ATI Catalyst 8.1 Is Available

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in News

January17th2008

Yesterday, ATI released Catalyst 8.1, a new driver package for its videocards, but unfortunately, there is no new driver for Linux or Mac available yet. The last Linux driver package was released on the 20th of December, while the one for Mac OS X seems to be really old, since there seems to be no driver package available for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard". Anyway, let's leave them aside and talk about the new Windows driver package now, shall we?
ATI Catalyst 8.1 is ready

The latest Catalyst software suite, released on the 16th of January, as I said, is labeled 8.1, and packs the following components:- Radeon™ display driver 8.451
- Multimedia Center™ 9.16 (Windows XP only)
- HydraVision™ (Windows XP only)
- HydraVision™ Basic Edition (Windows XP only)
- Remote Wonder 3.04 (Windows XP only)
- WDM Driver Install Bundle
- Southbridge/IXP Driver
- Catalyst™ Control Center Version 8.1The range of ATI products supported is wide, starting with the "ancient" Radeon 9500 series and going to the latest DirectX 10.1 cards, HD3850 and HD3870.

According to the official release notes, available here(be aware this link leads to a PDF file), "Catalyst 8.1 introduces MultiView™ support. This feature provides for hardware
accelerated OpenGL rendering across multiple graphics adapters. MultiView™ will provide hardware accelerated 3D rendering in a system containing multiple graphics cards on an extended desktop arrangement. This feature will allow for the rendering performance and additional frame buffer resources to be evenly shared with the second and third graphics adapters. This allows for a 3D application to have the same performance running on a secondary or third display device as if it were running on the primary display device."

If the above is not enough, then it would be nice for you to know that this last Catalyst release takes care of a bunch of issues with various games, such as Bioshock, FEAR, World in Conflict or Oblivion, so if you have problems with one of these, be sure to update your drivers as soon as possible! The release notes can be also viewed online here, while the driver package can be downloaded from this page.

Later edit: an interesting device is the new apricorn drivewire