Anyone know what is the best driver out there at the moment? I've heard a few horror stories out there about the dirvers on this thing and I don't want to have one of my own.
In other words, you're probably gonna' have to start somewhere and compare.
For instance, the new 10.3 betas yielded me upwards of a 15% gain in performance in some games, but the ONE game they crashed for me consistently- NFS Shift - is something I play a lot...so I went back to the 10.2 official release. Those have been VERY stable for me since released.
If memory serves correct, 8.663 is a few versions back. (the 10.2 official is 8.702).
The hotfix, from what I recall, fixed a couple of specific issues. (AVP problems and a cursor issue) I didn't bother downloading since I didn't see any issues with the 10.2s to begin with).
Catalyst drivers are a bit confusing if you are coming from Nvidia; Catalyst versions appear to go by the year and month of release, but they contain driver upgrades with separate version numbers. Each new Catalyst version generally has a newer version of the driver.