Now available for Windows Vista, Windows XP and Linux platforms
Amid the myriad of resolved issues, this new release of Catalyst provides support for Stanford Universities new beta Folding@Home GPU client, for the ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series graphics cards.
According to AMD; "the new Folding@Home beta GPU client delivers significant performance improvements in folding calculations, and enables users to fold far more complex proteins".
Folders therefore will be wanting to upgrade as soon as possible, but you should be aware that there are known issues. Don't expect multi-GPU CrossFire configurations to work, and "crashes can occur when running the new beta GPU Folding@Home client concurrently with 3D applications or playing back video content", says AMD.
For Linux users, Catalyst 8.4 introduces support for the Radeon HD 3800 Series (though, not the Radeon HD 3870 X2), Radeon HD 3600 Series, and the Radeon HD 3400 Series. In addition, you'll also find support for Ubuntu 8.04.
The resolved issue highlights, as detailed by AMD, are as follows:
- Unreal 3 engine based games(Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, Bioshock, Rainbow6 Las Vegas) Forced AA support under CrossFireX configurations: Users can now enable Anti-Aliasing in the Unreal 3.0 engine (DirectX 9 mode) games using the Catalyst Control Center in CrossFireX configurations.
- Company of Heroes: Setting the in-game options to maximum levels no longer results in the game exiting to the desktop after the game has completed loading.
- Crysis: Setting the Catalyst™ Control Center->Advanced View->3D->Standard Settings to Optimal Quality and having certain in game option settings no longer results in the game failing to render properly.
- Doom 3: Setting the in game options to Ultra Quality and the screen size to 1600x1200 no longer results in the image next to the text failing to be rendered.
- Hellgate: London: Flickering is no longer noticed when quitting and then relaunching the game when the in-game setting are set to their maximum levels.
- Lost Planet: Setting AA to either 4x or 8x no longer results in the game failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28492
- Tabula Rasa: Setting the graphics option to enable Deferred Lighting and Dynamic Shadows no longer results in corruption being displayed.
- Tomb Raider Anniversary: Performance improvements are now noticed when playing the game with CrossFire™ enabled.
Those of course only scratch the surface, for the complete list of resolved issues, refer to the official release notes.
Useful links
Download Catalyst 8.4
Catalyst 8.4 release notes (PDF)
