A few summers ago ATI released the Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card. It was the first consumer graphics card to feature significant technological advancements such as a 256bit memory bus*, 8 pixel-pipelines, and full support for Microsoft's DX9 API. It was a remarkable piece of hardware that couldn't be touched by anything else available during it's time on the market.

Kick-starting the Radeon 9700 Pro was ATI's new Catalyst driver suite, a set of video drivers from ATI that, very unlike their previous driver efforts, earned high praise from reviewers and end-users alike. Along with the 9700 Pro, these drivers helped ATI turn a corner that immediately launched them to the top of the 3D graphics heap.

New versions of the Catalyst drivers were released over time (and pretty much on a monthly basis) that added new features and introduced new capabilities, fixed bugs and compatibility issues, increased performance, and to the chagrin of users even introduced new bugs that never before existed.

Late last summer ATI released a huge new update to Catalyst in the form of a new interface which they called the Catalyst Control Center (it was know as ACE for most of its development cycle). CCC marked a huge overhaul for ATI's driver interface that looked and worked completely different than what they offered previously. It's built on top of Microsoft's .NET framework and features a customizable interface, is easy to use for novices but at the same time powerful enough for advanced users, and has several features that aren't found on the old Control Panel. For a more complete look at Catalyst Control Center, our launch day preview can be found here.

You've probably already heard that today ATI has released the newest 5.6 version of the Catalyst drivers. This new driver set marks the introduction of some fairly significant features and improvements to Catalyst and the Catalyst Control Center in particular. I'll be going over those features in this article and doing a performance comparison to earlier Catalyst releases and, thanks to an unprecedented release from ATI outlining their future plans, I'll also be looking forward a couple releases to see what else ATI has in store for us.

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* Technically speaking, Matrox's Parhelia was the first consumer graphics card that featured a 256bit memory bus. The Parhelia preceded the Radeon 9700 Pro by a few months, but because it lacked some seriously needed technologies (namely some form of bandwidth saving technique), it pretty much flopped hard as a 3D graphics card. Therefore, in my short revision of history, I will mark the Radeon 9700 Pro as the first true 3D graphics card to have a 256bit memory bus. :)

CCC App Performance Improvements

Some of the biggest complaints with CCC are its long load times, unresponsive interface, and large memory footprint. ATI has been steadily improving each of these areas since the initial release, but there always seemed to be a lot of room for improvement. With the 5.6 release ATI claims to have improved the load times significantly and removed all lag from the interface. They also claim that overall improvements to the code base have made CCC more stable and efficient.

While the load times still aren't as quick as I'd personally like, it is indeed reduced considerably when compared to the 5.5 release and interface lag, one of the more annoying issues with CCC, seems to have been solved with the 5.6 release. CCC now, for me at least, is almost as responsive as any standard Windows app.

Information Center

The Information Center that was previously found under the Help toolbar menu has been moved to the main navigation menu for easier access as well. I'd still like to see much more technical details about the currently installed graphics hardware however.

Catalyst for Mobility

Also beginning with the 5.6 release ATI will be providing drivers and the Catalyst Control Center for Mobility users which, in a nut shell, means some of you road-warrior types won't need to wait for your notebook OEM to come up with updated driver releases.

The new Catalyst Mobility program is Opt-In, meaning that ATI won't force it, but ODM/OEM companies can join voluntarily if they wish. The advantage is that those manufacturers can then leverage ATI's own support for those parts without having to spend their own resources maintaining drivers. Unfortunately, larger OEMs like Dell and HP will likely still customize the drivers for use with their products, so most users with notebooks from those guys will still be waiting around. Initial Catalyst Mobility support will only be available for Windows XP users running an X700 or X800 Mobility part.

Enhanced Linux Support

Also in included in today's release are new updates to support ATI Linux users. The new package is reportedly much easier to install and contains a lot of updates and bugfixes. I haven't had time to check out the new Linux package myself yet, but I've been told that things have been vastly improved on that front.

Overhauled Video Controls

One of the bigger changes to CCC for this release are a bunch of brand new controls for adjusting video playback settings. Included is a brand new side-by-side video preview which shows your tweaks in real time without needing to Apply the settings. This allows for much easier video adjustments without needing to have a video already running in the background as was the requirement with earlier Catalyst releases.

