Catalyst 10.5 WHQL released.

AMD has released this months Catalyst driver. Most notable changes are 120Hz dipslays are now supported on HD3000 & HD4000 Series products and OverDrive enhancements with multi-display configurations. Also there are fixes for games – BattleField: Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2, IL-2 Sturmovik – 1946, Empire: Total War, Napoleon: Total War, Aliens vs Predator, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction (HD2000 & HD3000 Series) and last but not least Unigine Heaven 2.0 – Benchmark. Grab the new driver from AMD.

Note: Looks like long loading times with BFBC2 might be back, hotfix is underway.

Download – WinXP 32bit | WinXP 64bit | Vista/Win7 32bit | Vista/Win7 64bit

Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 Benchmark available

There is a new DirectX11 benchmark tool made available by Rebellion. So the proud owners of DX11 class hardware have something new to check the performance of their cards with. It’s 303MB worth of download and dl-link is bellow. Thanks to Rebellion, SEGA and 20th Century Fox for releasing it to the public.

Download

nVIDIA Inspector v1.85 is available

Orbmu2k has updated his handy little utility for nVIDIA cards.

• Alternative methode to define shader count.
• Commandline Parametering
• DisplayHandle Hotfix

Download

First ForceWare Rel. 256 driver sees light.

nVIDIA has posted the first beta of their much awaited ForceWare Release 256 drivers. It comes with a whole bunch of performance enhancements for the GTX400 series and a couple of bugs ironed out.

• Up to 14% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920×1200 noAA/AF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 4% in Batman: Arkham Asylum (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF PhysX=High)
• Up to 5% in BattleForge (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High settings)
• Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 4% in Crysis: Warhead (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Enthusiast setting)
• Up to 24% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (1920×1200 no AA/AF)
• Up to 9% in Far Cry 2 (2560×1600 8xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 25% in Just Cause 2 (2560×1600 no AA/AF – Concrete Jungle)
• Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1920×1200 no AA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 40% in Metro 2033 with SLI ((1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 8% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920×1200 no AA/AF – Day)
• Up to 110% in Stone Giant with SLI (2650×1600 – Tessellation on, DoF on)
• Up to 6% in The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena (2560×1600 no AA/AF)
• Up to 9% in Unigine: Tropics (2560×1600 no AA/AF – OpenGL)
• Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Performance and Extreme Presets)
• Up to 19% with Transparency AA (1920×1200 4xTrSS – measured in Crysis)

Release Notes

Download – WinVista / Win7 32bit | WinVista / Win7 64 bit | WinXP 32bit | WinXP 64bit

BFGTech exits graphics market.

Some sad news people… after 8 years in the graphics business BFGTech sent out the message that they will pull of the graphics card market, but will continue bring new products in their other product line-ups. For GFX cards they will continue telephone, e-mail support & RMA services for the qualified warranty holders.

All we can say is best of luck to BFGTech in the future and we hope they’ll be back on in the graphics business again some time.