ATI Catalyst 9.7 is here

[hotel 10]

If anyone would read the release notes on the site you would see it says these drivers helped to improve games limited by CPU and gave the examples of Crysis and Lost Planet Colonies. By using the word "Examples" I would say this CPU limited improvment can be effective on many other games and quite possibly may improve Arma2 to a small degree.

EDIT: After installing the latest drivers I notice a decrease in performance of the Arma2 demo benchmark by 3 FPS. The Frames I was getting in the campain are the same with no improvment of smoothness. I honestly wasnt expecting this driver update to help this game though as I feel the game itself needs fixing before drivers can help increase performance enough to make a difference.

Campaign - 20 - 25 FPS after first mission

Single Missions - 25 - 35 FPS

Online - Not enough inccentive to go online with this piss poor performance

Rig

AMD Phenom 2 X4 955BE @3.8Ghz

Gigabye 790FX and SB750 chipset

Partiot 2x2GB 1600Mhz DDR3

Sapphire HD4890 1GB @930/1150(4.3)

Western Digital 500GB 16MB Cache

650W BFG

Edited July 22, 2009 by Hotel
Addition

[craig3000 10]

All I can say is for me personally these drivers 9.7 WHQL run the game better than the previous 9.6 drivers, the links are now updated along with XP drivers too

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Edited July 24, 2009 by craig3000

[rekrul 7]

Any big changes from the 9.7beta drivers?

[waycool 0]

Yeehaw xp ones tomorrow thanks for the heads up.

[bascule42 10]

Nice one mate. Win 7 has improved the game in a very big way for me. Thanks for letting us know about new drivers for it. :)

[craig3000 10]

Any big changes from the 9.7beta drivers?

Wouldn't know they don't exactly tell us :D

But the driver version number has changed so they are updated from the leaked version just don't know to what extent

[thr0tt 12]

Well I guess the question is, did these drivers fix all the issues with the ArmA game engine so now everything fliles, no graphical corruption, no CTD's, streaming no longer makes machines stutter, LOD switching is fixed with no massive popups in and around towns, that sort of thing.

Not sure if ATI is going to fix ArmA for BI but lets hope.

[The Kentucky Kid 0]

I've been running the 9.7 drivers floating around for the last 1-2 weeks and didn't notice any changes. Still low performance, flashing textures, missing/flashing heads in vehicles, 10 fps in town etc. All on Win 7.

[thr0tt 12]

I've been running the 9.7 drivers floating around for the last 1-2 weeks and didn't notice any changes. Still low performance, flashing textures, missing/flashing heads in vehicles, 10 fps in town etc. All on Win 7.

Well you must be one of the unlucky folk with faulty hardware like me.

[InFireBaptize 0]

this thread gonna get merged into an existing thread by the mod.

I still have flashing textures with the latest driver but i don't notice lag in towns. most of my settings are normal, very high shadow, very high video ram, normal AA, low post processing and the rest on normal.

[Shadow NX 1]

Nice, lets see how it works, the older beta was worser than 9.6 and gave everything a slight blur

[craig3000 10]

-edit- cba to endure flame wars

Edited August 18, 2009 by craig3000

[flake 10]

9.7 cut empire total war performance by half. they just dont seem compatible with that game. in arma2 fps was pretty much the same. thats with most recent 9.7 build.

[thr0tt 12]

Just for reference for those who believe these are the saviours of the game:

LEAKED

Driver Packaging Version 8.631-090625a-082375C-ATI

Catalystâ„¢ Version 09.7

Provider ATI Technologies Inc.

2D Driver Version 6.14.10.6973

2D Driver File Path System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{29A89013-67FE-4497-8322-2DAF02823BD9}/0000

Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0678

OpenGL Version 6.14.10.8784

Catalystâ„¢ Control Center Version 2009.0520.1631.27815

AIW/VIVO WDM Driver Version 6.14.10.6238

AIW/VIVO WDM SP Driver Version 6.14.10.6238

OFFICIAL

Driver Packaging Version 8.632-090702a-084680C-ATI

Catalystâ„¢ Version 09.7

Provider ATI Technologies Inc.

