UPDATED: Catalyst Accelerates To 5.7

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TR: Hi Andrew, firstly could you tell our readers what is your official title with ATI and why is it that you are now stepping to the front alongside Terry [Makedon - head of ATI’s driver programme] for these announcements?

AD: My official title at ATI is Software Product Manager. I’ve been with ATI for almost 5 years now, and basically my job can be broken down into two parts. First part is totally internal to ATI – define requirements, define ATI’s software roadmap, make sure features/performance improvements/bug fixes get into each and every Catalyst release ? Second part is the external role – I’ll visit customers, press, write white papers, basically tell the world about the great things ATI’s Catalyst software can do for them. I’ve been talking to press for a few years now, but mostly in North America only, so basically I’m expanding into new territories :)

TR: Ok, good to have you with us. Let's get down to it. After the major changes introduced with the 5.6 drivers could you explain why 5.7 has followed so quickly and what you think the motivation is for users who already have 5.6 to download 5.7?

AD: That’s an easy one :) We release a new Catalyst software package every single month (the nomenclature is pretty easy – for Catalyst 5.6, the 5 stands for 2005, and the 6 stands for 6 month of the year) – we always want to ensure that our end users have the latest software features, best possible performance, and we always want to fix any bugs that might come up as quickly as we can. As well as the usual bug fixes and new features, Catalyst 5.7 included some very significant gains for certain ATI graphics cards with 64MB and 128MB of memory (I’m talking gains in the range of 50-100% at 1600x1200 6XAA, 16XAF!!)

TR: With 5.6 for the first time you introduced support for mobile graphics, when can users expect a larger number of mobility cards to be supported by these drivers? (As an owner of a laptop with Radeon 9700 graphics I’m very interested in this!)

AD: Within in the next couple of Catalyst releases all users with a ATI Mobility RADEON 9600 and above (all DirectX 9 capable hardware) will be able to install the Catalyst Mobility driver on their laptops (assuming that their laptop manufacturer has allowed ATI to include their laptops in the installer for Catalyst Mobility – for some reason some laptop manufacturers do not want a Catalyst driver that has not been internally qualified at their company being installed on their laptops)

TR: Finally, can you give us any insights into what you hope to achieve with 5.8, 5.9, and even 6.0? What are the specific targets with these drivers and what do you think still needs to be improved upon with the current drivers?

AD: These questions are always tough to answer :) But I can tell you that you’ll see some cool new features coming into the Catalyst Control Center in the next few months – there’s going to be a brand new task oriented wizard (don’t think of the typical wizard – this one is going to be really amazing), some very cool 3D, video and color control features that users are really going enjoy. Some other very cool features I just can’t mention quite yet ;). Users can also expect performance enhancements for the Catalyst driver as well as the Catalyst Control Center.

TR: Many thanks for taking time out with us Andrew, and for giving us some sneaky insights into the future.

AD: Thanks Gordon, I appreciate the opportunity to answer your questions.

So there you go, Andrew Dodd, a thoroughly nice guy. We'll look forward to hearing more from him in the future. That's all for now folks!

Link:
ATI UK

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