We have just released ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux platforms on http://www.amd.com

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 Windows release include:


New Features

GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta
 This release of ATI Catalyst™ supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduce system resource utilization, and preserve battery life. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is expected to be available for download from Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com) before the end of the year. This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5800, ATI Radeon HD 5700 and ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series of products.


High Quality downscaling for video transcoding MSE
 This release of ATI Catalyst™ includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920x1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320x240 @30p - iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive.


Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems
• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
o RHEL 5.4 support
o openSUSE 11.2 early look support

Note: AMD’s DirectX 9 ATI Radeon graphics accelerators are not officially supported under Windows 7. If the user chooses to, they can install the ATI Catalyst Windows Vista graphics driver under Windows 7. Please be aware that none of the new Windows 7 graphics driver (WDDM 1.1) features are supported (as the Windows Vista level graphics driver is limited to WDDM 1.0 level support). Using the ATI Catalyst Windows Vista driver under Windows 7 is not officially supported by AMD, and as such AMD will not provide any form of customer support for users running in this configuration

WDDM 1.1 includes virtualized video memory, scheduling, cross process sharing of Direct3D surfaces, and enhanced fault tolerance. WDDM 1.0 will not support multi monitor if the graphics cards use different drivers. In other words if one is a Radeon, and one is a GeForce. Thanks to Wikipedia for this info.

ATI Catalyst™ 9.10 – AMD’s first official unified Windows7 / Windows Vista Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for the Windows 7 General Availability release
• AMD has delivered it’s first official unified WHQL certified graphics driver designed for the Windows 7 GA release
• ATI Catalyst™ 9.10 delivers a superior Windows 7 experience:
• Gaming performance – superior performance compared to Windows Vista for single GPU configurations and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations in CPU limited applications/cases
• Stability – through AMD’s WHQL certified, unified Windows 7 / Windows Vista graphics driver
• Leadership in Innovation – support for all the Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 features and AMD ATI Catalyst features on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of products
• Features the ATI Catalyst™ DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11 Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver


Super Sample Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
• This release of ATI Catalyst™ provides support for a new Anti-Aliasing method on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. Users can now experience the high level of anti-aliasing image quality using Super Sampling anti-aliasing while maintaining good performance levels.



Resolved issue high-lights
• “Ghostbusters” game no longer flickers between desktop and game play when anti-aliasing is set to 8X and game resolution is set to 2560x1600
• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" no longer causes the game to fail under ATI CrossFireX™ enabled configurations
• Severe flickering is no longer observed while running 3D games/samples on specific HDMI displays on ATI CrossFireX™ enabled systems using 3 and 4 GPU configurations
• Desktop flashing is no longer observed after driver installation and reboot with systems configured with an ATI Radeon™ product in the primary PCIe slot and an ATI Firestream product in the secondary PCIe slot
• "Combat Mission Shock Force" no longer fails after playing the game for a certain amount of time
• Underscan/Overscan settings for TV can now be applied from the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center - TV Properties Adjustments page
• Changes to the “All Settings” and “Basic Quality” pages in ATI Catalyst™ Control Center - Avivo™ Video will now be retained after reboot


Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalyst™ 9.10 release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems
• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
• Ubuntu 9.10 early look support

To be honest this is a pretty bad driver release from ATI and one of the worst I've ever tested. Not only are there no performance gains, but looking at the six pages of release notes, there's really very few fixes. This driver simply seemed like it was fast tracked so ATI could continue to offer the one every month deal that it has been doing for years and years.

Ok, so not so good then.

The ATI Catalyst 9.8 suite updates the software to version 8.64 and supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 - and therefore most Red Hat based Linux distros - as well as the current Debian based Ubuntu 9.04 known as Jaunty Jackalope. The release also supports RandR 1.2 to manage display rotation, desktop sizing and multiple display arrangement.