This section provides information on new features found in this release of the Radeon

Display Driver. These include the following:

• OpenGL 3.1 extension support

This release of ATI Catalyst provides OpenGL 3.1 extension support. The

following is a list of OpenGL 3.1 features and extensions added in Catalyst 9.8:

• Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40

• Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced)
• Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer)

• Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike theì NV extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens
• At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders
• Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object)

• Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle)

• Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object)

• SNORM texture component formats

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst 9.8:

• Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - performance improves up to 15-50% in CPU limited settings with the largest gains in CrossfireX configurations
• Company of Heroes DirectX 10 - performance improves by up to 10-77% in CPU limited settings
• Crysis DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 10% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 34% in CPU limited settings
• Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 7% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 69% in CPU limited settings
• Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 50% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 88% in CPU limited settings
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 - Dual CrossfireX performance improves up to 40% in CPU limited settings with Quad CrossfireX performance improving up to 60% in CPU limited settings 
• UnigineTropics OpenGL - performance improves 5-20%
• UnigineTropics DirectX 10 - Quad CrossfireX performance improves 5-20% in CPU limited settings
• World in Conflict DirectX 10 - performance improves by 5-10%

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst

Software Suite for Windows. These include:

• Catalyst Control Center: Diagnostic warning message now appears in CrossFire aspect when the only display is removed from the CrossFire chain
• Catalyst Control Centre will now launch properly with CrossFire disabled on multiadapter enabled/configured systems
• Catalyst Control Center: Some of the missing "Monitor Attributes" options in the Displays tab are now available 
• Refresh rates are now applied properly for standard and optimized HDTV modes in Catalyst Control Center
• Catalyst Control Center: Missing update for Windows 7 localized help content is nowì available
• TV Properties tab now properly displays "Image Quality" instead of "TV Properties" for Catalyst Control Center user interface

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst

Software Suite for Windows 7. These include:

• Display and mouse rotation now functions properly after reboot with 3 or more

  displays in clone mode

• “Unreal Tournament 3” no longer fails to respond after performing a taskswitch to

  desktop

• Hotplugging a secondary display during HD playback with WinDVD no longer

  causes desktop to go blank

• Intermittent block noise no longer visible during MPEG2-TS content playback with

  Windows Media Player

• Windows 7 logo no longer displays flickering distortion during Windows 7 loading

  screen (system reboot up)

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst

Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:

• “Call of Duty: World at War” no longer exhibits flickering water corruption when

  Software CrossFire is enabled

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst

Software Suite for Windows XP. These include:

• Catalyst Control Center: Predefined and custom HDTV formats can now be applied

  via HDTV support

• Intermittent video artifacts no longer visible when playing a DVD in stretched

  desktop mode

The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under

the Windows operating system in the latest version of Catalyst. These include:

• Launching Hotkeys Manager in Catalyst Control Center may result in unhandled

  exception error to appear

• The "Desktop Rotation" page in Catalyst Control Center may display additional

  information for the second display when the secondary adapter is connected

• HDMI may be detected as DTV (DVI) instead of DTV (HDMI) when HDMI display

  is hotplugged for the first time

• Catalyst Control Center might not revert back to default settings for "Dynamic

  Range" after settings are modified

• In extended/cloned mode, the secondary display status may appear incorrect in the

  "Available Display Devices" page under Catalyst Control Center Basic view

• Catalyst Control Center: AVIVO Advanced Color page may display "Color

  vibrance", "Flesh tone correction" and "Video Gamma" in English instead of proper

  translation string

• Catalyst Control Center stopped working error may pop up when specific HDMI

  displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back

The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under

the Windows 7 operating system in the latest version of Catalyst. These include:

• With OverlayMixer filter, Blu-ray disc playback with PowerDVD may display black

  video with audio and counter still running

• Display may go blank after resuming from hibernation during SD DVD playback in

  Windows Media Center Edition (MCE)

  ATI Catalyst Release Note Version 9.8 7

• In some HDTV extended mode configurations, some audio breaks may intermittently

  be heard when connected through HDMI audio

• SD DVD playback may halt and display error message when DVI + S-VIDEO

  displays are set to clone mode in Windows 7

• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" may

  cause the game to fail under MGPU configurations

The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under

the Windows Vista operating system in the latest version of Catalyst. These include:

• With CrossFire enabled, some DX10 games (Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., Lost Planet:

  Colonies, etc.) might not have HDMI audio

• With some system configurations a delay may be noticed when task switching

  between the desktop and a game in progress

• Media playback with WinDVD, Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center

  may output static sound over HDMI when connected to Sony TVs

• Playback of certain Picture-in-Picture titles may exhibit transparent overlay effects or

  turn black in the secondary stream

• Corruption may be visible in the "Change Outfit…" menu text in "The Sims 3"
• Catalyst Control Center may show HDMI displays as DVI for both connecting via

  HDMI port and to DVI port via HDMI-DVI dongle for specific ASICs

• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" may

  cause the game to fail under MGPU configurations

The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under

the Windows XP operating system in the latest version of Catalyst. These include:

• Resuming video playback after S1 sleep may result in no HDMI audio, although

  Display Manager in Catalyst Control Center reports display as DTV (HDMI)

• Catalyst Control Center: Hotplugging back a HDMI display might not restore its

  original DTV (HDMI) Pixel Format setting, if a DVI display was hotplugged and

  unplugged during the interval to the same port

• Changes to AVIVO Basic color settings might not be retained after Catalyst Control

  Center is re-opened with specific ASICs

• AVIVO Basic color setting changes might not be applied during HD DVD playback

  on specific ASICs on XP Media Center Edition