ATi Catalyst 3.10 Driver Report

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The Firing Squad have thrown up their Catalyst 3.10 Driver Report!

They tested Catalyst 3.9 against the newly released Catalyst 3.10 using the following Radeon cards 9800 XT , 9800 Pro 128 MB, 9700 Pro, 9600 Pro, 9500 Pro, 9500, 8500 and using the following benchmarks NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, Quake III: Arena version 1.32, Unreal Tournament 2003, IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles, Splinter Cell and Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

As part of its recent commitment to release a new graphics driver every month, in mid-December ATI released its CATALYST 3.10 driver to the web. Initially, CATALYST 3.10 caused some confusion among FS readers in the news comments, as the name was similar to the CATALYST 3.1 driver released at the beginning of this year. Whereas CATALYST 3.1 is pronounced ?three dot one?, CATALYST 3.10 is known as ?three dot ten?.

Under ATI?s new naming scheme, the three denotes the year the driver was released (in this case, 2003), while the ?.10? designates CATALYST 3.10 as the tenth driver released for that year. The CATALYST team will ring in 2004 with a new 4.x driver set sometime later this month.

Other than the new name, the biggest topic surrounding CATALYST 3.10 is game compatibility. If you recall, shortly after we posted our CATALYST 3.9 report, ATI issued a hotfix for its CATALYST driver to resolve the issues with Call of Duty. ATI cards were notorious for crashing with this game, which was the #2 selling game in November and December, behind The Sims: Makin? Magic (an expansion pack that costs less than Call of Duty). In fact, Call of Duty has already surpassed Battlefield 1942 and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory as the #2 game played online so clearly this was an issue that needed to be addressed.

CATALYST 3.10 Driver Report