Jye

http://www.rage3d.com


The first new feature is probably the number one requested feature on Rage3d's now famous message boards. As a result of feedback from the Catalyst beta program this made it into the release. As we all know by now ATI drivers do not live well on systems unless all traces of older drivers are removed beforehand. In the past most people resort to uninstalling in safe mode and removing all traces of ATI that way. The new drivers have a feature called The ATI Software Uninstall Utility which does exactly what the name implies. You run this exe before you load the drivers and it removes everything related to ATI on your system including registry keys and dll's. A quick reboot is neededand then your machine is in a total fresh state ready to install the new drivers. Not only is this very handy, but it's something that is essential for graphics drivers to work properly. A hodge-podge of different dll's on a system is never good for performance.

Terry and Andrew went on to explain another new driver feature called Overdirve. The best way I can explain Overdrive is it's VVT for graphics cards. In a similar way to a cars variable valve timing which automatically adjusted to various load conditions, Overdrive uses the feedback from a thermal temperature monitor on the latest ATI 9800 xl and dynamically adjusts the clock settings on the fly. In other words, when a card is running cold, Terry claimed that a 5% increase could be achieved in performance without any user intervention and without any fear of damage to the card. I'm sure this is a feature that's going to be talked about alot in the future. Alas, older cards do not have this feature.

This is the first time I've seen a driver get an Editor's Choice award. Even we haven't done that. Must be impressive.