News - AMD releases Catalyst 10.10 and 10.10a drivers - promises speed improvements

[HEXUS]

And a long list of features.

Read more.

[Guppy]

I usually just install the display driver, do I need all this extra stuff that's been added in this release? To put it another way does this extra stuff add anything useful that a gamer like me could use?

[TheWizard]

I usually just install the display driver, do I need all this extra stuff that's been added in this release? To put it another way does this extra stuff add anything useful that a gamer like me could use?

I think its mostly to do with the new 3d features of the 6800s as well as performance optimisation. From the link provided by the OP:

"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"

Theres also this part about BlueRay 3D support. Do have a read over the driver notes there might be more detailed info there. Hope that helps.

[kalniel]

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."

Can you explain this one some more?

Texture filtering optimisations are supposed to be enabled by default in 10.9 and previous drivers, even at quality preset. On my current 10.9 install I can check this by looking at the catalyst AI tab, which shows that it is not disabled. Or was this a bug in the control panel that's been fixed?

[Tarinder]

Here's the official line I got from AMD. I've added in a couple of comments in brackets [ ]

Note that with earlier drivers [than 10.10] all texture filtering optimizations on 5850/5870 cards defaulted to OFF even when Catalyst AI was enabled (so if you are comparing image quality between 5850 and 6850 it is important to use the same drivers so that the optimizations will be at the same level – with newer drivers 5850 and 5870 will default to the “Quality” filtering mode in the same way as 68xx cards do [on 10.10 by default]).

To enable any filtering optimizations on earlier drivers for 58xx cards you would need to set Catalyst AI to the maximum setting (we made this decision because we hadn’t given the users such fine-grained control as they now have in the newer drivers where they can disable optimizations independently of the application detection).

.
And after investigating why frame rates went up on the same card - HD 5850 - when changing from 10.9 to 10.10 press, I was informed:

Run 58xx on 10.9 with Catalyst AI set to maximum, versus 68xx on current driver with filter quality slider set to Quality [this is default on HD 6850]

Run 58xx on 10.9 with Catalyst AI set to standard, versus 68xx on current driver with texture filter slider set to “High Quality”

[kalniel]

Ah, so AI enabled (standard) wasn't applying TF optimisation. Wonder if that was also the case with the 4000 series?

[bear jesus]

I think i will wait untill my 6870's come before i install these.
*just likes pointing out he ordered 2 6870's*

On a more serious note i'm interested to see the morphological anti-aliasing and how well it does, even more so at a res of 5040x1050 as from what i have read it will be a better option to give better image quality without too much of a fps drop.

[TheWizard]

And I will have to wait quite a bit yet to install this new driver. Awaiting components to arrive for my new AMD rig so everything will be a fresh install.

[MadduckUK]

pinkish tint on greys, especially on this forum. will have a fiddle

[kalniel]

pinkish tint on greys, especially on this forum. will have a fiddle

Colour temp a little low - this forum is a great test as it goes pink very easily!

[MadduckUK]

must have different defaults from earlier drvers, as all the changes i make are through my monitor calibration and not CCC, anyway sorted now

[nishanthan]

I love amd drivers. it is better than Nvidia. Btw i will install it once i recive my 4850

[kalniel]

must have different defaults from earlier drvers, as all the changes i make are through my monitor calibration and not CCC, anyway sorted now

Made no difference for me *shrugs*

[shaffaaf27]

so does this new driver create extra FPS at the expense of IQ?