AMD Catalyst Drivers 8.12 and DeskScapes

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

Last week, AMD released an update to their Catalyst drivers, including enhancements that were added specifically for the benefit of DeskScapes users who are still running Windows XP. You should expect to see a dramatic drop in CPU usage especially for dynamic dreams.

We are encouraging all AMD card owners who are using DeskScapes to update their drivers. If you are still using Windows XP, this is a requirement.

The drivers are available for download from http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx or can be accessed directly via the Community tab from Impulse.

Chahk
Reply #1 Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:10 PM

Will give it a test drive tonight.  DS was dogging on my XP partition, taking 100% of one of the cores.  Hopefully these drivers will be an improvement.

Chahk
Reply #2 Friday, December 19, 2008 3:36 PM

Progress.  DS is now taking only 49% of one of the cores.  Still unacceptable performance though.  Everything else from OD+ to just dragging windows around is very sluggish.  ATI's got some more work to do.

Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz,
ATI Radeon X1950XT 512MB,
WinXP SP3, DX9.0c, latest ATI drivers.

Neil Banfield
Reply #3 Friday, December 19, 2008 4:55 PM

Ensure you have forced antialiasing disabled in the ATI drivers.

Also are you using video dreams?  If so try a dynamic dream (search for ovals).  Does that use a similar level of cpu?

Chahk
Reply #4 Friday, December 19, 2008 4:57 PM

All tests were done with dynamic dreams only.  Not sure about AA, will check it when I get home.

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