ATI Catalyst 8.5 brings improvements and performance boost for some games

AMD/ATI release new Catalyst drivers on pretty much a monthly schedule. The updates range from tiny tweaks to major improvements. Yesterday's release of Catalyst 8.5 brings with it some significant improvements.

• Catalyst Control Center Component Video
• ATI Graphics Driver Un-install Enhancement
• SECAM TV Out Support
• 1080p HDTV custom mode
• HDMI Audio for non-standard TV modes
• Adaptive AA on OpenGL for Catalyst™ Control Center
• 1080p24 Mode Support
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 support

Performance improvements include:

• Call of Juarez DX10: Performance increases up to 12% on systems containing an ATI Radeon HD 3xx0 series of product
• Halo: Performance increases by 10-30% across all of the supported ATI Radeon series of products
• Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases from 5 to 35% on systems containing an ATI Radeon HD 3xx0 series of product
• Stalker DX9: Performance increases by 20-50% when HDR is enabled in the game; across all ATI Radeon HD38x0 series of products
• World in Conflict DX10: Performance increases up to 25% on systems containing an ATI Radeon HD36x0 and/or an ATI Radeon 38x0 series of product. Higher performance gains are noticed on systems containing an ATI Radeon 3870x2 series of product

As you can see, if you have a graphics card from the Radeon HD 3xx0 series then these drivers seem to bring with them quite a few performance related tweaks. Those running 38x0 and 3870 X2 cards might now start to see the benefits of their investment.

Drivers available here

Release notes available here