Catalyst 7.1 is the first official Windows Vista driver from AMD/ATI. Catalyst 7.1 has been WHQL certified and comes with a load of interesting functions, but what most people is interested in is the performance of Microsoft’s new operating system. There are already a couple of articles which goes in depth with AMD/ATI’s first official Vista driver and in benchmarks at Firingsquad and TweakTown we can see that a lot has happened since the beta drivers. There are still some games which suffers from problems, but several games actually performs considerably better in Windows Vista than Windows XP.
AMD/ATI seems to be on the right track with its Vista-based Catalyst drivers and even if there are a lot of things to improve, such as the new OpenGL support, Catalyst 7.1 seems to be a good start and a well working foundation for most Vista users. The new driver can be found in our file archive by following the links below.
– Catalyst 7.1 CCC (Windows Vista 32-bit, 38.7MB)
– Catalyst 7.1 CCC (Windows Vista 64-bit, 48.8MB)
Highlights of the Windows Vista Catalyst 7.1 release include: New features
Blu-ray and HD DVD playback
• Catalyst 7.1 introduces the ability to playback Blu-ray and HD DVD protected high definition content under Windows Vista 32-bit edition (support for Windows Vista 64-bit edition will be available in a future Catalyst release), when used in combination with a software content player from vendors such as Cyberlink or Intervideo and an ATI Radeon X1000 series graphics accelerator (with HDCP support). Note: an HDCP ready Display is also required.
Crossfire support under Windows Vista
• Catalyst 7.1 introduces Crossfire support for the entire ATI Radeon X1000 product series under Microsoft Vista. Users will see significant performance gains in a number of applications when running in Crossfire mode under Windows Vista. (Initially available for Direct3D only, coming soon in a future Catalyst release for OpenGL)
Native OpenGL Windows Vista support
• Catalyst 7.1 introduces native support for OpenGL, delivering a number of OpenGL application performance gains over the previously released AMD Vista RTM driver (8.31.100.3.2.1). Future Catalyst releases will include further OpenGL optimizations to further enhance performance of Vista OpenGL applications
Catalyst Install Manager for Windows Vista
• Catalyst 7.1 provides Microsoft Vista users with a new ATI Radeon graphics installer that will help users more easily update and install ATI Catalyst software. Users will also experience a significant improvement in install and un-install times of ATI Catalyst software components.
New Catalyst Control Center
• Catalyst 7.1 introduces a brand new version of the Catalyst Control Center for Windows Vista, which delivers a number of significant enhancements:
o Significant performance gains; Catalyst Control Center start-up time has been substantially reduced, and overall responsiveness has improved.
o Reduced system resource usage
o New 3D preview – significantly improves the ability for users to understand the benefits of enabling the many Catalyst features of their ATI Radeon graphics accelerator
o Increased stability
o Native Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit support
