For our tests we used a Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 running at 3.6 GHz on a Gigabyte X48-DQ6 with Intel's X48 chipset that was equipped with 2x 2,048 MiByte DDR2 memory (5-5-5-18). An Enermax Modu82+ PSU delivers the required energy. Each driver was tested with a Radeon HD 4870/512 and a Radeon HD 3870/512.

Catalyst 8.9: What's new?
First of all we see a little change in the Catalyst Control Center. If you activated adaptive anti-aliasing (AAA) in any AMD driver up to the Catalyst 8.7 you could choose between multi- or supersampling and both modes offered additional options. Since the driver 8.8 this isn't possible anymore: If you activate AAA only Quality or Performance can be selected - the driver decides if SSAA or MSAA is used. This sounds like a step into the wrong direction, but actually the manual switching between super- and multisampling has never been reliable.

Catalyst 8.10 forecast
Just recently a Release Candidate of the Catalyst 8.10 (unofficially) found its way to the internet. The driver has the internal serial number 8.450 and therefore seems to be quite new. When we had our tests nearly finished we decided to check the new driver too - and it was worth it.

With the Catalyst 8.10 the Control Center gets a new option: In the menu "Overdrive”, the OC menu, you can now manually control the fan speed. In our tests this worked fine on Windows XP x86 and Vista x64. The only problem: The menu is only visible with a single card of the HD 4000 series. With an HD 3870 and a 2900 XT the CCC didn't offer the option. Modding the Windows registry could help you there.