ATI Catalyst Radeon Display Driver 4.8 (Windows 2000/XP)

The CATALYST™ software suite 4.8 contains the following:

• RADEON™ display driver 8.042
• ATI MULTIMEDIA CENTER™ 9.02
• HydraVision™ 3.25.0006
• HydraVision™ Basic Edition 3.25.9006
• ATI REMOTE WONDER™ 2.3
• WDM version 4.07
• Southbridge/IXP Driver

ATI Integrated Product Support

The CATALYST™ software suite is designed to support the following ATI integrated product family:

• RADEON™ IGP 320
• RADEON™ IGP 330
• RADEON™ IGP 340
• RADEON™ 9000 IGP
• RADEON™ 9100 IGP Pro
• RADEON™ 9100 IGP
• IXP 150
• IXP 200
• IXP 250
• IXP 300

New Features

This section provides information on new features found in this release of the CATALYST™ Display Drivers. New features include:

• Geometry Instancing
• VPU Recover Enhancement
• EIA 861B Timing Specification

Geometry Instancing

This release of CATALYST introduces the support of Geometry Instancing. This new feature provides assistance when a game has to render many objects where the geometry is highly similar. Geometry Instancing allows the VPU to create multiple objects from a single geometric model, rather than passing an entire new model for each item on the screen. This increases the rendering speed of images such as leaves, or grass.

VPU Recover Enhancement

VPU Recover has been improved in this release of CATALYST. In most cases, VPU Recover will fully recover instead of switching to software rendering mode. This enhancement is supported under the Windows XP operating system.

EIA 861B Timing Specification

This release of CATALYST™ introduces EIA 861B Timing Specification for DVI based televisions. The RADEON™ Software Release version 8.04 will support 256 byte E-EDID and will decode CEA timing extensions. Further, it will retrieve DTV timing information. When the driver detects EIA 861B timings in E-EDID that the controller cannot handle, it will replace the EDID detail timing with adjusted timings suitable to our controller. The modes will be added as EDID detailed timing.

Common modes that are supported include:

• 640 x 480p at 60 Hz and 25.2 MHz pclk
• 720 x 480p at 59.94 Hz and 27.0 MHz pclk
• 720 x 576p at 50 Hz and 27.0 MHz pclk
• 1280 x 720p at 60 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
• 1280 x 720p at 50 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
• 1920 x 1080i at 60 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
• 1920 x 1080i at 50 Hz and 74.25 MHz pclk
• 1920 x 1080p at 60 Hz and 148.5 MHz pclk
• 1920 x 1080p at 50 Hz and 148.5 MHz pclk

This feature will be supported under the Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems.

Performance Improvements

As with most CATALYST™ releases performance has increased in various situations. The following performance gains are noticed:

Note: Before proceeding with your driver installation we suggest you make sure you are installing the latest version available and for the appropriate model/revision and Operating System. We strongly suggest following 'readme' instructions for installing drivers when available. Often restarting your system will be necessary for the new driver to become active and start functioning properly.

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