ATI Releases Catalyst 7.8 Video Card Drivers For Download

[Apoptosis]

ATI has just released Catalyst 7.8 on http://www.ati.amd.com for Windows Vista, Windows XP and Linux platforms

Highlights of the Catalyst 7.8 release include:

Performance improvements

* Lost Planet DX10 with anti-aliasing improves 11% or greater on ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT products
* 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark 2005 improves as much as 6% on The ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series (single card and Crossfire) and ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series (single card and Crossfire configurations)
* Serious Sam 2 with HDR enabled improves as much as 14.5% on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 Series, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series

New features

Enhanced ATI Overdrive support for the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series

* This release of Catalyst™ introduces an enhanced version of ATI Overdrive for the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series. Users can now Overclock both GPU engine and graphics memory clock speeds in Crossfire mode (and over-clock single ATI Radeon graphics accelerators as well). This version of ATI Overdrive also includes a new stress test application to verify any over-clocking speeds users may have configured (either manually or through the auto-tuning tool) on their ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series of graphics accelerators.

Highlights of the Linux Catalyst 7.8 (8.40.4) release include:

New features

Catalyst Control Center: Linux Edition enhancements

* This release of Catalyst™ introduces native 64-bit support for the Catalyst Control Center: Linux Edition
* This release of Catalyst™ introduces TV Out support (Composite, S-Video, and Component Video) in the Catalyst Control Center: Linux Edition for ATI Radeon graphics cards that support TV Out

Resolved Issues

* A black screen is no longer observed on some hardware when switching to the console or leaving the X window system when a Vesa framebuffer console driver is used.
* Connecting a component Video display device launching X-Server no longer results in X-Server failing to start and the display device displaying a black screen.
* The DRI no longer fails to initialize in the second server generation.
* Pressing the identify displays function no longer results in display device 1 and 2 being incorrectly identified.
* A Floating Point Exception error no longer occurs when launching amdcccle.

For more information on Catalyst 7.8 (for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the Catalyst 7.8 release notes found in driver download section.

[dgood]

Doesn't mention image quality improvements in DX10 as was noticeable in some of the reviews. I'm still expecting many things to be ironed out in catalyst releases that will make the card surpass the 8800gts 640 but still lose to the gtx, but have it's place.

[Zertz]

I have read that the beta 7.8 driver dramatically improves general AA performance.