Catalyst 5.6 Released

What happened to the supposed performance increases? Admittedly, I have only seen 2 (somewhat rushed, IMO) articles on the subject, and both articles only benched a 256MB x800xl. If the perf improvements rest largely on memory management, then I would think 128MB cards would stand to gain more (might give my 9500 a bit more oomph when playing nfsu)?
The feature additions are nice, and I'm especially looking forward to getting the better hdtv support. It's a bloody mess trying to get happy with my htpc output via RGB.
 
Sweet! I heard these were suppose to give a nice improvement in DOOM 3. Been waiting for these.
 
WMV9 Acceleration
This release of Catalyst™ introduces full hardware acceleration of Microsoft Windows Media Video (WMV) files when using DirectX 9 shaders. Hardware acceleration significantly reduces dropped frames and can reduce CPU usage up to 50%.

Performance Improvements
As with most Catalyst™ releases, performance has increased in various situations. The following performance gains are noticed with Catalyst™ Software Suite 5.6.

Doom3: A performance gain of up to 7% is noticed at lower resolutions as a result of more efficient memory use
Chronicles of Riddick: A performance gain of up to 10% is noticed as a result of more efficient storage of vertex data
Halo: A performance gain of up to 20% is noticed as a result of generic driver Z-optimizations
3DMark05: A performance gain of up to 5% is noticed as a result of generic driver Z-optimizations

Ok, now time to test it to see if it is really true... Did not specify which cards got the performance increase, but I'm assuming DX9 cards.
 
Nice....helps bragging rights, for free. But let's be honest, we spend most of our time gaming, so I would rather see that kind of improvement from games.
 
Did they stop releasing the vanilla version? The Catalyst Control Center version never worked for me.
 
Flo said:
Did they stop releasing the vanilla version? The Catalyst Control Center version never worked for me.
Click to expand...

Non-CCC version here.

Performance gains not quite what it was hyped up to be so far though.
 
Thanks for the link. They used to have it right on the front page and the rest of their site doesn't work too well in Opera. Tons of session timeouts etc.
 
calibos said:
Looks like they do!!
Dell XPS4
3.4 650
1gig PC4300
X850XTPE

everything at stock

Old '05 score was 5862 with the 5.4/5.5's

New score is 6242!! with the 5.6's

I thought I was going to have to do some OC'ing to see 6000+

Woohoo!

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=917560
Click to expand...

I think your 5.5 score is very low. Stock PE's were getting 6000+ on 5.5. I've mostly seen them in the 6000-6100 range though.
 
didnt notice much in the way of performance gains, I dont do the 3dmark thing....in-game stuff seems about the same, but they are stable =)
 
|0b0 said:
didnt notice much in the way of performance gains, I dont do the 3dmark thing....in-game stuff seems about the same, but they are stable =)
Click to expand...
What card are you using? Your sig has 6800 in it. I'm still wondering about my 128MB vs 256MB theory.
 
so anyone tested this driver yet? i'm at work right now and wont be able to install it till i get home :(
 
For the nay-sayers of CCC, this update speaks the truth about the speed of it. It is less of a memory hog and more of a speed demon with some nice new features. For people who are wary over it due to some negative feedback I suggest you try this version. All in all, this is a very good driver release (compared to 5.2/3/4/5).
 
so yeah.....downloaded them.....heres what happened 3 seconds into ati tool :p

odd.jpg
 
i posted this in the actual ATI forum since thats where it should be but whatever......3 seconds into useing ATI tool with new drivers on my 9600 pro

odd.jpg



soulsaver_8229
 
soulsaver_8229 said:
so yeah.....downloaded them.....heres what happened 3 seconds into ati tool :p
Click to expand...
What were your o/c's like before?
 
they have been that way since ive owned the card, its only 14/15 over clocked......and never had a problem with ati tool as of yet with it

just ran it again tho and went through 2 mins with no artifacts so i gave up.......guess its ok now /shrug/ :confused:

soulsaver_8229
 
seems fine atm, dunno what i did............and im i the only one whos getting hella pissed at how slow Ati's site is? and [H] or is it just me? :mad:


soulsaver_8229
 
Hey homiez,

This 5.6 is really kicked ass. I get around 300+ more in 3DMark2005. I'ma test it for games tomorrow's morning.
 
jebo_4jc said:
I see. I must not have read that part of the Rules for Posting Here.

The other thread came first, and this is no sticky.
Click to expand...

You can drop the tude. This is the ATi forum, and were the drivers will be stickied. Just like always before.
 
error after error after error. This is not Win x64 compliant.

Well I retract my previous statement. The driver at guru3d doesn't work. The download at ATi works properly.

as for x86 I wasn't thinking properly. x86 is my 32 bit program folder.
 
Kewl!!! I'll DL these when I gets home and post back with a comment on performance. It's BloodyMary night and I got drivers to change!!
 
since this is about video cards and such......i read up on Smartshader......should i be useing that or no? i just play Halo thats about it :p and which Smartshader profile should i use if so?



soulsaver_8229
 
Anandtech was not too impressed with the Catalyst 5.6 drivers:

"We just feel that if a performance gain isn't going to show under most conditions (not the least of which is heavy load) than it doesn't have a very large impact on user experience. "

"It goes without saying that we are disappointed in the performance of Catalyst 5.6."

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2441

I am going to hold off for now.
My catalyst 5.1 work fine.
 
I did notice some minor fps boost on Doom3 and CoD so not bad i guess. But for some reasons, AtiTool detects the driver as 5.4+ on my x800xl. Weird.
 
well, i got cli.exe error after installing this driver.. anyone know how to fix this?
 
Betauser said:
well, i got cli.exe error after installing this driver.. anyone know how to fix this?
Click to expand...

Are you running the Dot Net 2.0 Beta. If so that is your problem. This CAT C3 does not like Dot Net 2.0 beta. Uninstall it and install .Net1.1.

That should fix your problem.

Also when you upgraded I assume you uninstalled the old drivers and C3.
 
AACDIRECT said:
Are you running the Dot Net 2.0 Beta. If so that is your problem. This CAT C3 does not like Dot Net 2.0 beta. Uninstall it and install .Net1.1.

That should fix your problem.

Also when you upgraded I assume you uninstalled the old drivers and C3.
Click to expand...


what is C3? and i dont even know if i have Dot net 2.0 installed to my computer.. i'm installing the 1.1 now.. but what is C3?
 
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