i,m yet to try them as i am loving the OTHER beta drivers but i,ll throw these on and try my tests again.
ATI Catalyst™ 10.7a beta driver features:
?Starcraft II: Support for Anti-Aliasing through the ATI Catalyst Control Center when using a Windows® 7, Windows Vista® or Windows XP based system with an:
?ATI Radeon™ HD 5xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
?ATI Radeon HD 4xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
?ATI Radeon HD 3xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
?ATI Radeon HD 2xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
?Improved performance for Quad ATI CrossFireX™ for Eyefinity™ supported configurations
Don’t forget to grab the right batch and avivo drivers which still ahve that stupid marketing page to dig through.
So far for me on a 5770 and a 5450 these drivers are workign fine, can’t say they are great or worse yet as haven’t done a lot of testing BUT thy installed perfectly over the top of the 10.5 and 10.6 preview drivers without a hitch.
Video playback wise they definately see to work with Total meda theatre 3 blu ray edition better, especially with the new 3d video plugin just need som ebetter galsses and a beter monitor.
Exerpt of chnages.
I have now got a 5870 vapor-x and it runs fine so far on these drivers.
setting up avivo is a bit of a challenge with the new features especially getting deblocking and noise reduction right.
Apart from this all game sso far run very well especially battlefield bad compamy 2(load times are instant no lag in a single card setup for me)
can’t wait for the catalyst 10.7 though
New Windows Features
Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 Windows release includes:
GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe® Flash Player 10.1
AMD GPU acceleration of Adobe® Flash Player 10.1 delivers smooth high definition video playback and reduces system resource utilization on notebook and desktop platforms featuring AMD graphics including:
ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 and HD 5000 series Graphics
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series (and higher) Graphics
ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 series integrated graphics (and higher)
Video De-blocking support
Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback
Supported on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
Mosquito noise removal
Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback
Supported on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon™ HD series Graphics
New Linux Features
Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.6 release includes:
Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon™ HD series Graphics
Support for new Linux operating systems
This release of ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
RHEL 5.5 production support
2D performance enhancements
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers a new architecture for 2D acceleration. The new 2D architecture delivers fast windows resizing with Compiz/Visual-Effects and general 2D performance improvements in all AMD supported Linux distributions.
For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 release notes.
Itsnotcheating australia has changed the setup again so now you get office 2010(office14) pro version for $99 BUT it is the acedemic version.
All well and good for the students it is aimed at but the idea of education is to go out…get a job…start a buisness etc.
So going from a full retail commercial use ultimate 2007 office to a acedemic use only whilst enrolled/emplyed as teacher etc is in my opinion both a backward step and a slap in the face PLUS it costs more.
Office 2010 in the rela world is actually cheaper than 2007 so why is this dearer…
Anywho, it is not all doom and gloom .
They ahve dropped the price of Windows 7 proffesional back to $49.95 for a 32 or 64 bit copy so thats good news.
Oh and as a side note if you were lucky enough to buy during the free upgrade period AND activate it then the free office 2010 upgrade is the commercial 2010 proffesional edition.
now the added on/off function i was a bit hmm about what that was (power to charge phone when computer off?) then once i loaded it it seems shizzle has moved.
turbo boost is now in MIT and NOW you can choose the level 12/13/14/16.5 e.g
and NOW turbo boost works when overclocked
mine is now testing at 290/14 with boost set to limit at 15 for 4334
problem is it seems to need a few more volts…well quite afew but again so far hasn’t caused a problem and has given it a nice push especialy in none multi threaded apps like single core cinebench.
i,ll post some screens later when i finished (i,m typing this wjile running prime )
temsp aren’t foing over 48( more likely 58) but then i only have a dinky ayuwn tower cooler with a pull fan.
so check the gigabyte site for updates peoples..boost whilst overclocked is fun
OK there is a hard temp limit of 62 degrees on these things…too many volts= too much temp, 30 minutes into prime it tipped 52 degrees in AOD and then POP off she went so AOD temps are +10 for future reference.
Started back up fine and now trying with less volts
click to view
Ok grabbed a new toy to replace the aging Q6600, a nice shiny T1055 phenom 6 core beast.
A cheap gigabyte 770tUD3P ddr3 motherboard and 8 gig of gskill ripjaws.
