AMD has released the ninth monthly revision of Catalyst, Catalyst 8.9, and as always there are a couple of news worth mentioning. Like support for 1080p 50Hz modes with Radeon HD 4000/3000/2000/X1000 and the Overdrive feature with Quad CrossFireX configurations. In essence you can now overclock all four graphics cores and their individual memory either automatically or manually.
It is also worth mentioning that AMD has added the first support for OpenGL 3.0, the latest version of the OpenGL API announced back in August. For full support for OpenGL 3.0 you need a graphics card that also sport DirectX 10, which means that not all Radeon cards are fully compatible with the API. DirectX and D3D have been taking over more and more lately so we’re quite eager to see what OpenGL 3.0 can do to change that.
There are also numerous bug fixes and performance optimizations as listed below;
- Company of Heroes: Setting the in-game options to maximum levels no longer results in the game exiting to the desktop after the game has completed loading.
- DiRT: Setting shadows to ultra quadCF no longer results in a performance drop being noticed.
- Assassins Creed: Brightness and saturation distortion is no longer observed during game play with ForceAA enabled.
- Grid: Enabling CrossFire and starting a new game no longer results in flickering bands being noticed across the display device.
- Jericho: Corruption is no longer noticed when AA is enabled and the in-game option Advanced Smoothing is enabled.
- Age of Conan: Playing the game for a short period of time no longer results in flickering corruption being noticed.
You can find more information on Catalyst 8.9 and download the new drivers from AMD’s website.
