[Computer Base]ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2 Cat 9.x + GTX 295 review

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Originally Posted by STEvil

The driver is available to the public (42, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything!) : http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...6&postcount=42

ChaosminionX - I have 8.12's and 8gb right now, no problem? Maybe try setting a fixed memory address so your system only "sees" 7.9gb or something?

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He's talking about the 9.X Drivers being released to the public. The link above is to some 8.5 beta cats

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Originally Posted by jasonelmore

He's talking about the 9.X Drivers being released to the public. The link above is to some 8.5 beta cats

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73402 is 8.561.3-081217a

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so are you saying 73402 is this new 9.1 beta?

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Yes.

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???

@AbelJemka, yeah, i catch your drift, beetween touting an unreleased product vs using beta driver in review, everything is a fair game in this industry, no need to cry foul when stuffs like that happen from BOTH side of IHVs.

long live ati

Hearing good results with beta, and the delay can mean a good thing. Means AMD really wants to get this right and taking longer than the usual release Cat 9.1 on the 10th day and hope it wasn't just the holiday vacation.

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Originally Posted by STEvil

The driver is available to the public (42, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything!) : http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...6&postcount=42

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The driver is not available anywhere on the AMD site from what I can see and in that respect is not available to the public. Granted, someone with access to the AMD FTP seems to have gone and posted it on various file sharing sites but that is by no means "public".

As for the other comments regarding the beta nature of the drivers used it is as simple as this: the GTX 295 needed beta drivers for the preview or it wouldn't work. Simple as that.

On the other hand I had so many issues with the HD 4870 X2 drivers sent to us before the GTX 295 launch that I basically gave up trying to use them. They weren't even close to final and including them in a review would have been pointless at best. Calling them a "9.1" beta is like calling a Yugo a Ferrari. They are 8.12 drivers with a few bits and numerous bugs tacked on and nothing more.

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

They are 8.12 drivers with a few bits and numerous bugs tacked on and nothing more.

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so 48~70% gains in crysis is just a "bit"?

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Originally Posted by SNiiPE_DoGG

so 48~70% gains in crysis is just a "bit"?

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Coupled with artifacts and crashes at 2560 x 1600 2xAA on Vista x64? I would say yes. Not to mention driver recovery when playing NFS: Undercover at 1920 x 1200 with any kind of AA turned on. IMO, any performance increases that come with stability issues are worth less than a steaming pile of crap.

well they are beta drivers by fixing somethings they may have made other things worse :)

How much should these 9.1 Drivers help out Crossfire 4850's? Should it still be a large increase like the rest of the higher end ATI cards, since they are all based on the same GPU.