ATI Releases Catalyst 3.6 Drivers Today...

[Matt2]

ANy speed increase or decrease with 3.6 vs 3.5 Omegas?

 

[rbV5]

*Overscan for TV-out is hidden in the drivers still, no way to enable it without a tweaker or registry edit.
*How do you enable 1080i output?

* I scanned the registry, overscan appeared to be enabled in the current control set, but maybe I missed an entry. Rage3D tweak enabled it no problem, I was able to use the new force TV display to check that the button appeared on the advanced TV display properties since I don't use anlog NTSC output anymore.
* Not so easy this one. In order to enable High resolution interlaced display from the VGA port, I had to connect the component output gang adaptor (YPbPr) and enable 480p, 540p, 1080i<--probably only needed this one, these are the resolutions supported by my widescreen display) and 16:9 and then reboot. I could now pick 30Hz interlaced for 1920x1080 (VGA out not YPbPr is what I'm after)....but the timings were off. This could totally be from a conflict from powerstrip as I use it to tweak my output resolutions using Karnis's guide at AVSforum <--Highly recommend for ATI cards). I uninstalled powerstrip, downloaded the new 3.43 build 402 version, created a custom timing for 1080i <--the ATI one had worked for me since Cat 3.4 btw) rebooted, and my 1080i is working perfectly again...whew! Threw Shrek on to check a few chapters out....absolutely gorgeous.

I'm not sure why property sheets like the rotation tab and options like overscan and enable HDTV modes aren't exposed in the drivers, as the registry keys are there, and have been there for a long time now. Rage3D tweak works great, but combined with powerstrip and ATI's control panel makes for a lot of opportunities to create conflicts<--which I think may have happened) Uninstalling powerstrip to begin with may have saved me some grief, I'm going to re-install later to see if I can duplicate my problems. IT IS WORTH the hassle though, 1080i DVD output using the Radeon's excellent video scaling, output to a large widescreen display is a sight to behold.🙂

 

[BFG10K]

These drivers totally rock and I believe I've finally found the fabled ones that are supposed to increase performance a lot on the 9700 Pro.

Most of my benchmarks are up across the board in most Quake 3 based games and the scores in Serious Sam 1 & 2 are the highest I've ever seen - I'm talking up to 20% faster at 1600 x 1200 and 1792 x 1344. I even triple-checked the IQ and game/driver settings to make sure I hadn't done anything silly but no, everything looks fine.

The drivers do seem to take a longer time to switch resolutions during in-game changes but I only ever change resolutions like that when benchmarking so it doesn't worry me. Also NOLF's mouse is still laggy but every other game seems to run just fine.

Nice work ATi. 😎

 

[Errors]

Installed the 3.6 drivers on my system and it made Raven Shield laggy and basicly unplayable.
Other games seemed fine,couldn't sem to fix it so have gone back to 3.4

winXP
radeon 8500
xp2100

 

[monte84]

i installed slight improvement in 3dmark2001 from 14867-14951 stock speed 9800np

 

[ronnn]

I have really noticed an improvement in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2. 3.5 was a bust and had to go back to 3.4, but this new one is much better with my generic 9700pro

 

[Wigwam]

somone mentioned "full package *.exe" install - where do i get that from, and does it also contain the ATi control Panel and MMC 8.5 in the one package or do i need to get them separately?

gonna do an OS reinstal next week so will install the new drivers then from scratch so like the idea of this package

 

[rbV5]

somone mentioned "full package *.exe" install - where do i get that from, and does it also contain the ATi control Panel and MMC 8.5 in the one package or do i need to get them separately?

MMC is not included, just drivers

Software bundle for high speed connections
Contains:
Catalyst 3.6 Driver
WDM Capture Driver
Control Panel Software

Linked for XP

 

[Wigwam]

thanks, i guess it was the following from the ATi website that confused me:

"Web Content
The CATALYST? software suite 3.6 contains the following:

RADEON? display driver 7.91
Multimedia Center? 8.5
HydraVision? 3.21
Remote Wonder 1.5"

 

[Regs]

rbV5, I know there will always be issues with drivers that will require feedback. But using driver cleaner and doing all this extra stuff for every driver update?

 

[rbV5]

But using driver cleaner and doing all this extra stuff for every driver update?

Its up to you, but I said:

Simply uninstalled the Cat 3.5 driver from the control panel rebooted canceled the hardware wizard and clicked on the full package *.exe install. Worked perfect.

All the "extra stuff" I did was to get everything working the way I need it to work for me. Obviously if you're not outputting video to a digital display using interlaced high resolution output, you would never notice that you can't enable certain modes without mucking around a little in the registry and the drivers/software, just like I wouldn't notice menu corruption in CS because its not installed on my rig. Someone might benefit from someone elses experience, or maybe point out something I'm missing. I could care less if anybody makes anymore out of it than that🙂

 

[Regs]

:beer: cheers

 

[J3anyus]

Any word on when to expect Omega drivers based on this Catalyst release? I'm still running Omegas based on the 3.5 Cats, seem to run everything fine for me. I'm tempted to upgrade though since so many people have claimed image quality is noticeably higher in this release.

 

[Wigwam]

based on the tantalising hints ATi gave iin the driver info it sounds like Cat 3.7 arent too far behind either.

 

[Rottie]

Cat 3.6 is good but not with Splinter Cell game running 1024 x 768 x 32 bit or more the edge on the screen get color distort or something like that....maybe it has to do with too bright color. I dunno.

 

[videoclone]

🙂 when are the new nvidia drivers comming out? anyone know?

 

[Schadenfroh]

44.67 WHQL over at the guru of 3d that also have a even newer beta.

 

[1ManArmY]

Does the 3.6's include the soft pro hack 9700 Pro to 9800?????????