Release Note Comments

There is only really one section that we are interested in when looking through the release notes for the drivers. Below is the area explaining the performance increase that ATI are promising.

With this new release, ATI also have a bunch of fixes which are worth taking note of.

Performance:

• Further improvements in our Vertex Shader handling bring performance improvements to applications that use stencil shadow volumes. For example, the Battle of Proxycon and Troll's Lair tests gain 10-30% on RADEON™ X800 PRO.

• Calls of Duty framerates improve 5-10% when anti-aliasing is enabled on RADEON™ X800-series products.

• Aquamark performance is up slightly (2-3%) on RADEON™ X800-series products.

Features:

• This release introduces a new feature called Temporal Anti-Aliasing. OpenGL and Direct 3D applications will benefit from this feature when custom settings for Anti-Aliasing are used, and Temporal Anti-Aliasing is enabled. The feature provides higher Anti-Aliasing quality when an application frame rate is 60 frames per second or higher.

Stability:

• Setting the D3D option to Optimal Quality and configuring the game Freedom Fighters to 1280x1024 no longer results in display corruption being seen on the test resolution window. This issue occurred under Windows XP with an ALL-IN-WONDER™ 9200 installed

• The water that surrounds Death Island in the game Halo: Combat evolved is now seen as blue in colour. This issues was known to occur under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ 8500 installed

• Image rendering issues in the Truform room found in Serious Sam are no longer noticed when increasing the Truform level to maximum under the Advanced Rendering Option

• Flashing textures in the water are no longer noticed when running Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow under Windows XP with an ATI RADEON™ X800 XT installed

• Playing the game TOCA Race Driver under Windows XP no longer results in the shadows being missing under the car when the shadow quality is set to high

If you would like to read the full release notes, they can be found here at the ATI website.