ATI released a new set of its unified Catalyst drivers for Windows XP and 2000.

The v5.12 software suite updates both the ATI Display Driver (version 8.201), and the Catalyst Control Center (version 5.12). Catalyst 5.12 improves a variety of CPU-bound performance cases when an ATI product is installed in conjunction with a dual-core or hyperthreading CPU. Performance gains include:

- 3DMark05 gains as much as 5.7%
- 3DMark03 gains as much as 3.3%
- 3DMark2001 SE gains up to 10%
- Aquamark 3 gains up to 16%
- Comanche 4 improves as much as 20%
- Far Cry gains as much as 25% on some product configurations
- Half-Life 2 performance improves as much as 8%
- Splinter Cell improves as much as 8% in certain parts of the game
- Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness runs as much as 10% faster
- Unreal Tournament 2004 framerates improve as much as 10%

Detailled release notes is available here.

Download the WinXP/2K Catalyst drivers here.

ATI will announce another version of its Catalyst drivers (v5.13) on December the 16th, where it is expected to offer support for hardware encoding powered by the X1600 GPU. The encoding includes H.264 kai WMV-HD support under the AVIVO technology concept.