ATI Catalyst 10.4 drivers released

ATI have just released ATI Catalyst™ 10.4 for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux. One of the features that i am quite excited about to see supported is H.264 Level 5.1 support. I know this will make a lot of high-definition media enthusiasts happy as that will now be hardware accelerated.

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.4 Windows release include:

Performance improvements

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky

o Improves up to 6% with ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics products
o Improves up to 3% with ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 graphics products
o Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series products

New Features

ATI Catalyst – Video enhancements

* H.264 Level 5.1 support
o ATI Catalyst™ can now playback 5.1 level streams on all support players
o Allows for playback of high resolutions (4Kx2K)
* Mosquito noise removal
o Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback .
o Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series of products

AMD video transcoding updates

* This release of ATI Catalyst™ provides enhanced support for the Windows 7 Drag and Drop video converter
o Performance improvements
o New formats supported (H.264 file formats – MTS and WMV9 Complex profile interlaced content)
o ATI Catalyst™ Control Center option for enabling/disabling GPU acceleration
* Support for the ATI Video converter is now available in the advanced view of the ATI Catalyst Control Center

Resolved Issues: Highlights

* Desktop mouse cursor will no longer intermittently appear enlarged
* Pressing the “Page Down” button while configuring the last display in Eyefinity group will now properly switch to the next display instead of closing the bezel user interface
* Shortcut keys to configure the bezel now functions properly
* “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” maps no longer takes unusually long to load for ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
* Performance on 2D applications and benchmarks has now been fixed
* Flashing no longer visible in “Shattered Horizon” game with CrossFire™ enabled
* Changing in-game resolution in “Alien vs. Predator” no longer causes screen flickering under multi-GPU configuration
* Tint setting under Catalyst Control Center – Basic Color now displays smooth transition when adjusted for Blu-ray playback
* In-game anti-alias now functions properly when other in-game options like Volumetric Effects are enabled in “Empire: Total War” and “Napoleon: Total War”games
* Flickering corruption and flashing textures are no longer visible in “Battlefield 2: Bad Company”

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