ATI Catalyst 9.5 Driver – Everything you want to know
May 19, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Do you regularly update your graphics drivers?
With 2 months of ATI CatalystTM driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a steady engagement from you guys in the community via this blog site. Please keep up the comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can. So, without further ado – let me introduce ATI Catalyst 9.5!
Please report all driver related issues here.
*If you are having technical issues with your graphics card or are in need of driver support, please use the proper channels to submit those issues here.*
Marketing sound bite: ATI CatalystTM 9.5 – Unified Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista®
WHQL is the word of the month for this blog; AMD was the first to introduce a fully certified single unified WHQL approved graphics driver for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista®. By meeting Microsoft’s WHQL certification requirements in ATI CatalystTM 9.5 driver for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista, we clearly showcase our continued focus on delivering an extremely stable and robust Win 7 experience. First to market is important, but best to market first is how we roll at AMD in terms of graphics driver support for new operating systems. AMD led the market with early support for Vista and now continues that graphics driver leadership with the launch of Catalyst 9.5.
All ATI RadeonTM GPU users with an ATI Radeon HD 4000, 3000 and 2000 series product will enjoy WHQL certified support under Win 7 with ATI Catalyst 9.5.
Marketing sound bite: ATI Stream update:
<Insert Drum roll here please>
The comments section of my blog has been filled for 2 months with questions on when we were going to deliver 64-bit support for ATI AVIVOTM technology under Windows Vista, today is the day!
With today’s release of ATI Catalyst 9.5 a number of issues that you may have previously experienced using the ATI Video Converter have been resolved! Also, ATI AVIVO technology is now supported under Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit.
Using ATI Stream technology, users of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of new optimizations in this video conversion tool (found in ATI CatalystTM Control Center Basic View) for a better experience when transcoding video files.
Game Optimizations: ATI CatalystTM 9.5
One of the items I want to cover each month is optimizations in games and highlighting those for you in this blog; now, I want to be honest and upfront, I intend to highlight the top games and/or optimizations but not all of them! All of the details and minutia are listed in the release notes of each ATI Catalyst Driver and that can be viewed here.
For this month the highlights are:
- Unigine Tropics DirectX® 9 – enables performance gains for single GPU and ATI CrossFireXTM configurations with anti-aliasing enabled.
- Company of Heroes - enables performance gains for both single GPU and ATI CrossFireXTM configurations.
- BattleForge- enables performance gains for ATI CrossFireXTM configurations.
And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI CatalystTM 9.5
No new features this month but a host of fixes included in this month’s release.
Source: AMD Blog
Sphere: Related ContentFaster Graphics For Lower Prices: ATI Radeon HD 4770
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
First things first: the Radeon HD 4770 is faster than existing 4800 series hardware (namely the 4830). Yes, this is by design.
We hate to start another article complaining about naming (there seems to be some sort of pervasive renaissance of poor naming this year), but let’s talk about why exactly we are in this situation with a look back at something from our RV670 coverage:
At least it’s ironic.
Yes, the problem is born out of AMD’s attempt at sensible, appropriate naming. The problem is that AMD seems to want to associate that “family” number with the physical GPU than with the a performance class. This is despite the fact that they generally use increasing numbers for “families” that are generally faster. Thus, the 40nm RV740 needs a new family name, and they can’t really choose 49xx presumably (by us) because people would be more upset if they saw a high number and got lower performance than if they saw a lower number and got higher performance. So Radeon HD 4770 it is.
When we brought up our issues with the naming scheme, AMD was quick to respond that naming is one of the most contentious things that go on in bringing a graphics card to market. People get passionate about the issue. Passion is great, but not if it confuses, misleads, or distracts the end user. And that’s what a decision like this does. There is no practical reason that this card shouldn’t be named 4840 to reflect where it’s performance falls. After all, the recently released 4890 is host to quite a few tweaks to the physical layout of the chip and it isn’t called the 4970.
At the same time, that trailing zero is doing nothing on all AMD hardware. There is an extra number in there that could allow AMD to shift some things around in their naming scheme to retain all the information they want to reflect about architecture generation, processes revision, performance class and specific performance within that class. If we are going to have a model number system, in order to have real value to both the informed and casual graphics card user it needs to be built to properly represent the underlying hardware AND be strictly related to performance. With this move, AMD joins NVIDIA in taking too many liberties with naming to the detriment of the end user.
Now that that’s taken care of, what we have today is a 40nm GPU (the first) paired with 512MB of RAM on a $110 card. The package delivers performance at a level between the 4830 and the 4850. First indications were that this would be a $99 part and the performance we see with this card at the “magic” price would be terrific. It’s still not bad at a 10% higher price. AMD had indicated that there should be some $10 mail in rebates available for those who are interested in the extra bonus hassle and upfront cost to get the cash.
ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB Video Card Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
AMD is launching the World’s first 40nm graphics card today with the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4770. With such a small die size, it means that AMD can fit more dies per wafer and reduce costs. AMD expects that the Radeon HD 4770 should sell for $109 with an available rebate of $10, which brings the final price into the uber sexy sub-$100 category. Usually the sub-$100 category means crappy performance, but with a core clock of 750MHz and 512MB of GDDR5 memory you might want to think twice about that.
