ATI releases Catalyst 10.7 drivers

This month ATI has released version 10.7 of the ATI catalyst driver. This is not a major update, but what caught my eye was the GPU acceleration feature for VLC media player. This update enables GPU acceleration of h.264 video content when using the VLC 1.1.1 Media Player – enabling a better user experience by consuming less system resources with either a 4000 or 5000 series GPU.

h.264 (A.K.A Advanced Video Coding) is a standard for video compression and is supported by many of the big companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Google and this means that there are going to be more video content encoded using this codec.

Here is what is new in this month’s update!

New Windows Features

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release for Microsoft Windows include:

ATI Eyefinity Technology – Enhancements for HydraVision™

  • Maximizing a window across multiple displays will now take user defined bezel compensation into account
  • Automatically adjusts window position when dragging and dropping windows to ensure title bar visibility
  • Proper dialog box placement – dialogs do not cross displays, are not hidden behind bezels, and can be designated to be shown on the users “preferred” display

Enhanced Pull-down detection

  • The Pull-down detection algorithm has been enhanced for higher visual quality on certain types of video content
  • Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of GPUs

ATI CrossFireX™ technology – support for rotated displays

  • This release of ATI Catalyst™ enables end users running supported ATI CrossFireX™ configurations to rotate their displays (single or ATI Eyefinity display configurations) and still enjoy the performance benefits of ATI CrossFireX technology

ATI Radeon™ GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 Media Player

  • Enables GPU acceleration of h.264 video content when using the VLC 1.1.1 Media Player – enabling a better user experience by consuming less system resources
  • Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series of GPU products
  • Requires VLC version 1.1.1 and later

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst driver for Linux 10.7 release include:

Support for new Linux operating systems

  • This release of ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
    • Ubuntu 10.04 production support

ATI Eyefinity support

  • ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.7 provides support for ATI Eyefinity technology under all supported Linux distributions

For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release notes.

To download the driver, click here