Final Thoughts

It comes as no surprise that there's very little performance improvements when it comes to looking at the FPS. In saying that, there's a bit of movement for the HD 5850 in some areas and slightly more for the HD 5870. The main reason we didn't expect a whole lot from the driver was because the Catalyst team has probably no doubt been working hard on creating a stable driver for the HD 5970.

If you're a HD 5770 user we would recommend that you move off the beta and onto the official WHQL driver for the simple fact that it's an official one. If you're also on a HD 5800 series model you may as well make the jump; there's no negative performance effects in our tests and a few positive ones to be seen.

If that's not enough to make you move over, there are a few new features included on the latest drivers. Of course, there's also that typical lineup of bug fixes that are always included with a new set.

While there's nothing to really get excited about with this particular driver, we do have to give some big props to the driver team for creating a wonderful HD 5970 driver. You can know that if you have a HD 5970 or if you're lucky enough to have two, you will see some simply fantastic performance from the setup.

As always, if you've got a different operating system, card or game and you're seeing some results worth mentioning, make sure you drop us a line in our forums. Next month should mark the final 9 series Catalyst driver from ATI and we hope that Santa in the red suit is bringing us something to get excited about this holiday season.

Until next month, may all your frame rates be high and your games good fun!