[PR] “Best Ever” AMD Catalyst™ Software Release Continues AMD’s Reputation as the Industry’s Most Stable and Reliable Graphics Experience

New user interface designed to make customization of image quality and features such as AMD Eyefinity technology easier than ever before

SUNNYVALE, Calif.  — Dec. 13, 2010 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced AMD Catalyst™ graphics drivers have been independently verified as providing the most stable and reliable experience in the industry, and introduced an intuitive  user interface. The new user interface is available for the full suite of AMD Radeon™ drivers supporting desktop, notebook and chipset graphics products. With support for Windows^® 7 and Windows^® Vista operating systems, the new AMD Catalyst™ drivers enable industry-leading stability, advanced performance and superior usability and simplicity.

“The AMD Catalyst software updates we are announcing today help make the industry’s best graphics solutions perform even better, while continuing to offer the highest level of stability and reliability,” said Ben Bar-Haim, corporate vice president of software, AMD Products Group. “Today’s driver release brings significant enhancements to the user interface, making it more intuitive than ever for users to take advantage of the wide range of features and benefits of their AMD Radeon graphics hardware. And our standard of providing monthly driver updates is designed to enable ongoing performance improvements in not only our graphics products, but also our upcoming AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units.”

Industry-Leading Stability:

• Third party group, Perseus Labs, conducted stability testing with Microsoft^® Windows Logo Kit (WLK) Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) to compare AMD graphics hardware stability versus that of competitors.^[1] Using a variety of drivers and configurations, the tests determined driver stability under extreme conditions. Notably, only AMD hardware and driver software passed 100% of test runs successfully without any system crashes or failures.

Simplifying the PC Experience:

• AMD collaborated with user-interface design experts Infusion to improve the usability of the AMD Catalyst Control Center™ and developed an entirely new User Interface (UI) for all AMD customers.
• AMD Catalyst Control Center™ is now more intuitive, with a task-based discovery model and leveraging familiar user-interface concepts from Web browsers such as a navigation bar and search field. The addition of quick navigation features and resizable interface, plus the inclusion of presets and “one-click” access to any setting, make for a more efficient user experience.
• AMD Catalyst™ software updates are also designed to enable users to get more from their AMD Radeon™ hardware, with releases frequently including enhancements to help increase productivity, and to provide an enhanced gaming experience, better video capabilities and more efficient power consumption.

Greater Performance at Zero Cost:

• With free monthly AMD Catalyst™ driver updates, AMD is able to provide users with significant performance gains in a number of top PC titles. For example, ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 series users realized performance gains of up to 68% in select games through regular AMD Catalyst™ driver updates.^[2]
• Weekly AMD Catalyst™ Application Profile (CAP) releases allow AMD Radeon™ graphics users to access the latest application profiles in order to maximize their multi-GPU performance or enable anti-aliasing in the latest PC games.

The latest updates and improvements to AMD Catalyst™ software will include the DivX Plus Codec Pack for AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 and HD 6900 series graphics cards resulting in reduced noise on home theatre PCs and an improved video experience when watching DivX video due to lower CPU load. Today’s update will also include AMD Catalyst™ software support for OpenGL 4.1 enabling higher geometric precision and increased rendering flexibility.

Supporting Resources

• Product page: AMD Catalyst™ Technology
• Product page: AMD Radeon™ graphics product information
• Facebook: Become a fan of AMD technology on Facebook
• Twitter: Follow AMD graphics news on Twitter at @ATIGraphics