AMD has announced a pre-release version of Catalyst 10.3, along with details about what to expect in the latest revision. The new driver brings a host of performance enhancements to over a dozen of today's most popular games, including Aliens vs. Predator, Call of Duty: World at War, Company of Heroes, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Dirt 2, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Resident Evil 5, World in Conflict, Wolfenstein, and many more.

Most of the titles listed only perform 10% better or less on AMD's Radeon HD 5000 and 4800 series products, but a few will see major gains. For instance, Dirt 2 should run up to 20% better with Radeon HD 5700 and 5800 cards, and up to 30% with the dual-GPU 5970.


Catalyst 10.3 has more than just the usual round of tweaks, though, and many of the new additions are for multi-screen setups. A few noteworthy features include bezel correction, individual display control for brightness, color and contrast, and stereoscopic 3D driver hooks.

You can read a more complete list of the changes after the break, or grab your download here. The mainstream WHQL-certified version of Catalyst 10.3 is planned to go live on March 24.

In addition to the key new features in ATI Catalyst™ 10.3 listed below the ATI Catalyst™ 10.3 Preview Update can provide the following performance improvements.

3DMark Vantage

* Overall scores increase by up to 8% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
* Overall scores increase by up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products

Aliens vs. Predator

* Overall performance increases 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products

Battleforge

* Improves up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Call of Duty: World at War

* Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
* Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Company of Heroes

* Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Crysis and Crysis Warhead

* Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Devil May Cry 4

* Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

DiRT 2

* Improves up to 30% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
* Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
* Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

* Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
* Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Far Cry 2

* Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2

* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat Benchmark

* Improves up to 10% with Anti-Aliasing enabled on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky

* Improves up to 2% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
* Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products

Resident Evil 5

* Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

* Improves up to 15% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
* Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Unigine Tropics

* Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products

World in Conflict

* Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
* Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
* Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Wolfenstein

* Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
* Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Note: This list is not exhaustive and more improvements are possible

Key new features in ATI Catalyst 10.3:

* ATI Catalyst™ Mobility - monthly updates for the mobile crowd

* ATI Eyefinity Technology Bezel Correction - compensate for your bezels so objects in your game move from one display to the other smoothly

* ATI Eyefinity Technology Per Display Control - adjust for differences in each individual displays brightness, color and contrast

* ATI Eyefinity Technology Multiple Display Groups - more display groups to give further control of your desktop with three displays or more connected

* ATI Eyefinity Technology Display Configuration Switching - easily switch from one display mode to another

* 3D Stereoscopic 3D driver hooks - enables 3rd party middleware vendors to bring more 3D stereoscopic gaming options