DX 8.1 vs. DX9

Unreal Tournament 2003

Notes

While ATI’s CATALYST 3.1 instructions call for the installation of DirectX9, these drivers (and the CATALYST 3.0 drivers) work just fine under DirectX 8.1. As you can see in our test results, it appears that the new drivers initially perform better under DX8.1 in the flyby test, but as the resolution increases we see no performance difference (including botmatch). Therefore, if everything is running just fine for you under DX8, we see no real reason to upgrade to DX9 unless you really want to check out the technology demos and screensavers ATI has provided on its website.