8.8 is working flawlessly... err... without any crash type issues
I built a new htpc for my parents and threw vista business x64 on it for giggles. I got an amd 780 board (radeon 3200 gfx built in), athlon x2 5000+ (BE for lower temps) and.... a radeon 3450 card!
I know, I'm insane... but I wanted to see if the hybrid crossfire would work... and honestly, it does a pretty nice job of it. I don't expect my parents to play Crysis or anything... but if I'm stuck at their place, I can play some older games on their TV
Of course, seeing that ati enabled hybrid crossfire in XP kinda ticks me off... it's pretty tempting to go buy an oem copy of XP MCE for 100$ from the 'egg.
The one odd issue I'm having is that the overscan on vista doesn't seem to work as well as in xp. The tv is native 1080p, but the driver won't use its under/overscan. I have to go and switch the resolution to the "1080p optimized" .. which doesn't quite fill the tv. I have my own htpc next to it with a radeon 3870 (xp sp3/cat 8.8) and it fills the screen 100% at 1920x1080. *grumble*
If anybody is curious, the 'rents htpc config (links):
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI mATX ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450
4gb DDR2-800 (laying around) / 750GB Seagate HD / Antec NSK 2400 case / Antec 350w Basiq PSU
The system is -silent- and it's powerful enough to play HD content once you've set up all the correct codecs.