News

AMD has just released the 10.10c hotfix to their drivers! Normally AMD releases these hot fixes due to missing something in the main drivers. But it would seem that AMD has released this hotfix with the new Open GL 4.1 beta as well..........Hmm, post in the forums if you give this a try, and let everyone know if you get performance boosts or not.

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AMD Catalyst 10.10c Hotfix Features:

* OpenGL 4.1 beta support
* Support for the new Morphological Anti-Aliasing feature
* Dead Rising 2 – Crossfire profile (Resolves negative scaling)
* Crossfire Performance Improvement for:
o Metro 2033
o F1 2011 - (Direct X9 version)
o Fallout New Vegas
* Performance optimizations for systems with an AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 series of graphics products installed
o Aliens versus Predator performance enhancements
o Star Craft 2 performance enhancements
o OpenGL performance enhancements – gains can be seen in Prey, Quake Wars: Enemy Territories, and Heaven v2

Jump on over to the official Catalyst 10.10c hotfix page to read more and download the new drivers.

The Linux Foundation is going on a rant and complaining about Nvidia's binary only drivers. Nvidia is the only large graphics company to not attempt to open up their specifications on the hardware. Intel, VIA, and even AMD have opened up their hardware. Linux is the future and if Nvidia continues this trend, AMD is in a good position to clean up. I have in my hands a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 that works well in Linux and was just released.

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"We...consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable," the official statement begins. "Vendors that provide closed-source kernel modules force their customers to give up key Linux advantages or choose new vendors." But Bottomley gets much more specific than this. "Their (Nvidia's) binary module is one of the top causes of kernel crashes, which makes Linux look bad," he said. "Nvidia does a reasonable job of Q-and-A-ing (quality assurance) of a certain number of configurations but the problem is that their configurations (are) a lot less than what's actually out there on the market," Bottomley said.

That being said, AMD's fully open source driver team at Novell still as a ways to go before being on par with the FireGL binary driver. Even so, AMD is providing more and more feature with FireGL including Crossfire support (finally!).

I'm glad ATI is addressing this issue. I know that this has been an issue for many of us. This will definitely increase the hardware choices for Linux users.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201804673

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"AMD said it had been working with various open source groups to enhance the compatibility for its ATI Radeon graphics chips for consumer Linux users. The releases, which are planned for early September, would also include subsequent versions of ATI's Catalyst developer software package."

Most of us know that driver quality is a large problem in regards to PC stability. Vista will include feedback to allow a steady flow of money to help with its logo program. Most people don't understand that a WHQL logo costs money paid to Microsoft.

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The DQR system relies on scores to indicate a driver's quality level, and it derives those scores from user-submitted crash reports. Microsoft's Online Crash Analysis Team will analyze crash reports to determine the ratio of crashing systems to non-crashing systems. Drivers that rarely cause crashes will be rated "Green," while moderately problematic drivers will be rated "Yellow." The horrid stuff gets a big, fat "Red" rating. (Microsoft has not revealed the exact methodology for determining these scores, only that "Green" maps to 7-9 points, "Yellow" 4-6, and "Red" 1-3.) Furthermore, to achieve a "Green" status, a driver must have been released and in use for at least 120 days (starting on June 1, 2007), and must maintain its stability throughout time. Driver manufacturers (or OEMs) must rectify any problem that causes a driver's rating to fall to "Yellow" or "Red" within 90 days, or suffer the consequences. For drivers of this sort, updates must be made available through Windows Update, as well.

nVidia has released a new set of Win2K/XP forceware drivers for the nForce chipset series. And this set includes a new version of the often cursed at SW IDE drivers. Let's hope they got those CD burner and hard drive issues cleared up. A list of the fixes and improvements.

- WHQL certified kit for nForce, nForce2, and nForce3
- First release of NVIDIA IDE driver for Windows XP and Windows 2000

General compatibility fixes
Audio Improvements:
- Realtek ALC655 codec support added
- Fix for BSOD on loading DLS files
- Reduced susceptibility to audio glitches under heavy system load; additional fixes for 6 channel GetPosition glitches
- ASIO support for recording at sample rates other than 48kHz; lower and more predictable latency
- Fixes for NOLF. The 3D minimum and maximum distance and the roll off factor were not being taken into account for air absorption. Also modified reverb gain so that the max distance was taken into account
- Fix for EAX reverbs; initialized EAX reverbs to off when querying for the EAX listener interface; updated EAX property handlers to ignore invalid parameters instead of range limiting -- this matches Creative EAX behavior

Direct download here. Win2K/XP nForce v3.13

Beta ATI Catalyst 3.9 drivers version 6.14.10.6396 are being hosted for download over at Station Drivers's ATI driver page.

The following chipsets are supported in this beta -

Radeon 9200, 9600 & 9800 chipsets

It includes control panel 6.14.10.5057

nVidia has released their official version of the 52.16 video drivers which are no longer called Detonator. The new name is now called Forceware. These new drivers add several features -

- Enhanced image quality for both anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing
- New nView 3.0 Multi-Display Setup Wizard?to easily configure your multi-display settings
- nView Grid lines to section off the display to help organize your various Windows
- Customized user profiles to save display settings and image quality settings on a per application/game basis
- A new user friendly interface
- Microsoft® DirectX® and OpenGL® support
- Support for GeForce 5700, GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, and GeForce FX 5950

nVidia 52.16 WHQL Official W2K/XP

For a list of fixes as well as how to work the new features you can download thier the Forceware 50 Release Notes in pdf form

New drivers posted today! Monday, June 23. I will be updating mine... when I build my new computer, which won't be till tomorrow. The damn car inspection took so long, I missed the FedEx person.

Download them here.

These things are dated today. I'll give you a full report soon. I need to reinstall Win2k after messing my entire system up over the past few months. Grab the download here.

