14 DAY TRIAL // ...who still enjoy a good DirectX game played on an Ati Radeon. Maybe I should have called it AMD Radeon but since I'm a fan of old names, I'll let it live for a while. Moreover it seems that AMD likes old names too since they are also calling it Ati Catalyst 7.5 and not AMD Catalyst 7.5. But let's get going, shall we?
On June the 1st, AMD released the latest drivers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Due to the incompatibilities related to the hardware layer of the drivers, the 7.5 Series is still limited to Radeon 9500 or higher. As a result, AMD has no driver support for non-DirectX 9 cards (such as the 9200/9250 series).
The new ATI Catalyst 7.5 drivers have suffered some major improvements over the latest version, but probably the most expected one relates to DirectX 10 support for Ati Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics cards in Windows Vista. Evidently, DirectX 10 support is available on single and multi-GPU configurations, so Crossfire users should be pretty happy if they possess 2 HD 2900 XT cards.
Unfortunately there is no DirectX 10 support for Windows XP (and that's a pity since Vista still trails behind XP in framerates and general gameplay). AMD's new drivers also add support for the second-generation ATI Theater 650 line. And that could come in handy since the new drivers also come with major improvements regarding the broadcast quality.
Major issues in several games have also been addressed so X19xx users will see more framerates in games such as Quake 4, Doom 3 and Prey due to the fact that 7.5 drivers have an improved OpenGL layer. You can download the drivers directly from Softpedia, the mirrors for Windows XP and Vista are here and here.