2D Driver Version 6.14.10.6973

2D Driver File Path System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{29A89013-67FE-4497-8322-2DAF02823BD9}/0000

Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0678

OpenGL Version 6.14.10.8787

Catalystâ„¢ Control Center Version 2009.0702.1239.20840

AIW/VIVO WDM Driver Version 6.14.10.6238

AIW/VIVO WDM SP Driver Version 6.14.10.6238

---------- Post added at 09:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:06 PM ----------

Try updating to the official 9.7's then instead of the leaked ones

I had no texture issues before but streaming performance wasn't great, you could notice it in the dense town areas, shadows off

With these drivers the streaming performance seems to be a lot better, even in the dense areas I would say its unnoticeable , with shadows on as well!

All of our computers are different so different things will happen sometimes

Cool, so same drivers but better results, you sire have fallen for the placebo effect.

[choC 10]

]

Cool, so same drivers but better results, you sire have fallen for the placebo effect.

Well he doesn't seem to be the only one reporting improvement over the betas..

I'll give them a go tonight after work.

[sittinGood 10]

no improvement over the beta here!

my specs:

Intel Core 2 Q9550 @ 3,3GHz

ASUS P5Q-E

ATI Radeon 4850 512MB

Corsair X2 2x 2GB RAM

Still have noticable mouselag at 30-40 FPS and drop downs in singleplayer with many NPCs. Waiting for a Hotfix right now, this game is nice but Betatesting on an unstable game isn't my profession.

[Dogtags 0]

no improvement over the beta here!

my specs:

Intel Core 2 Q9550 @ 3,3GHz

ASUS P5Q-E

ATI Radeon 4850 512MB

Corsair X2 2x 2GB RAM

this game is nice but Betatesting on an unstable game isn't my profession.

But you just did :p

[sittinGood 10]

^:rolleyes:

[thr0tt 12]

Well he doesn't seem to be the only one reporting improvement over the betas..

I'll give them a go tonight after work.

Cool, I have just copied an MP3 from one place to another and now believe my ArmA 2 has improved. I get the same results in ArmA Mark II but it feels better. Not sure if this works for you but I also suggest facing the PC to the east to see if that also helps. :rolleyes:

[craig3000 10]

-edit- cba to endure flame wars

Edited August 18, 2009 by craig3000

[alx 20]

Do the betas have debug code in them by any chance? That would be somewhat useful in betas and might cause some perfomance degredation. Not the sort of thing that would be commonly known, and might explain an improvement in performance in the released drivers. Alternatively, does ArmaII use OpenGL? That part of the driver has been updated. Perhaps the people at Guru3D will know....

[craig3000 10]

-edit- cba to endure flame wars

Edited August 18, 2009 by craig3000

[thr0tt 12]

No sir I updated from the 9.6 drivers!!!!!!!!! When did I say I was using the beta drivers where???? I just said its good to be running the WHQL version I mean it takes all of 5 minutes to install for god sake, And I indeed have better performance just because I had better performance doesn't mean to say that you will have this as well, different systems have different effects there are many variables, I know what I have and you can believe or not, it don't bother me

And I don't think the drivers are the savior of the game where did I ever state that? Only some proper game patches will save this game and the third one is taking a longgg time!

Needs more exclamation marks and question marks. Didn't read your post closely enough before assuming you had tried the leaked versions of these drivers which are the same. The statement about the saviour was not directed at you just a statement of fact for any that think ATI will save the game.

Still lets hope your clan server full of mature 18+ users includes the use of more exclamation marks and maybe some other characters to help show your frustration in game. ;)

[craig3000 10]

-edit- cba to endure flame wars

Edited August 18, 2009 by craig3000

[thr0tt 12]

Easy to misread isn't it ? I said "Still lets hope your clan server full of mature 18+ users includes the use of more exclamation marks and maybe some other characters to help show your frustration in game."