The ATI Radeon HD 4770 is marketed as being the fastest graphics card available for under $100 after mail-in-rebate that is still able to play current game titles at decent resolutions. This is made possible since the dual-slot card runs a core clock speed of 750MHz and 800MHz on the 512MB of GDDR5 memory. This is enough horse power to produce a compute power of 960 GFLOPs with a memory bandwidth of 51.2GB/s.
The Radeon HD 4770 has a total of 640 stream processors, which is double the number that a Radeon HD 4670 has, but is still fewer than the 800 stream processors on the Radeon HD 4800 series of cards. The Radeon HD 4770 has 20% fewer stream processors than the Radeon HD 4850, which will hurt the shader power of the card. Some of that performance loss is gained back by a higher core clock speed and GDDR5 memory, but it will be slower than a Radeon HD 4800 series graphics card. The specifications for the Radeon HD 4770 are very impressive though, and it has twice the compute performance of the Radeon HD 4670 in a card that costs roughly $100.
AMD is targeting the Radeon HD 4770 512MB against the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB as you can see from the ATI slide shown above. In terms of general technology, the ATI Radeon HD 4770 is superior, but as we all know what looks good on paper might not work to well in the real world, so let’s take a closer look at this new graphics card and then hit the benchmarks. It’s not every day you see the GPU manufacturing process (40nm) pass up desktop processors (45nm), so this should prove to be interesting.
ATI Radeon HD 4770 review: The $100 Killer GPU?
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Hot on the heels of last month’s Radeon HD 4890 release which set a new performance record for ATI as their fastest single GPU yet, the company has another new graphics card for us today, this time targeting the sub-$100 market.
The new Radeon HD 4770 is the world’s first 40nm graphics processing unit, and although it’s not designed to set any speed records like the flagship 4890, the 4770 aims to deliver the best possible value in a neat cost-effective package.
It has become common practice for both ATI and Nvidia to make their initial migration to a new design process using a mid-range or even low-end GPU, allowing time for refinement before they push it to high-performance parts. That said, the Radeon HD 4770 is far from a simple affair as the GPU has a transistor count of 826 million, or just 14% less than the Radeon HD 4890, ATI’s most complex GPU yet.
New Revolution: ATI Radeon HD 4770 Graphics Card Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Everyone remembers the revolution made by Radeon HD 4850 that has set a new performance bar for mainstream graphics accelerator. Today AMD officially launches a new revolutionary, this time from the Budget segment.
So, Radeon HD 4770 announced today, on April 27, 2009, became this new solution. ATI often testdrives some technological innovations on inexpensive graphics solutions first and Radeon HD 4770 is no exception: it is based on RV740 – the world’s first graphics processor manufactured with 40nm process. It is also the first budget graphics adapter equipped with GDDR5 memory. The new solution promises to be pretty exciting from all standpoints that is why our today’s review will try to reveal if the new Radeon HD 4770 can really perform a revolution in the budget gaming segment. But at first let’s check out the technical details.
ATI Radeon HD 4770 40nm GPU, $99 Graphics Return
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
AMD is launching yet another new ATI Radeon graphics card today. And in light of the current worldwide economic conditions, along with the performance and power consumption data we’ll be presenting you on the proceeding pages, we suspect it’s going to be a welcomed addition to the company’s already potent graphics card line-up.
You see, the brand new Radeon HD 4770 is AMD’s first mainstream desktop GPU manufactured using a 40nm process, and as such, it is more economical for the company to produce (with a smaller die size) and it consumes little power relative to the current crop of products manufactured at 55nm. The Radeon HD 4770’s main features don’t stray far from the other members of the Radeon HD 4000 family, but its specifications are somewhat different due to the use of a new GPU, which was formerly codenamed RV740.
Now then, what if we told you this new lower power GPU also drops in at a miserly $99 price point? Are the days of the reasonably powerful $99 graphics card back, you ask? We’ll answer that question for you in the pages ahead but in the mean time, the Radeon HD 4770’s main features and benefits are listed below for those of you who like to see all of the gritty details. We’ll discuss the card itself and its overall performance a little later. Take a look…
ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The HD 4770 is the poster boy for the changing face of ATI. They have forgone the push for a power-hungry monolithic architecture and have instead focused their energies on scalable, more compact GPU cores which can be used for multiple cards in various price ranges. This was first accomplished with the 55nm HD 4800-series and later perfected with the lower end HD 4600 series and more recently the HD 4890 1GB. As technology has progressed, so too has ATI’s shift towards a more price and efficiency-conscious manufacturing processes. While Nvidia has had some serious issues moving from 65nm to 55nm, with the HD 4770 ATI has now gone directly to the use of 40nm chips. What this means for power consumption has yet to be seen but what we can tell you is that a smaller manufacturing process could conceivably allow ATI more pricing flexibility in the long run due to lower production costs. That should translate into a better pricing structure.
