The new drivers can be downloaded from this link, and they promise a wealth of improvements and extras, such as an OpenCL driver.
We're of the opinion that the performance increases are down to the quality of the default filtering on the new driver. As quoted from our review "We compared the performance of Catalyst 10.9 WHQL against 10.10 press on a Radeon HD 5850 and found that the new driver was up to 10 per cent faster in Just Cause 2 and AvP.
The primary reason for this is how the new control panel exposes optimisations. Pre-10.10 drivers switched off all texture-filtering optimisation with the control-panel setting in default mode. These optimisations are now effective with the 10.10's default 'quality' setting."
Introduction of AMD HD3D Technology
Blu-ray 3D support
o This release of AMD Catalyst™ provides support for Blu-ray 3D playback
o Requires Blu-ray 3D player software, 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses
o Supported on the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
Stereo 3D gaming support
o This release of AMD Catalyst™ provides support for Stereo 3D gaming via 3rd party Stereo 3D Conversion Software from Dynamic Digital Depth (DDD) and iZ3D
o Requires 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses
o Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
Introduction of AMD Catalyst™ Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology Edition
* There will now be two variants of the AMD Catalyst package available:
1. AMD Catalyst™ – includes the Direct3D, OpenGL, Display driver and AMD Catalyst Control Center components
2. AMD Catalyst™ Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology Edition Edition (same as ATI Catalyst, but includes the OpenCL driver) – Everything found in AMD Catalyst, plus the OpenCL driver
* Users can still grab all of the individual AMD Catalyst components as well (which will also include the OpenCL driver as well)
Video accleration for HD WMV video content
* This release of AMD Catalyst™ provides video acceleration support for WMV HD (Microsoft video codec) under Windows 7
* Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of products
Enhanced Dynamic Contrast video controls
* This release of AMD Catalyst™ enhances the Dynamic Contrast setting found in the Catalyst Control Center by adding support for histogram based detection
Performance Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 10.10 release include:
Metro 2033™
· Performance increases up to 7% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations
· Performance increases up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations
· Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series in DirectX 11 and 10 modes
· Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series in DirectX 11 and 10 modes
· Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series in DirectX 11and 10 modes
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.™ : Call of Pripyat Benchmark
· Performance increases up to 7% on single ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Unigine™ Heaven
· Performance increases up to 9% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
· Performance increases up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
World in Conflict™
· Performance increases up to 9% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
· Performance increases up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
Aliens vs. Predator™ DirectX 11 Benchmark
· Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire
· Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire
· Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
· Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
· Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series
Crysis Warhead®
· Performance increases up to 9% on Single ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products with anti-aliasing enabled
Far Cry™ 2
· Performance increases up to 7% on Single ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Highlights of the Linux AMD Catalyst™ 10.10 release include:
New Features
Support for new Linux operating systems
* This release of AMD Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
* openSUSE 11.3 support (production)
* Ubuntu 10.10 support (early look)
For more information on AMD Catalyst™ 10.10 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues and performance highlights in this release, please see the AMD Catalyst™ 10.10 release notes.
Also, for those that are interested, we’ve posted the AMD Catalyst 10.10a hotfix driver here.
Highlights include:
* Support for the new Morphological Anti-Aliasing feature
* Performance optimizations for systems with an AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 series of graphics products installed
o Aliens versus Predator performance enhancements
o Star Craft 2 performance enhancements
o OpenGL performance enhancements – gains can be seen in Prey, Quake Wars: Enemy Territories, and Heaven v2.1
