Following a preview release this time last week, AMD has today officially made available its ATI Catalyst 10.3 drivers.
We've already taken the opportunity to explore the performance of the latest release, and we've found Catalyst 10.3 is able to provide significant improvements across a number of games. Arriving just a day prior to the launch of NVIDIA's Fermi, AMD's timing couldn't be better.
In addition to generous performance gains across 18 popular titles, the release also introduces a number of key new features - including ATI Catalyst Mobility, a wave of ATI Eyefinity enhancements and added support for stereoscopic 3D.
The Catalyst 10.3 drivers, as always, are available to download from game.amd.com, and the accompanying release notes can be found here in PDF format. Just want to know what you have to gain? We've added the pertinent details below.
New Features
ATI Catalyst support for ATI Mobility Radeon Premium Graphics solutions
- This release of ATI Catalyst introduces support for the production version of Windows 7 and Windows Vista for notebooks featuring the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2000 Series, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Series, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series of products
- Supported by most major OEM and ODM notebook manufacturers
ATI Catalyst Control Center - ATI Eyefinity technology enhancements
- Multiple ATI Eyefinity Groups
- Create more than one ATI Eyefinity group from multiple displays
- Display Bezel Compensation
- Easy-to-use wizard shows users how to adjust their display layout to remove the pixels occupied by their display bezels
- Per-Display Color Adjust
- Individual Color, Brightness and Contrast controls
- Improved Display Configuration switching
- Support for ATI Eyefinity groups and the ATI Catalyst Control Center profile manager
- Easy to toggle between cloned and extended desktop modes
ATI Catalyst support for 3D Stereoscopic glasses
- AMD has updated it’s Direct3D (Quad buffer support) driver to enable 3rd party middleware vendors such as iZ3D to output stereo L/R images at 120 Hz (60 Hz per eye)
Performance Improvements
The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst 10.3:
- 3DMark Vantage
- Overall scores increase by up to 8% with ATI Radeon HD 5000 graphics products
- Overall scores increase by up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Aliens vs. Predator
- Overall performance increases 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Battleforge
- Improves up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Call of Duty: World at War
- Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
- Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Company of Heroes
- Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Crysis and Crysis Warhead
- Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Devil May Cry 4
- Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- DiRT 2
- Improves up to 30% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
- Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
- Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
- Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Far Cry 2
- Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Call of Pripyat Benchmark
- Improves up to 10% with Anti-Aliasing enabled on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky
- Improves up to 2% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
- Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
- Resident Evil 5
- Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
- Improves up to 15% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
- Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Unigine Tropics
- Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- World in Conflict
- Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
- Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
- Wolfenstein
- Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
- Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
