ATI to release 13 Catalysts this year

Written by Tim Smalley

December 8, 2005 | 19:53

Tags: #avivo #catalyst #control-panel #driver #dual-core #released

Companies: #ati

ATI has just posted its Catalyst 5.12 drivers on their homepage this evening. Normally, this would be ATI's final release of the year, but we are expecting one more release to come before the new year.

The Inquirer had the chance to speak to the father of the Catalyst driver this evening, and he said to expect some cool functionality for Avivo on the Radeon X1000-series video cards. This could include things like video transcoding and encoding at speeds up to five times faster than conventional encoders that use the CPU. ExtremeTech uncovered this a few weeks back.

Since then, German publication, CHIP has suggested that the Avivo functionality - including transcoding and encoding - will be known as XCode, after having the chance to test a beta version of the driver. However, Apple also has a technology known as XCode, so we wonder whether the two big boys will play in court over the naming rights. We suspect that ATI will use a different name, though.

Catalyst 5.12 brings several new features to the table. The most important one being peformance enhancements for dual core processors in CPU limited scenarios.

These improvements will be for all of ATI's video cards that have support for Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 API, meaning that consumers with Radeon 9700's or newer will recieve benefits if they are running a dual core CPU, from either Intel's Pentium D or AMD's Athlon 64 X2 product ranges. NVIDIA has had this functionality since the release of its Release 80 drivers at the start of October, so it is good to see that both red and green fans can benefit from using a dual core CPU.

The game fixes include the following items:
  • Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil: Playing the game under Windows XP MCE with CrossFire enabled no longer results in ghosting effect being noticed. Further details on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21187
  • EverQuest II: Playing the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon X1800 series, no longer results in the operating system failing to respond after approximately 5 minutes of game play. Further details on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-21189
  • Far Cry: Launching the game on systems using an ATI Xpress 200 series product and running the Windows XP operating system no longer results in the operating system failing to respond. Further details on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-20978
  • Quake4: Selecting the Ultra Quality option within the game no longer results in the game failing to load after the restart required by the game. Further details on this resolved issue can be found in topic number 737-20981
Interestingly, there appears to be no Control Panel version of Catalyst 5.12. Many users have neglected Catalyst Control Center because it is not as fast as the now legacy Control Panel. Do you still use the Control Panel version of the drivers? Let us know in our forums.

You can download the new Catalyst 5.12 drivers here.
Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

TOP STORIES

SUGGESTED FOR YOU