ATI Catalyst 9.7 Vista Driver Analysis

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Introduction

I had to check the Game.AMD website the other day to make sure I didn't miss the email about the release of the latest Catalyst drivers. As I expected, when I checked the website there wasn't a new driver. A few days later, however, and that email came through saying a new driver set had been released.

While running a bit late this month, the AMD team finally managed to get a new driver out. This month also saw the release of Windows 7 to manufacturers and over the coming months we'll be integrating the new operating system into our benchmark line-up.

Before we get stuck into the benchmarks, let's have a quick look at the expected performance improvements to see what's going on.

Performance Improvements

Crysis - performance at very high quality preset increases by up to 8% on HD4800 series products

Lost Planet Colonies - performance increases by 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing is used on the HD4800 series products