ATI Catalyst 10.6 Released

By Marcus Yam
published

Get your driver refresh here.

AMD has released the Catalyst 10.6 drivers for those running on ATI Radeon HD 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 series desktop cards and Radeon HD 3000 and 4000 series IGPs.

Grab the download right here.

New features - GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 - Video De-blocking supportReduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback (for users of Radeon HD 5000 series cards) - Mosquito noise reductionReduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback (for users of Radeon HD 5000 series cards) - Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 (OpenGL 4.0 supported by Radeon HD 5000 series only) Performance improvements - 3DMark VantageOverall scores improve up to 5% on a single ATI Radeon HD 5970 - Batman: Arkham AsylumPerformance improves up to 5% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 series cardsPerformance improves up to 10% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations - Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 BenchmarkPerformance improves up to 4% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cardsPerformance improves up to 10% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurationsPerformance improves up to 3% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards - Company of Heroes - DX10Performance improves up to 7% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cardsPerformance improves up to 5% with single card and CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations - Crysis WarheadCrossFire performance improves by up to 7% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series cards - DiRT 2 - DX9Performance improves up to 10% on single card ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cardsPerformance improves up to 10% on single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurationsPerformance improves up to 4% on single card ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards - The Chronicles of Riddick - Assault on Dark AthenaPerformance improves up to 15% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cardsPerformance improves up to 13% on CrossFire and single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurationsPerformance improves up to 8% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards - Unigine TropicsCrossFire performance improves by up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series cards - World in ConflictPerformance improves up to 6% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cardsPerformance improves up to 8% on CrossFire and single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations - WolfensteinPerformance improves up to 18% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cardsPerformance improves up to 18% on CrossFire and single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurationsPerformance improves up to 11% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
43 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ragnar-Kon
    Like the OpenGL support. And those are some nice performance increase numbers. Shame I don't play any of those games...
    Reply
  • tramit
    Yay crossfire improvements.... I just need to pick up a second card first...
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    Mosquito noise reduction

    Wow, video cards can repel mosquitoes now?! talk about innovation, GO ATI! forget onboard audio, nVidia needs to get on this ASAP!
    Reply
  • rmicro1
    Can anyone confirm if the idle speed is still ramped up from the last release? I remember they increased clock frequency on idle to prevent the flicker on dual screens but this affected single screen setups as well and increased power consumption. I didn't upgrade because of this as my machine idles much of the day and I like the very low idle consumption.
    Reply
  • avatar_raq
    Finally, ATI guys did some improvement in CF scaling,although I believe it doesn't catch up to nVIDIA's SLI scaling yet!! Come on ATI, give me better drivers and I'll buy another 5870..But first improve the performance and CF scaling in metro2033 and other games that matter today!!
    Reply
  • joebob2000
    Will Catalyst 10.6 support HDMI audio in Linux? If no, they can keep it! LOLz
    Reply
  • rocket_sauce
    I like how they included the "up to x%" but that could still mean 0%...can anyone confirm any of these percentages?
    Reply
  • tokenz
    joebob2000Will Catalyst 10.6 support HDMI audio in Linux? If no, they can keep it! LOLz
    Tell me what cards do support hdmi audio in Linux? None that I am aware of. So guess you are going to be without a video card for a while.
    Reply
  • tony singh
    Looks like no more improvements for hd 4000 series from now on. The champ may have matured..
    Reply
  • nahdogg
    Anyone in the same boat as me running on 8.6 mobility drivers that Dell has available? Anyway to use these on a laptop with a 3650 card?
    Reply