ATI Catalyst 5.9 Performance Analysis

Final Thoughts

After all is said and done, we have a slight increase in our higher end cards this time around and one would tend to assume that this is due to the Radeon X1800 series (R520) coming out soon as ATI are going to squeeze as much performance out as possible.

Gigabyte RADEON X700 Pro

When reading the release notes we didn't think it was going to be much more then another bug fix driver with a load of fixes being concentrated on in the Catalyst Control Center. While we wouldn't say this is one of the best releases as of late, we would say it's one of the more notable ones as it's nice to see a few extra (free) frames and 3DMarks on the higher end cards and the newly released X550 also gets a slight bump in performance.

This driver is certainly worth using - tons of fixes and worthwhile performance increases have been seen. If you haven't already downloaded it, head over to ATI (links below) and make your way to their download page. You can let us know your opinions about the new driver in our forums, if you wish.

- ATI Catalyst drivers can be downloaded here from the ATI website and our ATI Catalyst driver installation guide is here which explains how to properly install and uninstall VGA drivers