We don’t usually post non-technical PR slides but we feel like the one above is quite telling. Nvidia has been spinning their wheels for some time now with the same G92 core and until recently, their 9800 GT had very little competition. The HD 4830 changed this somewhat but it was not able to best Nvidia’s renamed card in the majority of benchmarks. As such, Nvidia has been getting away with a ~$115 USD price on their mid-range card while the HD 4830 goes for under $100. The HD 4770 with its GDDR5 memory should change that pricing scheme quite a bit since it should outperform the 9800 GT by a relatively wide margin. What this means for the HD 4830 is anyone’s guess but like we always say: competition is a great thing.
If we take back and look at the last few months, ATI seems to have really hit their stride and from the 40nm manufacturing process to the GDDR5, the HD 4770 definitely looks promising. But can it deliver?
ATI Has No Immediate Plans for New Dual-Chip Flagship Graphics Card
April 6, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
ATI, graphics products group of Advanced Micro Devices, has no immediate plans to release a new dual-chip flagship graphics card based on the recently launched ATI Radeon HD 4890 (RV790) graphics processing units (GPUs) to address the market of performance-hungry customers as there are graphics cards that could satisfy their needs in the company’s product family.
In the recent years ATI decided to concentrate on development of very competitive performance-mainstream graphics chips that would be not very expensive in manufacturing, but which could still offer leading-edge performance when working in tandem. As a result, both previous-gen performance mainstream ATI Radeon processors – models 3870 (RV670) and 4870 (RV770) – powered dual-chip “X2” graphics cards. However, the company does not want to release ATI Radeon HD 4890 X2 now since the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is still competitive and price-points of the single-chip HD 4890 boards will not allow the company to sell HD 4890 X2 at price-point beyond $500.
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB graphics cards have recommended price between $229 and $249 in the USA. Two of such graphics cards would cost around $500, whereas for AMD it would make sense to introduce a flagship board at $549 price-point so to differ substantially from ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 that has recommended price-tag of $399.
“The single-GPU ATI Radeon HD 4890 makes sense because it fills an important price band within the market and a gap within our product line. With respect to an X2 variant, as you know, the ATI Radeon X2 products are specifically designed for the ultra-enthusiast. We continue to sell well into this small, but important part of the graphics market with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 as well as CrossFireX configurations of our single-GPU performance products and feel an additional product addressing the ultra high-end is not warranted at this time,” explained David Cummings, director of product marketing of discrete desktop graphics at AMD’s graphics products group, AMD.
There is no surprise that the price-war between ATI and Nvidia Corp. in the mainstream and performance-mainstream product segments popularized multi-GPU configurations consisting of two now-inexpensive graphics cards and slightly decreased popularity of dual-chip flagship offerings.
Since ATI RV790 graphics processor is not pin-to-pin compatible with ATI RV770, add-in-card manufacturers will not be able to just install new chips onto print circuit boards of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards. Moreover, Simon Vivera, another spokesperson for AMD’s graphics products group, said that the company for now forbids its partners to create Radeon HD 4890 X2 graphics cards.
Source: xbitlabs
Sphere: Related ContentWindows 7 series: NVIDIA and AMD Graphics and Gaming Performance
March 24, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Though officially in beta, Windows 7 is probably the most talked about subject in the world of PC technology today. Released to the public on January 7th, 2009, Windows 7 has quickly found its way onto many computers including netbooks, laptops, virtual machines and even gaming and enthusiast PCs. Users that were once distrusting of Vista and even Mac-lovers have spent the last few months complementing Microsoft of their latest operating system and for good reason: it slick, fast, visually appealing and runs on all ranges of hardware quite nicely. Here in my office I have installed it on an Eee PC, a separate hard drive in my main system, my MacBook Pro (gasp!), the NVIDIA ION platform and a couple of benchmarking and testing rigs as well.
This article will be the first in a series of performance and feature reviews on Windows 7 that will be updated and added to up through the final retail release of the Windows 7 operating system; whenever that might be. As the title obviously suggests, today we are going to be looking at GPU and gaming performance on Windows 7 in comparison to Windows Vista. There are two primary goals with this article: first we would like to see how, in general, performance on this beta version of Windows 7 compares to the performance of gaming on a more mature Vista operating system with Service Pack 1. Secondly, we would like to compare how both NVIDIA and AMD are doing in terms of driver optimizations and performance for Windows 7 compared to each company’s support on Windows Vista.
ATI Catalyst 9.3 Driver: Performance Express-Test
March 20, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
ATI Catalyst drivers development follows a very precise schedule. The number after the point in the driver index stands for the release month. Since February is over and March has already passed its middle, the time has come for the new ATI Catalyst driver version 9.3 to be released. So, what do the ATI Catalyst driver developers can tell us about the new version?
According to the release notes, Catalyst 9.3 doesn’t promise any performance breakthroughs in any of the contemporary games, except Lost Planet: Colonies shooter, where we should see up to 20% performance improvement for Radeon HD 4800 cards and up to 50% improvement for less powerful solutions, such as Radeon HD 4600, 4500 and 4300. They also mentioned that performance may increase in a few other cases when it is limited by the CPU. They also haven’t forgotten about Folding@Home distributed computing project fans: the performance in GPGPU mode is also supposed to be increased.