All of the video control panels have been redesigned and streamlined to take advantage of the new interactive video features. There's also a brand new Deinterlacing panel also allows users to choose which deinterlacing method you want to use, something a lot of people, particularly Home Theater PC users, will appreciate.

Like the 3D settings area, the Video settings has an all-in-one panel to give more experienced users quick access to all the options available in the indicia panels.

Also included in this release is the long anticipated Microsoft .WMV video acceleration option. Many people have been expecting this for quite a long time but, because of problems out of ATI's control, the feature couldn't be officially included until now. WMV acceleration allows hardware accelerated video playback of Microsoft's popular Windows WMV movie files and is important because it greatly reduces CPU cultivation which results in less dropped frames during video playback.

All-In-Wonder now supported under Windows XP MCE

To help take further advantage of the new Video features in CCC, ATI has now enabled support for the All-In-Wonder line of cards under Windows XP Media Center Edition. Previously the AIW wouldn't work under MCE because of a lack of the neccessary drivers needed for video capture and other features. Thankfully that's a thing of the past now as AIW owners wishing to use Microsoft's Media Center version of Windows now can.

The biggest thing for most of the guys looking for new drivers will probably always be 3D performance improvements. In that regard ATI has made some pretty big claims as to the performance boost they've managed to wring out of the 5.6 drivers.

ATI mentions improvements in a few specific games:

• Doom 3
  more efficient memory usage
• Chronicles of Riddick
  more efficient storage of vertex data
• COD
  Found way to leverage Doom 3 optimizations – increases efficiency
• Halo, 3DMark05, TR: AOD, AM3
  Z-optimizations – removing un-seen pixels before running through pixel shaders
• Lock On: Modern Air Combat
  CATALYST AI – enables texture compression with no visual impact (cloud textures)

However, to see for myself, and see whether these were actual improvements when compared to the previous releases or just the recent 5.5 release, I decided to test the new drivers and compare them with older sets as far back as the 5.1 set.

I had originally intended to test older cards but time started to become a real issue so, in the interest of getting this thing finished, I decided to only check out one card for now; ATI's flagship X850XT Platinum. I have partial results from the other cards so I hope to get this article updated with those results when I can get a chance to complete the tests.

I didn't check out all the games and apps ATI listed, but I did test some games they didn't to see if there were any improvements there as well.

What follows is my standard benchmarking procedure.

Test Setup

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropy were applied in the game where the options existed. For games that did not support those options natively, the graphics card control panel was used. V-Sync was also forced off for each test via the graphics card control panel. Otherwise all other graphics card control panel settings were left to their default values.

Batch files were used when possible for automated benchmarking, the details of the commands used are outlined for each test. Manual benchmarking was done using FRAPS 2.5.5.

Benchmarking was done with Windows set to the "Adjust for best performance" profile, and all unnecessary Windows services and hardware devices were disabled. The latest drivers for each necessary hardware component were installed prior to testing and kept consistent throughout.

The Onboard sound was disabled for all tests expect for Richard Burns Rally which will not load without sound hardware installed and operational.

Test System Specs

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3500+, 2.2GHz Newcastle core
• Motherboard: DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, s939 NForce4
• Videocards: Radeon X850XT Platinum
• Video Drivers:
• Catalyst 5.6 Beta
• Catalyst 5.5 WHQL
• Catalyst 5.4 WHQL
• Catalyst 5.3 WHQL
• Catalyst 5.2 WHQL
• Catalyst 5.1 WHQL
• Memory: 1GB (2x512MB) OCZ DDR PC-4200 Platinum Edition @ 400MHz/2-2-2-5 1T
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda V SATA, 7200rpm
• Sound: Onboard, disabled for most tests
• PSU: Enermax Noisetaker EG495P-PE 485W
• OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

Benchmark Software

• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, v1.02 (DirectX)
• Half-Life 2, Source Engine 7 (DirectX)
• Far Cry, v1.31 (DirectX)
• Doom3, v1.3 (OpenGL)
• Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (OpenGL)
• Halo: Combat Evolved, v1.07 (DirectX)
• Call of Duty: United Offensive, v1.41 (OpenGL)
• Pacific Fighters, v3.04 (OpenGL)
• 3DMark03, build 3.6.0 (DirectX)
• 3DMark05, build 1.2.0 (DirectX)

3DMark03

I benchmarked 3DMark03 using the default settings. I set it up to loop each test three times, it then automatically averaged the results and gave a final score. The results for each test are below.

