ATI Catalyst 10.6 released
The new ATI Catalyst 10.6 drivers for AMD GPUs came out Wednesday with a bunch of improvements related to Flash H.264 GPU acceleration and Linux 2D performance improvements. Unfortunately I can’t test them out with my Nvidia card but anything that improves the speed of crazy Compiz effects for some people is a good improvement in my book. If you do have an ATI card you can grab the new drivers here.
Note: If you play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 you might be disappointed if you downloaded the 10.6 drivers right when they came out. AMD accidentally turned off an optimization which was causing big performance problems. They will be releasing a Catalyst Application Profile update today to address the issue.
New Windows Features Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 Windows release includes: GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe® Flash Player 10.1
AMD GPU acceleration of Adobe® Flash Player 10.1 delivers smooth high definition video playback and reduces system resource utilization on notebook and desktop platforms featuring AMD graphics including:
- ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 and HD 5000 series Graphics
- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series (and higher) Graphics
- ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 series integrated graphics (and higher)
Video De-blocking support
Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback
Supported on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
Mosquito noise removal
Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback
Supported on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon™ HD series Graphics
New Linux Features Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.6 release includes: Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series Graphics
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon™ HD series Graphics
Support for new Linux operating systems
This release of ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
- RHEL 5.5 production support
2D performance enhancements
ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 delivers a new architecture for 2D acceleration. The new 2D architecture delivers fast windows resizing with Compiz/Visual-Effects and general 2D performance improvements in all AMD supported Linux distributions.
For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.6 release notes.