AMD has posted version 10.10 of its Catalyst video drivers, coinciding with its recent release of its Radeon HD 6000-series video cards.
Chief among the new features in Catalyst 10.10 is greatly expanded 3D support, by way of AMD's new HD3D technology. This allows Blu-ray 3D playback, which requires an AMD Radeon HD 6870 or 6850 video card, Blu-ray 3D player software, a 3D-capable display, and stereoscopic 3D glasses; and stereo 3D gaming when using third-party stereo 3D conversion software from Dynamic Digital Depth and iS3D, which requires a Radeon HD 5000- or 6000-series video card, a 3D display, and stereoscopic 3D glasses.
Also introduced in Catalyst 10.10 is support for AMD's Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP), which is replacing ATI Stream as its GPGPU computing technology. Video acceleration for high-definition WMV files under Windows 7 is also being added in this release, and will be supported on Radeon HD 5000-series video cards. One change is being instituted in the Catalyst Control Center: the adding of histogram-based detection to the Dynamic Contrast setting.
The Linux version of the Catalyst 10.10 driver will expand support for openSUSE 11.3 and Ubuntu 10.10.
As is usual with driver updates, Catalyst 10.10 will increase performance in certain games and applications under certain situations. Among the categories of improvements:
- Metro 2033: on single card and CrossFireX configurations on 5700- and 5800-series cards; in DirectX 10 and 11 modes on 5400-, 5500, and 5600-series cards.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat: on single-card 5800-series–card setups
- Unigine Heaven: on single-card and CrossFireX 5700- and 5800-series configurations with anti-aliasing enabled
- World in Conflict: with 5500- and 5600-series cards.
- Aliens vs. Predator benchmark: single-card and CrossFireX 5700- and 5800-series configurations; and with all 5400-, 5500-, and 5600-series cards
- Crysis Warhead: on single-card 5800-series setups with anti-aliasing enabled
- Far Cry 2: on single-card 5800-series setups
Catalyst driver updates are released monthly, and are available for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux platforms. They may be downloaded at AMD's Web site, or by the Steam download and distribution service.