Windows 7 pro X64 (old installation, didn’t even format, really liking windows 7)
HD4870 1 gig HIS @790/925
Memory is running at 1600 9 9 9 24 (bit loose but early days)
Stock heatsink and fan Now using a Awyun V8 tower cooler on the cpu and video card is stock cooling.
Well worth the money.
Big improvement over the q6600 even with 8 Gig of ram(which i have again), and it was no slouch even by todays standards.
These $250 dollar 6 core chips though are brilliant.
a few screenshots of a couple of benches i did at 3360(turbo takes the cores to around 4 ghz when needed unless under full load then they lock to 3360)
Other things to note was testing farcry2 i noticed a very nice boost in performance, not so much huge FPS jumps BUT very very much smoother throughout.
Also UT3 had a large improvement overall jumping a good 10fps in my torture test and spiking a good 20 plus fps maximum.
Now this is with an overclocked chip BUIT stock cooler, stock volts, basically just throwing the bus speed up and the memory down a touch to level it out.
Prime and amd overdrive and gaming stable.
Thats it for now i,ll throw some more details later
*UPDATE*
Overclocked to 3500mhz and 4000mhz now turbo still on
still stock volts
ram now running at 1666 9 9 9 24
Quite a boost
UPDATE
Fixed issues with having no temp sensors working, seems ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration ) screws around when turned on with a Phenom II or these X6 chips.
Turned it of and viola
and updated cinebench 11.5 results including single core which really shows the turbo boost kicking in, especially whilst doing other tasks.
I just recieved the email telling me that i am eligable for the Win7 ultimate $29 upgrade offer based on my purchase of windows vista ultimate from itsnotcheating for $80
Now in anyones book windows 7 ultimate retail upgrade for total of $110 is a bargain.
So if you are in australia and qualify
Tafe students and employees and university of course then it it is worth both the Office 2007 and vista ultimate
I play this on 2 computers one witha ATI 4850 and X2 4800 and one with a 9800pro and an old xp 2600.
The 9800 pro does struggle but it is playable.
The 4850 eats the game alive with everything maxxed out, so you do not need a massive system for this.
Question
What are the minimum system requirements for The Sims 3?
Answer
Minimum system requirements for The Sims 3:
Windows XP
Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
1 GB RAM
At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
128 MB video card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
Windows Vista
Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
1.5 GB RAM
At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
128 MB video card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:
Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above
2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
0.5 GB additional RAM
Mac System Requirements
Mac OS 10.5.7 Leopard or higher
Intel Core Duo Processor
2 GB of RAM
At least 6.5 free hard drive space, with at least 1GB additional space for custom content
ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
Supported video cards: ATI Radeon™ series X1600, X1900, HD 2400, HD 2600, HD 3870, HD 4850, HD 4870; NVIDIA GeForce series 7300, 7600, 8600, 8800, 9400M, 9600M GT, GT 120, GT 130; Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) GMA 3-Series. This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems, or the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards. Laptop version of these chipsets may work but are not supported.
Supported Video Cards
NVIDIA GeForce series
FX 5900, FX 5950
6200, 6500, 6600, 6800,
7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
8400, 8500, 8600, 8800
9600, 9800, GTX 260, GTX 280
Laptop versions of these chipsets may work, but may run comparatively slower. Standalone cards that are installed in vanilla PCI slots (not PCIe or PCIx or AGP), such as some GeForce FX variants, will perform poorly. Intel integrated chipsets featuring underclocked parts will not perform adequately.
Integrated chipsets such as the ATI Xpress and the NVIDIA TurboCache variants will have low settings selected, but should run satisfactorily.
The NVIDIA GeForce FX series is unsupported under Vista.
Note: Attempting to play the game using video hardware that isn’t listed above may result in reduced performance, graphical issues or cause the game to not run at all.
gameplay
The game play of Sims 3 is exciting for the fans of their previous games. The controls are in the same style but with new features and the lifestyles if you’r sims are more exciting than ever.
Graphics
The graphics of this game have improved and have a far better look to the last Sims. This latest game gives a more detailed look to you’r sims and also the their suroundings, even the water has a shine to it.
My thoughts
This latest instalment of the Sims saga is in my opinion the best one manly for its more detailed and exotic way of gameplay.
just need som ebetter galsses and a beter monitor.
