ATI's Catalyst 3.8 Drivers: ATI Sanctioned Overclocking
by Derek Wilson on October 8, 2003 3:02 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Catalyst 3.8 Drivers
The first new tab on the drivers that jumped out at us was OVERDRIVE(tm). Clicking there we see one lonely checkbox and a description of the functionality. The description states that overdrive will allow the chip to maintain its optimum speed based on the temperature of the chip.
All of the tests in this article have been done with overdrive on.
The second tab we didn't recognize was the VPU Recovery tab. In moving to this panel, we see that ATI has added functionality to their driver that will reset the video card if the hardware stops responding to the drivers commands.
This seems like a good idea as we found a problem with the 3.7 Cats where changing the D3D or OGL settings in the driver while using a DVI connection would drop the screen. I quickly learned the windows shortcut to sleep mode in order to fix that problem, but hopefully this will be a more elegant solution. There may be some overhead and there may not be, but that is a study we will save for later. For now, we left the option set to its default ON state
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#31 was a reply to # 28.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
are you telling me that your going to play HL2 , in DX8 at 640x800 on your Fx ? to get decent framerates ?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Nice of you to warn us ahead of time #8.It does take one to know one.
So in your esteemed opinion, what are all the current GF FX card owners to do?
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
i am a little disappointed with the overdrive feature as well...i was all exicted too about the possibilities...and certainly expecting more than just a 1.5fps difference :(Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#26 said: ""TombRaider AOD , the only DX9 game benchmarked is 3 1/2 times faster than Nvidia.ATI 42 fps , Nvidia 12 fps.
WoooW.
Imagine HL2.""
Do0d, TRAOD has nothing to do with HL2. Also, NV is playable at lower resolutions than 16x12. And any card will fly with PS2.0 off...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
...I'm honestly struggling to work out why CM hyped these up as the best Catalysts ever. We knew these weren't going to be performance drivers, but the new features are gimmicky (overdrive/smartshader) or not as good as they should be (game profiles, but you have to manually switch them, bah!). Oh well, some bug fixes are at least nice.A somewhat disappointed 9800 Pro'er.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
TombRaider AOD , the only DX9 game benchmarked is 3 1/2 times faster than Nvidia.ATI 42 fps , Nvidia 12 fps.
WoooW.
Imagine HL2.
I'm impressed, If Cat 3.8 bring more stability, that should be good enough for ATI owners.
a Gforce2 mx owner.
AgaBooga - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#24, ATI would have had to implement special temperature measuring devices. I wonder how the bios flashing will respond to this...Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
sucks like 0.1% of gamers or market have the 9800TX why not do it with 9700pro or 9800projust a though ...............
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#20,You got your roman numerals backwards.
VIII is 8
IX is 9
X is 10
XI is 11
XII is 12
XIII is 13
XIV is 14 and so on