ATI Catalyst 5.13 will be the first step towards unleashing AVIVO

ATI has as you know released 12 Catalyst drivers this year, one for each month. The twelth, Catalyst 5.12, brought some nice faetures such as dual core optimizations and more. These were however not the last drivers of this year, which is kind of a surprise. On December 22 ATI is expected to release Catalyst 5.13 and it will bring features that will change the X1000 family’s position on the multimedia market. Catalyst 5.13 is namely the first big step towards unleashing the video features that are available through the architecture’s AVIVO technology and at Firingsquad they’ve peaked at what the new drivers does for the X1800 series’ video handling.

They’ve posted a seuel to its video comparison article between ATI, NVIDIA and XGI, where ATI somewhat suprising had to leave the comparison with the lowest grade of the three. The video features such as linear filtering and noise reduction was simply inferior to the competition. ATI wasn’t late with supplying Firingsquad with its coming Catalyst 5.13 drivers and the roles haven’t changed, but ATI has in one move completely turned the playing field upside down. Just with a driver update which unleashes some of the features in AVIVO ATI has created a system which can measure up to dedicted video processors in the $2500 category! A very interesting development which should really give ATI a push in the right direction, especially on the HTPC market.

:: Read on at Firingsquad