It has started to show up tests and previews of ATi’s new Catalyst 3.8 drivers on the internet, and a couple of them even have fully covered performance tests to offer. It seems, according to these first tests, like Catalyst 3.8 won’t improve performance from its predecessor at the same Clock frequencies. But the automatic overclocking function Overdrive does show some improvements in a number of tests, although very small ones.
According to Accelenation Overdrive uses the following parameters when dealing with overclocking.
At 0-51°C the GPU overclocks to 432 MHz (Max). At 48° – 59°C the GPU overclocks to 419 MHz and between 56° – 127°C the card will withhold its original frequency.BR>I’m a little skeptical about overclocking parameters that rely on temperatures, but it certainly blows wind into the sails of those who manufacture exotic cooling solutions.
Overall Catalyst 3.8 seems to be stable and include a lot of new features, but for those who owns a Radeon 9800XT we can’t see any noticeable performance increases.
At Anandtech and Accelenation you can find fully covering performance tests and all around information about the new drivers from ATi.
