ATi Catalyst 4.1 Driver Report

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The Firing Squad have thrown up their Catalyst 4.1 Driver Report!

They tested Catalyst 3.10 against the newly released Catalyst 4.1 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 expected, ATI rang in the new year with another CATALYST driver release, version 4.1 to be exact. If you don?t recall, ATI?s CATALYST driver team has committed itself to releasing a new driver every month, so we expect to see twelve driver releases this calendar year. As ATI?s first driver release for 2004, last week?s driver was dubbed 4.1, with the ?4? signifying the year the driver was released and the one designating it as the first driver released this year. More than a few of you have commented about this naming system in the news comments, but it looks like ATI is sticking to their guns on this one so everyone will have to get used to it by the time October 2004 hits.

One of the biggest additions in CATALYST 4.1 for RADEON 9800 XT/9600 XT users is that ATI has integrated the built-in hardware monitoring functionality we first mentioned as an upcoming feature in our CATALYST 3.8 report. This support comes in the form of temperature and clock speed, both of which can now be viewed in the OVERDRIVE control panel.

Its capability is limited in the sense that it only presents the current clock speed and temperature of the graphics core, there is no histogram present that would allow you to monitor temperature/clock speed fluctuations over time. This is a capability Tyan has had in their cards for some time, and more recently, ASUS with their Smart Doctor utility.

CATALYST 4.1 Driver Report