ATI Catalyst Driver Releases - Post new driver info here

Well 8.1 are out and there is an AGP & DirectX fix too if that is your problem?

Drivers:
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Fix:
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=31625

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html
8.2 are out as of yesterday.

Release notes:

Performance Improvements

Performance improvements with this release of Catalystâ„¢ includes Company of Heroes DX10 frame rates increasing as much as 20% across all of the ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 2x00 series of products and on all ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 3x00 series of products. These performance improvements are even larger (up to 30%) for CrossFireâ„¢ configurations.

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalystâ„¢ Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:

    * Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: Corruption is no longer noticed when editing levels. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32141
    * World of Warcraft: Flickering and missing objects are no longer noticed when playing the game in OpenGL mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32140
    * .NET Framework an Unhandled Exception error no longer occurs when upon booting or re-booting the system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32115
    * A white dot no longer appears on the windows desktop when launching the Catalyst Control Center. However, this issue may still be experienced under the Windows XP operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-31715
    * Audio stutter is no longer noticed when using the HDMI connector. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32118
    * Running the Spanish version of the Windows operating system no longer results in the Catalyst Control Center option failing to be available when right-clicking the Windows desktop menu bar. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32125
    * The Catalyst Control Center options are no longer missing for the secondary extended display when hot unplugging and hot plugging the display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32126
    * Native CrossFireâ„¢ can now be enabled when the primary display device is connected to the master card using a CV or TV. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32131
    * Enabling clone mode on a system containing an ATI Radeonâ„¢ X1200/1250/1270 series of product no longer results in the resolution and color depth changing to 640x480 8bpp. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32132
    * Playing DVD content using the Windows Media Player no longer results in the playback being choppy. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32136
    * Hot plugging and hot-unplugging an HDMI display device multiple times during one windows session may result in the display device failing to be detected. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32137
    * Enabling CrossFireâ„¢ on a system containing an ATI Radeonâ„¢ X1950 series of product no longer results in the Windows Vista operating system intermittently failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32138
    * The lower portion of the Catalyst Control Center is no longer cropped when changing the display resolution from 640x480 to 1920x1200. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32139
    * An error message is no longer displayed when attempting to set both the primary (HDMI) display device and secondary (DVI) display device to a display resolution of 1280x1024. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32142
    * The Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system no longer reboots when installing the T200 driver. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32143
    * Setting the DPI to 120 in the Display Properties no longer results in the combo box being cut-off. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32144
    * The antenna signal strength is no longer reported by Vista Media Center as low. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32145
    * A black line is no longer noticed when using VIVO for capturing and using Radeonâ„¢ HD 2900. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32146
    * The PAL-N video captured from the ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD2900 no longer displays colors and with vertical bars. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32147
    * The T200 NTSC capture card no longer fails to capture the Closed Captioning signal. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32148
    * A Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays option no longer appears when an HDMI display device is connected using an HDMI-DVI cable. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32149

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalystâ„¢ Software Suite for Windows XP. These include:

    * Doom3: Running an OpenGL application with CrossFireâ„¢ enabled and AA set to 16x no longer results in corruption being noticed when the display resolution is set to 2048x1536 or higher. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32150
    * TianXia2: Launching the game no longer results in the Windows XP operating system rebooting. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32152
    * Playing an H.264/VC1 title on a system with a display resolution higher than 1440x900 no longer results in the content failing to play in hardware mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32154
    * Changing the display resolution when CrossFireâ„¢ is enabled no longer results in the running 3D application failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-32155

And another one:

Code: [Select]

   * ATI Catalystâ„¢ 8.3 Highlights:CrossFireXâ„¢ (Quad) Support 3 or 4 GPUs in CrossFireXâ„¢ Mode
    * Hybrid Graphics Support
    * DirectX 10.1 Support
    * Anti-Aliasing Enhancements
    * ATI Catalystâ„¢ Control Center: HydraVision support for Windows Vista
    * Digital Panel GPU image scaling
    * Catalystâ„¢ Control Center: Advanced Video Quality Controls
    * ATI Catalystâ„¢ driver: Tessellation support

    * Performance ImprovementsCall of Juarez: Up to 20% improvement is noticed on ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ configured systems containing an ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD38x0 series of product
    * Company of Heroes DX10: Up to 17% improvement is noticed, especially at lower resolutions, on ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD38x0 products
    * Crysis DX10: Up to 15% improvement is noticed on all supported ATI Radeonâ„¢ products
    * Lost Planet DX9: Up to 36% improvement is noticed across all supported ATI Radeonâ„¢ products and in ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ configured systems
    * Shadermark 2.1: Performance scores increased up to 35% across all supported Radeonâ„¢ products and in ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ configured systems
    * Unreal Tournament 2004: Up to 10% increase in performance is noticed on systems containing an ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD2400, HD2600, or HD3400 series of products on in ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ configured systems


8.4 are out.

hopefully they fix the performance in shitsta. my framerates in TF2 are more than halved since switching from xp.

oh yeah cats 8.5 came out on wed.

i didnt bench or anything but the performance of tf2 seems to be getting back to XP levels.  plus there were patches for tf2 to improve multicore support.

8.6 are out: Download | Release Notes.

Is it necessary to keep up with the drivers if one has an old card, X1950pro in my case? I'm still using 8.1 or something in that area, uninstalling and installing is getting tiresome.

As long as the card supported by the drivers, I don't see why not. Sure you may not gain the performance boost that other higher model cards (2xxx+) get, but you still get the fixes for games and applications. Update won't hurt.
And you don't have to uninstall the previous video drivers to upgrade to the new ones. Since a year a so (whenever they started to use .NET), upgrades applied to the drivers even without restart.

I usually boot to safe mode, clean drivers and such. I thought a clean install was always necessary/best. Isn't that needed anymore?

I myself use drivercleaner and then boot to safe mode for "canceling" the automatic driver install and then install the new drivers in normal mode too, but you don't actually have to do that. That just for people that are sick in the mind. Nowadays, you can do without it just fine.

8.7 are out.
Release notes: http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/pdf/Catalyst_87.pdf

8.8 are out.

8.9 out.

8.10 just out, ya'all know where to find them