ATI released the last Catalyst driver for 2009, version 9.12 for Windows XP 7 and Vista. Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.12 Windows release include:
Performance improvements
- 3DMark Vantage overall performance improves as much as 9% on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series. GT1 Jane Nash performance improves as much as 15% and FT4 GPU Cloth improves up to 15%
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat performance improves as much as 6% on single card configurations
New Features
- ATI Catalyst support for DirectCompute 10.1
This release of ATI Catalyst provides full support for DirectCompute 10.1 for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4700 Series for both single card and ATI CrossFireX supported configurations. - OpenGL 3.2 extension support - This release of ATI Catalyst provides support for OpenGL 3.2 extension support on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series. The following is a list of OpenGL 3.2 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.12:
Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.50.
BGRA vertex component ordering (GL_ARB_vertex_array_bgra).
Drawing commands allowing modification of the base vertex index (GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex).
Shader fragment coordinate convention control (GL_ARB_fragment_coord_conventions).
Provoking vertex control (GL_ARB_provoking_vertex).
Seamless cube map filtering (GL_ARB_seamless_cube_map).
Multisampled textures and texture samplers for specific sample locations (GL_ARB_texture_multisample).
Fragment depth clamping (GL_ARB_depth_clamp).
Geometry shaders (GL_ARB_geometry_shader4).
Fence sync objects (GL_ARB_sync).
Transform_feedback2
texture_cubemap_array
We have a discussion thread open on these drivers right here.
Have you read our Radeon HD 5870 review already ?