Driver Update: ATI Catalyst 10.3

AMD has new Catalyst drivers ready and as usual the month and year of release make up the version number. The drivers are available for Windows XP, Vista and 7, with separate downloads for 32bit and 64bit environments. The new drivers are suitable for all Radeon models from the HD 2400 series; older maps rely on the 9.3 release. As usual, at the bottom of this posting are the direct links to the pages with the available downloads.

AMD recently supplied the CrossFireX profiles no longer only with the driver, but also as loose download, so that updates can be offered more quickly. We also find new functionality for Eyefinity configurations, such as bezel compensation and support for 3D glasses. Finally, the 10.3 release also includes a host of performance improvements and, of course, the usual list of bug fixes, followed by a collection of issues that are already known, but are still being worked on:

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 or 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
    Note: Bezel compensation is available only for sets of monitors that have pixel resolution and density within a 5% tolerance of each other.
• 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

• 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
• STALKER – Call of Pripyat Benchmark
  • Improves up to 10% with Anti-Aliasing enabled on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
• STALKER – 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 HAWX
  • 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

Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating Systems

• Canvas area no longer appears black for third display while creating a 3×1 or 1×3 Eyefinity group
• Catalyst Control Center: Avivo Video controls will now retain its value instead of changing to ‘0’ upon being disabled
• Hotplugging a HDMI display while Catalyst Control Center is open no longer causes the HDTV Standard Modes box not to appear

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System

• Flashing no longer visible in “Shattered Horizon” game with CrossFire enabled
• Saturation value for a hotplugged digital display will no longer intermittently be set to ‘0’ by default
• Enabling detail enhancement no longer causes dynamic contrast to stop functioning
• Catalyst Control Center system tray now displays the proper number of physical adapters
• Force EDID override now displays options above 85 Hz
• Resolutions no longer missing in Catalyst Control Center Graphics Desktop Properties with CV connected and displays in extended mode
• Forced anti-alias now functions properly in “The Saboteur” game
• Refresh rate changes no longer revert back to 60 Hz (default) when “Enable GPU Scaling” is enabled under Digital Panel Properties attributes
• “Aliens vs. Predators” game now loads properly when run in DirectX 11 mode on DirectX 9/10 graphics cards
• Mouse cursor no longer disappears on cloned displays after swapping the displays in primary and extended cloned mode
• Displays no longer goes blank on some of the ports after display is hot-unplugged and then hotplugged back
• Media Center no longer displays corruption when viewing DVB-T content
• Forced AF now works properly in “Empire: Total War” and “Napoleon: Total War” games

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

• Sporadic frame drops no longer visible while viewing H.264 interlaced Blu-ray content during fast moving scenes
• Video playback no longer displays checkerboard pattern on background after resume from sleep
• Blank screen no longer observed while exiting “Heaven-OGL” or “GL View” applications
• Tint adjustments in Catalyst Control Center Basic Color now transitions smoothly when adjusted for Blu-ray playback
• Displays no longer go blank when CrossFire is disabled for the first time under specific configurations
• Laser designator beam now focuses on target properly in “Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2” during Act II: Exodus mission

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

• Switching resolution options in “AION” game settings no longer causes the display screen to flicker
• Forward and backward seeking while viewing Hulu video on dailymotion.com with FlashPlayer 10.1 no longer causes the browser to freeze
• Video cut scenes are now rendering properly in “The Saboteur” game
• Corruption no longer visible when performing forward/backward video seeking on Hulu with Adobe Flash Player
• Corruption no longer observed when viewing MPEG2 clips with Windows Media Player

Known Issues Under All Windows Operating Systems

• Loading time between maps in “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” may be long
• [Catalyst Control Center] Changing to deinterlace mode may default to adaptive deinterlace mode instead when playing videos
• Pressing the “Page Down” button while configuring the last display in Eyefinity group may cause the bezel user interface to close instead of switching to the next display
• Desktop mouse cursor may intermittently appear enlarged
• Utilizing hardware shaders (perfect mode) may cause text to become corrupted and unreadable while loading any mission in “IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946” game

Known Issues Under the Windows 7 Operating System

• Black video may appear on one monitor when switching to clone mode during Bluray playback on PowerDVD
• Green video may be visible in the beginning during AVCHD content playback with PowerDVD 9
• Alt-Tabbing to desktop and back into “Mass Effect 2” game may cause the display to go black
• Display may flash black when high settings of 19×12 are applied to in-game settings for “Dawn of War 2”
• Catalyst Control Center might not remember the position of fourth monitor in Eyefinity group
• Video corruption might be visible when watching live HD Jade Channel (Hong Kong) with Windows Media Center
• Changing in-game resolution in “Alien vs. Predator” may result in screen flickering under Multi-GPU configuration; relaunching game will resolve issue
• In-game anti-alias might fail to apply when other in-game options like Volumetric Effects are enabled in “Empire: Total War” and “Napoleon: Total War” games
• Flashing black block corruption may be visible in “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” on some ASICs
• Intermittent flickering and flashing textures may be visible in “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” on some ASICs
• In-game V-sync option might not function in “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” until resolution/refresh rate mode change

Known Issues Under the Windows Vista Operating System

• “1776×1000” and “1152 x 648” HDTV resolutions might be missing from the Desktop Area for Catalyst Control Center – Desktop Properties
• With one of displays connected via the DisplayPort, PowerDVD may terminate during Blu-ray content playback in Eyefinity mode
• Audio playback devices may list “ATI DP Output” instead of “ATI HDMI Output” when a HDMI display is connected
• Display may flash black when high settings of 19×12 are applied to in-game settings for “Dawn of War 2”
• Corruption may be visible during fullscreen playback with Flash Player 10.1 on some ASICs
• Changing in-game resolution in “Alien vs. Predator” may result in screen flickering under Multi-GPU configuration; relaunching game will resolve issue

Known Issues Under the Windows XP Operating System

• Corruption may be visible during fullscreen playback with Flash Player 10.1 on some ASICs
• 75 Hz refresh rate might fail to apply with GPU Scaling enabled in digital panel properties

The following downloads are available:
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows XP (32bit)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows XP (mobility)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows XP (64bit)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows XP (Media Center Edition)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows Vista (32bit)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows Vista (64bit)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows 7 (32bit)
ATi Catalyst 10.3 for Windows 7 (64bit)
ATi CrossFireX Application Profiles