Catalyst 7.4 is the fourth graphics card driver from AMD this year and this latest version is now available with all of the major platforms; Windows Vista, Windows XP and Linux. The biggest updates are under Windows Vista where both AMD and NVIDIA still have a lot to do before it will be up to par with the older Windows drivers. Catalyst 7.4 contains a lot of goodies as AMD claims to have improved the performance of its Radeon X1000-based graphics cards significantly with some applications. AMD says that the performance may improve up to 15% in games like Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey, but high-end cards can enjoy improvements of up to 30% in both single and CrossFire configurations.
The games mentioned are all based on OpenGL and its primarily the OpenGL support that have been lacking under Windows Vista. It’s good to see that AMD is starting to catch up, and at the same time it has introduced Avivo Video Converter for Windows Vista 32-bit.
The Avivo Video Converter found within the Catalyst™ Control Center, allows the user to select the input file, and output format, along with the quality level and file location. The Avivo. Video Converter accepts a wide variety of file formats as a source, and outputs to file formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4/DivX, WMA, H.264/AVC and more.
More information about the Catalyst 7.4 driver is available at ati.amd.com.
