ATI Catalyst 9.7 drivers released

ATI today releases its 9.7 set of Catalyst drivers, covering HD2000 series and newer cards. The Windows Vista and 7 drivers are available now; XP will be coming tomorrow.

Changes to Catalyst Control Center are included in this release, as is ATI video encoder support for Windows 7, performance improvements for games where framerates are limited by CPU, and the usual bug fixes.

Below are your new features, performance improvements and resolved issues; check the release notes for known remaining issues if you wish. As always, uninstall the old driver set and, ideally, reboot and use a program like Driver Sweeper before installing the new set.

New Features
 
ATI Catalyst™ 9.7 – AMD’s first official unified Windows7 / Windows Vista Microsoft
WHQL certified graphics driver for the Windows 7 RTM  

•   Great gaming performance – superior performance compared to Windows Vista for single GPU configurations and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations
•   Stability – through AMD’s WHQL certified, unified Windows 7 / Windows Vista graphics driver 
•   Leadership in Innovation – support for all the Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 features and AMD ATI Catalyst  features on the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD  2000  Series of products 

ATI Catalyst™ Control Center Updates
The ATI Catalyst™ Control Center now features:

•   A newly designed Desktops & Displays Manager - enabling users to more quickly configure and arrange their displays
•   Full support for HydraVision under Windows 7

The new ATI Catalyst™ Control Center is supported under Windows 7 and Windows Vista

ATI Video encoder update – support for Windows 7

•  ATI Catalyst 9.7 introduces support for the ATI Video converter under Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit 
•  Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in ATI Catalyst™ Control Center Basic View) to achieve substantial performance improvements when transcoding video files 

Performance Improvements
 
Catalyst™ 9.7 brings performance benefits in several cases where framerates are CPU-limited. Some measured examples are:

•   Crysis - performance at very high quality preset increases by up to 8% on HD4800 series products 
•   Lost Planet Colonies - performance increases by 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing  is used on the HD4800 series products

Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating System

•   Added support for OpenGL extensions: EXT_provoking_vertex and EXT_vertex_array_bgra
•   Catalyst Control Center in some multi-display configurations Extend Desktop no longer causes the secondary display to become the primary display
•   Catalyst Control Center, "Make Primary" option no longer fails to function in some "Extended Desktop" modes
•   Opening Catalyst Control Center no longer results in an error message when using Dual Adapters with a non-ATI ASIC and ATI ASIC
•   Catalyst Control Center, HDMI configuration aspects no longer fail to launch on some systems
•   Catalyst Control Center hotkeys now toggle through all desktop modes 
•   Catalyst Control Center: Default HDTV modes can now be enabled properly
•   Catalyst Control Center duplicated display options no longeer become available in some multi-adapter configurations
•   Interlaced modes can now be applied on HDTV supported DFP panels even when forced via Catalyst Control Center
•   Confirmation dialog box now appears when applying HDTV 720p and 1080i formats; the resolution will be applied automatically
•   Catalyst Control Center, add custom modes is now available in the Digital Panel HDTV support page
•   Catalyst Control Center Advance Color page, when enabling the advanced color settings the preview window no longer blanks out
•   Catalyst Control Center Overdrive Auto-Tune no longer stops responding on some CrossFire configurations 
•   Catalyst Control Center does not show a "System restart required ... " message for some multi adapter CrossFire configurations
•   Catalyst Control Center an additional window no longer appears when running in Wizard mode
•   Catalyst Control Center tab is now available in advance Display Settings with Windows 7

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

• Displays on some HDMI devices no longer fails to scale to the full display when running at resolutions greater than 1152 x 864
• A delay no longer occurs when resuming from sleep on some system configurations
• Systems no longer become unresponsive when entering sleep mode when running Google Earth in Open GL mode
• Cyberlink Media Show Espresso no longer stops responding when transcoding some videos to WMV with hardware decode enabled
• Resolved frames drops when playing Blu-ray video with PowerDVD8
• Avivo video converter/transcoder generic image quality fixes
• Catalyst Control Center CrossFire configuration options now are displayed on subsequent system restart 
• Disabling and re-enabling CrossFire no longer causes flickering on certain direct 3D applications running in full screen
• Cybelink Media Show Espresso no longer show corruption when transcoded to ipod touch or PSP devices formats

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

• Catalyst Control Center image scaling options, "Maintain aspect ratio" and "Use centered timings" now function on DVI displays
• Catalyst Control Center, the Scaling Option is available on HDMI and Component Video configurations
• Catalyst Control Center, system configurations CrossFire does not become disabled on system restart

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System

• On some systems with both component video display and a secondary display, it is now possible to duplicate the displays using the display settings
• Playing back Blu-ray content in extended desktop no longer switches to primary display after unplugging the secondary display
• Catalyst Control Center, on some clone mode configuration with a TV, setting the TV Image Quality does not cause the primary display to become disabled on restart
• On some Clone mode configurations restoring from hibernate no longer causes the displays to switch to extended mode
• Restricting the maximum refresh rate and resolution via Catalyst Control Center no longer fails to apply
• Interlaced modes are now listed in the "List all Modes" window with HDTV supported DFP panels
• Catalyst Control Center, "Scaling Options" are available in HDTV modes
• HDTV modes no longer fail to appear in the "Display Properties", "list all modes" settings
• Catalyst Control Center: System no longer fails to set Component Video modes
• Catalyst Control Center no longer reports Crossfire as disabled for some quad crossfire configurations
• DVD playback video no longer fails to render when played on a secondary display
• Some system configurations now allow resolution switching when configured in clone mode with a TV display
• The login screen is centered after a display reconfiguration when the system is in standby
• Power Cinema no longer needs to be launched twice to start Blu-ray playback
• Color corruption no longer occurs when playing back some interlaced video content
• After hot-unplugging a digital display from a multi-display configuration, the current display settings now refresh