Latest ATI FirePro™ Graphics Driver claims Application Performance Increase Up To 20 Percent

Driver Version 8.702 Enables Real-Time Photoshop® CS4 Workflows, and Support for Stereo 3D and DisplayPort Audio.

SUNNYVALE, Calif — AMD today announced professional graphics users can access several new ATI FirePro™ graphics driver features designed to accelerate application performance and enhance reliability. Available for download, version 8.702 of the ATI FirePro™ graphics driver incorporates tremendous application tuning efforts, resulting in significant performance improvements − more than 20 percent –for Dassault Systèmes CATIA, Autodesk® 3ds Max® and PTC® ProENGINEER® users, for example1.

“With more than 20 percent performance improvement for many industry leading applications, this new performance driver increases the value for both existing and new ATI FirePro users,” said Janet Matsuda, senior director, AMD Professional Graphics. “Certified on more than 90 professional applications, ATI FirePro graphics drivers provide the right combination of application performance, reliability and feature support today’s professional need.”

Key features of the ATI FirePro graphics driver:

* Compared to previous drivers, version 8.702 provides Dassault Systèmes CATIA users more than 25 percent performance improvement, and Autodesk 3ds Max and PTC Pro/Engineer users more than 20 percent performance improvement1.
* Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 users can now render images with 10-bit2 per component color, helping provide exact representation of colors between Photoshop and their 10-bit display, as well as the ability to maintain an enhanced end-to-end 10-bit color workflow.
* In addition to current support of numerous active, passive and autostereoscopic displays, blue-line stereo3 for synchronizing 3D glasses is now supported.
* DisplayPort audio is now enabled on select ATI FirePro professional graphics cards, with support for 5.1 Dolby Digital and 5.1 DTS surround sound as well as 8-channel and 2-channel uncompressed audio4.

Later this year, AMD plans to issue reliability, application performance and feature enhancements in bi-monthly driver updates for notebooks that feature ATI FirePro™ professional graphics. AMD is working closely with workstation notebook manufacturers to ensure support for this initiative.