It's that time again for the ATI Catalyst driver update. AMD just released the ATI Catalyst 10.6 Driver.

New Windows Features

GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1
- AMD GPU acceleration of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 delivers smooth high definition video playback and reduces system resource utilization on notebook and desktop platforms featuring AMD graphics including:
o ATI Radeon HD 4000 and HD 5000 series Graphics
o ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series (and higher) Graphics
o ATI Radeon HD 3000 series integrated graphics (and higher)

Video De-blocking support
- Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback
- Supported on ATI Radeon HD 5000 series Graphics

Mosquito noise removal
- Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback
- Supported on ATI Radeon HD 5000 series Graphics

Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
- ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on ATI Radeon HD 5000 series Graphics
- ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon HD series Graphics

New Linux Features

Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
- ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on ATI Radeon HD 5000 series Graphics
- ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon HD series Graphics

Support for new Linux operating systems
- This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
o RHEL 5.5 production support

2D performance enhancements
- ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers a new architecture for 2D acceleration. The new 2D architecture delivers fast windows resizing with Compiz/Visual-Effects and general 2D performance improvements in all AMD supported Linux distributions.

For more information on ATI Catalyst 10.6 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, see the ATI Catalyst 10.6 release notes.

To download the driver, click here.

AMD claims that its improved ATI Catalyst 10.6 driver suite position the company ahead of rivals in terms of image quality as measured by the HQV Benchmark, Version 2.0. For more information, click here.