Game Test 1 - Wings of Fury Game Test 2 - Battle of Proxycon Game Test 3 - Troll's Lair Game Test 4 - Mother Nature Vertex Shader Pixel Shader 2.0 Overall Score

3DMark05

Like 3DMark03, I set 3DMark05 up to loop three times to get the final score. I tested 3DMark05 using the default detected settings.

Game Test 1 - Return to Proxycon Game Test 2 - Firefly Forest Game Test 3 - Canyon Flight Pixel Shader Vertex Shader - Simple Vertex Shader - Complex Overall Score

Uncommon for them, ATI has also laid bare their plans for Catalyst over the next few releases. There are several further improvements and some fairly significant additional features:

Catalyst 5.7

• Significant improvements in HyperMemory for 64 and 128MB boards will give budget users a nice performance boost when they install the 5.7 release for all applications that require a large amount of memory (ie: games!). ATI hasn't mentioned how exactly they are doing this but they show performance improvements up to 150% compared to the upcoming 5.6 in some cases.


• 
  
  Media Center Edition extensions Coming next month in release 5.7 are new Windows Media Center Edition extensions that should hopefully allow easier setup of our displays on Windows MCE based computers. The new extension will allow users to adjust settings in a living room environment and will support all the HDTV resolutions (including 1080p should you be lucky enough to have a capable set). Scaling controls should allow us to resize out desktop to fit our display screen.


• Thanks to CCC 64bit processor support, Windows XP 64bit users will be able to get the benefits of Catalyst Control Center when revision 5.7 is released.


• Also next month will come official support for CrossFire in CCC. Officially announced only a week and a half ago, CrossFire is ATI's answer to nVidia's multi-GPU SLI technology. CrossFire isn't available yet, but support in the drivers will be there starting with the 5.7 set. More info about CrossFire is available in our quick look at the emerging technology.

Catalyst 5.8

• Improved HDTV support will arrive with Catalyst 5.8. A new HDTV Wizard will hopefully mean that setting up a HDTV will be as easy as setting up a normal display. DVI HDTVs will also be supported in the 5.8 drivers. If it can handle my 32" 4:3 CRT HDTV that I haven't be able to configure properly since I bought it then I'll be impressed for sure.


• New CCC Wizard
  
  
  
  A new Catalyst Wizard will contain a list of tasks that envelope all the functionality from CCC. This should make controlling CCC easy for novices.
  
  The Wizard will work on 640x480 low resolution displays as well so in those cases where you can't fit the entire CCC panel on the screen (CCC was designed for 800x600 minimum), you should be able to use the wizard to adjust the display. Speaking from personal experience, this will be particularly useful for HTPC users trying to setup their HDTV sets.

Whether or not ATI can come through on these feature promises remains to be seen, but the simple fact that they've revealed them to us is a good indication that they probably already got them working and in some builds floating around. If ATI sticks to their monthly release cycle then we don't have long to wait to find out.

ATI added some cool features to CCC, particularly for the Video enthusiasts out there, and have all but eliminated the unresponsive interface. Load times are still a bit long, but they have improved significantly over earlier CCC releases. As well, the memory footprint has been reduced quite a bit. Instead of having two CLI processes running that each took a sizeable chunk of system resource, there are now three that, total, take quite a bit less.

The performance improvements for the games that ATI mentioned in their release documents are pretty good. The most impressive improvements came with Halo and Riddick where both games got quite a big boost in performance. For the more popular titles like Half-Life 2 and Splinter Cell 3 there are virtually no performance increases but to be fair, for most of the games and apps that ATI cited there were some fairly significant speedups.

What's most interesting about this release is that ATI has come out and told us what to expect down the road. As far as I can remember ATI has never really put future feature additions in stone like they have here today. I have no doubt that the new stuff will come but should things start slipping, breaking these "promises" to users will undoubtedly hurt them a lot, especailly when you consider all the negativity they've had to endure over the last year or so.