Important, which Catalyst version are you using?
Believe it or not, I'm using Catalyst 3.2 and Catalyst 3.2 seems to be the best
Catalyst version, even when 3.2 is 1 year old, March, 2003.
It seems that most people that have major problems, Direct3D init failures and
requiring 16 BPP just for some GFX rendering engines to init are using Catalyst 4x.