AMD releases new ATI Catalyst Drivers and promises Mobility Radeon updates

AMD has announced several new ATI Catalyst graphics driver features designed to enable higher performance, stability and a more intuitive computing experience for ATI Radeon graphics customers.

Two ATI Catalyst driver updates unlock the new features, the first coming today in ATI Catalyst update, version 10.2, and the second scheduled for release in March.

“As the first and, to date, only company to provide DirectX 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, AMD continues to demonstrate our commitment to innovation in graphics,” said Ben Bar-Haim, corporate vice-president, Software, AMD. “Our monthly ATI Catalyst driver updates further illustrate that commitment as we focus on continually enabling greater performance, even more rock solid stability, and intuitive, innovative features.”

“The visual experience delivered by today’s personal computers is made possible as much by the driver software layer as it is by the tremendous feature set and performance of the latest graphics cards”, said Jon Peddie, founder, Jon Peddie Research. “The AMD Graphics Division has internalized this and has created a centre of excellence around driver updates, bringing customers monthly improvements and features in addition to added stability and performance.”

Key features of ATI Catalyst graphics drivers, version 10.2 include better game performance with Game Profiles that help optimize performance. AMD is focusing its efforts to provide access to game profiles when a new game launches and AMD plans to post a separate executable file on AMD.com that users can install to get access to the latest application profiles for improved performance.

For the next release of the the ATI Catalyst graphics drivers version 10.3, scheduled for release in March, 2010, the company is promising monthly updates for mobile users. AMD plans to issue stability, performance and feature enhancements in monthly ATI Catalyst driver updates for Windows 7 and Windows Vista-based notebooks that feature ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000 and HD 5000 series premium graphics processors.

AMD is working closely with most major notebook manufacturers to ensure broad support for this initiative.