catalyst Control
Center: Missing update for Windows 7 localized help content is nowì available
- TV Properties tab
now properly displays "Image Quality" instead of "TV Properties"
for Catalyst Control Center user interface
Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
This section provides information on resolved issues in this
release of the ATI Catalyst
Software Suite for Windows 7. These include:
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:
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:
- Catalyst Control
Center: Predefined and custom HDTV formats can now be applied
via HDTV support
- Intermittent
video artifacts no longer visible when playing a DVD in stretched
desktop mode
Known Issues Under All Windows Operating Systems
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may
be experienced under
the Windows operating system in the latest version of Catalyst.
These include:
- Launching Hotkeys
Manager in Catalyst Control Center may result in unhandled
exception error to appear
- The "Desktop
Rotation" page in Catalyst Control Center may display additional
information for the second display when the secondary adapter is
connected
- HDMI may be
detected as DTV (DVI) instead of DTV (HDMI) when HDMI display
is hotplugged for the first time
- Catalyst Control
Center might not revert back to default settings for "Dynamic
Range" after settings are modified
- In extended/cloned
mode, the secondary display status may appear incorrect in the
"Available Display Devices" page under Catalyst
Control Center Basic view
- Catalyst Control
Center: AVIVO Advanced Color page may display "Color
vibrance", "Flesh tone correction" and
"Video Gamma" in English instead of proper
translation string
- Catalyst Control
Center stopped working error may pop up when specific HDMI
displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back
Known Issues Under the Windows 7 Operating System
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may
be experienced under
the Windows 7 operating system in the latest version of Catalyst.
These include:
- With OverlayMixer
filter, Blu-ray disc playback with PowerDVD may display black
video with audio and counter still running
- Display may go
blank after resuming from hibernation during SD DVD playback in
Windows Media Center Edition (MCE)
ATI Catalyst Release Note Version 9.8 7
- In some HDTV
extended mode configurations, some audio breaks may intermittently
be heard when connected through HDMI audio
- SD DVD playback
may halt and display error message when DVI + S-VIDEO
displays are set to clone mode in Windows 7
- Enabling Screen
Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" may
cause the game to fail under MGPU configurations
Known Issues Under the Windows Vista Operating System
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may
be experienced under
the Windows Vista operating system in the latest version of
Catalyst. These include:
- With CrossFire
enabled, some DX10 games (Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., Lost Planet:
Colonies, etc.) might not have HDMI audio
- With some system
configurations a delay may be noticed when task switching
between the desktop and a game in progress
- Media playback
with WinDVD, Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center
may output static sound over HDMI when connected to Sony TVs
- Playback of
certain Picture-in-Picture titles may exhibit transparent overlay effects or
turn black in the secondary stream
- Corruption may be
visible in the "Change Outfit…" menu text in "The Sims 3"
- Catalyst Control
Center may show HDMI displays as DVI for both connecting via
HDMI port and to DVI port via HDMI-DVI dongle for specific ASICs
- Enabling Screen
Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" may
cause the game to fail under MGPU configurations
Known Issues Under the Windows XP Operating System
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may
be experienced under
the Windows XP operating system in the latest version of
Catalyst. These include:
- Resuming video
playback after S1 sleep may result in no HDMI audio, although
Display Manager in Catalyst Control Center reports display as
DTV (HDMI)
- Catalyst Control
Center: Hotplugging back a HDMI display might not restore its
original DTV (HDMI) Pixel Format setting, if a DVI display was
hotplugged and
unplugged during the interval to the same port
- Changes to AVIVO
Basic color settings might not be retained after Catalyst Control
Center is re-opened with specific ASICs
- AVIVO Basic color
setting changes might not be applied during HD DVD playback
on specific ASICs on XP Media Center Edition
ATI Catalyst 9.8 - Windows XP/MCE - 32bit 