There are new dets on nVidia's site. Anyone want to comment on the performance or stability? I don't have an nVidia card. Grab the Win2k/XP download here. This is a new set of drivers just released today. Look at this quote...

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Delivers an incredible 30% increase in performance over previous Detonator 40 drivers**
** Performance results based upon GeForce FX 5600 Ultra running UnrealTournament 2003 Antalus flyby.

Interested in seeing the 3dfx source code for their graphics cards? Look no further than here. There isn't much else other than the source cord. Actually, this is quite interesting since since the person who released the code is the heart of x3dfx, the people that made drivers even when 3dfx went under.

This is good news, installing stuff is one of the biggest downfalls of Linux. nVidia has made an installer for their drivers. Now you can just have a couple of clicks and you're all loaded up, like Windows.

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The new installation software detects relevant details about the system its running on and automatically installs the correct drivers. The goal is to make it as easy to keep a Linux installation up to date as a Windows-based PC, Fear said.

Microsoft has just released DX9.0a. The stand alone version isn't released yet, so you'll need the web installer. Grab that here. I still wonder when OpenGL 2.0 will come hmm?

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Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX 9.0 includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX 9.0 APIs. This release also resolves an issue with DirectX 9.0 where some multiplayer games or MSN Messenger may not work correctly. A number of minor bugs were also resolved.

I have the press release, but the driver pages still show v3.1, so you're just going to have to wait until they update the pages. UPDATE: Seems the PR was for the multimedia center only... But why mention the CATs 3.2?

Here is the PR.

Driver selection.

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In addition to the new capabilities for the RADEON-based desktop graphics products, CATALYST 3.2 with MULTIMEDIA CENTER 8.1 delivers advanced features to the many ALL-IN-WONDER® users -- from the current best-selling ALL-IN-WONDER® 9700 PRO to the long-standing ALL-IN-WONDER® RADEON™. These capabilities include MULTVIEW™ for dual TV tuner input that provides Picture-in-Picture support, closed caption database search, VIDEOSOAP™ filtering for personal video recording captures and frame reconstruction, as well as new file management options in Multimedia Library.

I didn't know updating drivers was such a big

Good stuff today, new 4in1s. Who knows, maybe they'll actually make the VIA chipsets better!

Grab the download. Dated March 10th. That's today.

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Update via AGP driver to v4.41a cool, Fixed overwrite issue, Fixed the K8 CPU cache Flush syntax error in Viagart.sys (miniport driver).

Alrighty, I've got to update my drivers for all my comps that use ATI cards... (9500 Pro, 8500, 64VIVO). Not to mention the Rage Pro my Dad uses.

Get your drivers here. Feb 10th post date.

Finally, these fix the OpenGL shutter problem and maybe some other things. Grab them here. These are for all Radeon series cards. They are dated today.

Well, this may urge you to download DX9.

Win2K/XP/9x download. There are WHQL for Radeon 97/500 series, everyone else will be uncertified . BTW, all this crap today is pushing my Radeon 9500 review back slightly

Not to be outdone by ATI's new Linux drivers, nVidia has done more by making the unified drivers Linuxable™. Just wait till all companies do this.

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The new driver release focuses on enhancements for PCs running Linux, the open-source operating system that gradually is gaining ground on desktop PCs.

The new driver includes support for CineFX, the new graphics chip design powering Nvidia's recently unveiled GeForce FX and subsequent generations of graphics chips. The driver also supports upcoming high-end processors from Advanced Micro Devices.

Get the drivers.

VIA has gotten with the naming thing now, you know... nVidia has the Dets and ATI has Cats, so now VIA has Gayperion... Hyperion.

Link 1 HTTP.

Link 2 FTP.

The links are getting hammered as of now. Look at the graphs on this page. I got a laugh out of just how EXAGGERATED (spelling?) THEY ARE!!! Pay attention to the scale people...

These were posted earlier, but now they are officially from ATI.

New Windows OSes only.

I still don't know how to change stuff in the drivers (Like don't change 32 bit to 16 bit textures). It was there before the catalyst drivers wre made. Give me some feedback!

Amazing results for me from these babies. Tribes 2 is once again rocking.

Grab them here.

Also, anyone know how to change individual options instead of just the sliders? That'd be hot!

Dated today, the 3rd of December.

Hot off the coding block. Remember, Win2k and XP only.

These work across the board with all ATI powered boards.

This will help during that two week span of not running Windows.

UAYOR - Use at your own risk. They aren't on the front page of their site, this link has been floating around.

Backup if you feel that you have some important data.

ATI released a bundle of drivers to be compatible with linux, called the "Unified Linux Driver". Read the article here.
Download the drivers directly from ATI here.

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"The new ATI driver collection supports all recent versions of ATI-manufactured graphics boards, from the Radeon 8500 to the company's current speed demon, the Radeon 9700. The drivers enable support for version 2.0 of the OpenGL graphics specification used in many computer games and other graphics-rich applications"

Dated today, the 14th.

Win2K/XP.

Control Panel.

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CodeCreatures score is improved by 20% at 4X AA for 9700 series products
NASCAR 2002 framerate is up as much as 18% across the entire RADEON products line
NHL 2002 performance is up as much as 35% across the entire product line (largest gains on RADEON 7500/8500)
Performance on legacy (dx6 and dx7) apps is improved by as much as 15% for RADEON 9700 Series products

Yep, hot off the coding block. So damn hot, they are too be released in 3 days!

Get them here. By the way "Up to a 25% increase in performance" in these.

There are new Xabre drivers that are dated today. I use my Jaton Xabre at school here .

Get them here.

New detonator drivers are out for all your nVidia cards. These are for Win2k and XP.

Link 1.
Link 2.