10 Replies Latest reply: Sep 3, 2011 3:46 PM by Noel Carboni RSS

    Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?

    Noel Carboni Community Member

      I've still got 11.7 installed because its stability seems golden, and I've had less time lately to experiment.

       

      If you've updated to 11.8, would you be willing to share your experience with Photoshop?  Does everything seem to work?

       

      -Noel

        • 1. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
          icfm Community Member

          No problems here so far under Windows 7 64-bit with the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS5.1.

           

          (I am using the driver-only installer from ATI, rather than the whole Catalyst suite.)

          • 2. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
            Noel Carboni Community Member

            Thanks.  I suppose I'll give it a shot then.

             

            -Noel

            • 3. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
              Noel Carboni Community Member

              I went ahead and installed Catalyst 11.8 last night.

               

              This morning I just did some pretty basic Photoshop work, and got into a situation where Photoshop CS5 x64 12.0.4 was not updating the display unless I zoomed in or out.  My OpenGL setting is Advanced mode, and I have a VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 5670 1 GB card.

               

              Given a month and a half with Catalyst 11.7 working perfectly on this setup, my initial feeling is that Catalyst 11.8 may have broken something with Photoshop in its use of OpenGL in advanced mode.  However, I'm going to test it a bit more before downgrading the driver just to see if it happens again.

               

              For the time being, I advise ATI video card users to stay with Catalyst 11.7.

               

              -Noel

              • 4. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                Noel Carboni Community Member

                For the time being, I advise ATI video card users to stay with Catalyst 11.7.

                 

                 

                Confirmed!

                 

                I've just been through some testing and I found some definite buffer problems with the Catalyst 11.8 64 bit driver on Windows 7 x64, possibly tied to 16 bit data depths.  This causes problems in both Photoshop CS5 x64 and in my own OpenGL software.  Dropping back to 11.7 cures them.

                 

                Do NOT install Catalyst 11.8.  Use Catalyst 11.7 instead.

                 

                I really wish these guys would put a little more effort into getting their releases right.  They've really gone downhill this year.  Good versions for 2011 so far:  11.1, 11.2, 11.7.

                 

                -Noel

                • 5. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                  Hudechrome Community Member

                  Nice to have that feedback, Noel.

                  • 6. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                    icfm Community Member

                    Sorry to hear it didn't work for you.

                     

                    Can you post a link to a PSD file you were working on? I could try it here and report back.

                    • 7. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                      Noel Carboni Community Member

                      I couldn't get it to fail consistently, but after converting a Canon 40D raw file to a 16 bits/channel image, then just doing a few operations (crop, some color balancing, downsampling), suddenly I was seeing failures to update the display.  I could do things like click on a color channel, and the channels panel would show the eyeball and highlight on e.g., red only, but the display would still be in color - until I zoomed (e.g., with Ctrl + and Ctrl -).

                       

                      When I ran one of my own OpenGL-based plug-ins, in which I know exactly what functions of OpenGL are being used, I saw corruption (things in the wrong places on the screen) when combining texture buffers into frame buffers.  This is very well validated and tested code on many prior Catalyst versions, so I am convinced that Catalyst 11.8 is at fault, and in fact I could not reproduce any problems upon moving back to 11.7.

                       

                      Now, it's possible the 11.8 driver release is only failing on certain specific video cards - like I said, mines a Radeon HD 5670.  I can see how things might be wrong in code that's not common.

                       

                      Edit, oh, and by the way just to be sure I wiped out Photoshop's preferences, so as to start with fresh settings.

                       

                      -Noel

                      • 8. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                        icfm Community Member

                        Thanks for explaining in more detail.

                         

                        For what it's worth, my card is a Radeon HD 4870. I'll certainly post back here if I experience redraw issues like you describe.

                        • 9. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                          Noel Carboni Community Member

                          I hope it continues to work for you.  I believe the 4870 has a different chipset than the x670 models.

                           

                          -Noel

                          • 10. Re: Anyone Using ATI Catalyst 11.8?
                            Hudechrome Community Member

                            Back a couple of weeks, I began to see some problems with my card, the same as Noel's, using version 7, and was going to mention it here, but I set up to reproduce it and it would not. It was the same as what I saw in nVidia, which messed with the pointer position while updating a filter on a large file taking several seconds to allow the pointer to move during the update. It isn't doing that now, so it's wait and see. I did something different today but I don't know what.