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Catalyst 8.3: Better Hardware through Drivers
More Stuff Still...
Extended Desktop Support CrossFire now works with multi-monitor setups. Freaking finally. For the multitudes, too, since it's not HD 3000-specific; if you're rollin' X1800s or 1950s, it'll work across the board.  Anti-Aliasing Edge-detecting "Super Anti-Aliasing" now works for all games, including Unreal 3. Super AA goes all the way up to 42x, so you can really crank it up. I suspect this means you have to roll at like 640x480, but hey, 42xAA!  DirectX 10.1 Without any DX10.1 games, not having driver support hasn't really raised any alarms. But if you've got an HD 3000 card, from here on out, 10.1's active.  Display Scaling A minor tweak to GPU scaling--since GPUs can scale much cleaner than most monitors, most people would rather their video card take care of it. But actual scaling has been hit-or-miss with some monitors re-sizing the wrong aspect ratio to their borders, stretching things all weird. 8.3 scales the games inside a border, preventing the display from taking things into its own hands.  Custom Avivo Controls From here on out, noise reduction and edge enhancement can be manually set within CCC. This is good news for tweakers, and cements AMD with the growing HTPC crowd.  Conclusion Quad CrossFireX, Hybrid Graphics, and HydraVision are practical gains, real advances for AMD. Tessellation and Folding@Home are somewhat out of their hands, and fixes are welcome, but hardly applaudable. Milestone? Yeah, let's give 'em that much. The driver team deserves some bubbly. For the hardware guys, though, the pressure's not off. NVIDIA's 9000-series hardware is about as clear a threat as can be, and Intel's not making Phenom look any better. But for AMD supporters everywhere, this is your reward for spending your dollars, pounds, and euros. Excellent!
Page 1: Introduction & CrossFireX
Page 2: Hybrid Graphics & HydraVision Page 3: Tessellation & Folding@Home Page 4: More Stuff Still... And the Conclusion 
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Add Comment
3 User Comments 1 - Posted by
Jayb
on March 5, 2008 - 10:38 am Except that Nvidia's 9000-series is just the 8000-series with a little fine tuning. There are already cards out there that can be clocked to the speeds (purportedly) being offered on the 9800. The performance of these cards is not a mystery and they will certainly beat AMD's line-up, at least in a card for card match-up. AMD needs to get the 4000's out the door, and soon.
2 - Posted by
aireiq
on March 7, 2008 - 9:56 am > Every once in a while it even means new features, or rather, features delivered on promises made when the hardware was released, just now working right or even at all. "just now working right"? editor, editor, make me an edit. 3 - Posted by
Kurtis
on March 7, 2008 - 11:30 am /SLAP Snap out of it, man! Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
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