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Resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite for Windows 7:

• Alt-Tabbing to desktop and back into “Mass Effect 2″ game no longer causes the display to go black
• In-game Anti-Alias can now be applied when other in-game options like Volumetric Effects are enabled in “Empire: Total War” and “Napoleon: Total War” games
• Enabling Anti-Alias in “Empire: Total War” no longer causes a performance drop
• Running “Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.0″ in wireframe mode with tessellation enabled no longer causes the application to fail on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series cards
• Changing in-game resolution in “Alien vs. Predator” no longer causes the screen to flicker under Multi-GPU configurations
• Catalyst Control Center now remembers the position of fourth monitor in Eyefinity group
• Black screen no longer observed with “Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.0″ application with OpenGL mode settings
• Enabling dynamic contrast in Catalyst Control Center video settings no longer causes vertical stripes to appear during XVID content playback

ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Profiles Notes:

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 Fix – horizontal lines are no longer observed when running an ATI CrossFireX configuration
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 Fix – flickering and black square corruption is no longer observed when running on single card ATI Radeon products
• ATI Catalyst Control Center – forced on Anti-Aliasing is now supported in the following titles: Supreme Commander 2, Dirt2, Avatar and Battlefield Bad Company2 (single GPU configurations)
• Starcraft® 2: Wings of Liberty beta on ATI Radeon™ 5800 products running in an ATI CrossFireX configurations: moving units near the edge of a cliff no longer causes them to fall because the height field is corrupted

ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Suite for Windows 7 (32 bit)
ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Suite for Windows 7 (64 bit)
ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Suite for Vista (32 bit)
ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Suite for Vista (64 bit)
ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Suite for XP (32 bit)
ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Application Profiles
ATI Catalyst™ 10.5 Release Notes (PDF)

NVIDIA – We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers.

Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our website. Thanks, and stay tuned for updates.

Tweet from nVidia

Apologies for the confusion around our most recent GF100 update. To clarify, launch date for GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 is March 26, 2010.

This download provides the DirectX end-user multi-languaged redistributable that developers can include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. For full details please review the DirectX SDK EULA.txt and DirectX Redist.txt files located in the license directory.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP 64-bit; Windows XP Service Pack 3

Additional Information

• The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX components.
• The DirectX runtime cannot be uninstalled. We recommend Windows Me and Windows XP users create a “System Restore” point before installing. For information on creating a restore point, please refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles: Windows XP: Microsoft Knowledge Base article 310405.
• This update is recommended for users that do not have internet connection during installation
• If you would like the websetup version of the runtime package, please click here.
• Starting with Febraury 2007 SDK release – The redist no longer supports Win9x

Download DirectX End-User Runtimes (February 2010)

While traditionally the purview of computer enthusiasts and gamers, graphics are becoming increasingly important as everyday computer users start watching movies and playing games on PCs.

Optimus works by automatically shutting off the graphics card in a computer when it isn’t in use. For instance, if a computer user is surfing the Web or checking e-mail, Optimus will turn the card off, letting the chipset attached to the computer’s main processor deal with these simpler tasks.

When a user decides to watch a movie, Optimus flips the chip on to deal with the larger data load. By shutting off the graphics card, Optimus could potentially increase battery life five-fold.

Previously, users would have to manually turn off the graphics chip, interrupting whatever programs had been running.

Optimus is expected to be included with an upcoming line of notebooks from Asustek Computer Inc later this year.

Full Story ~ The Wall Street Journal

If games and Vista Aero didn’t pursuade you to buy a graphics card for your PC, perhaps DirectCompute will.

That’s a new technology in Windows 7 that lets applications tap the power of graphics processors to accelerate performance, giving the system processor a boost. It sounds really promising, but so did ReadyBoost for Vista and it never seemed to take off.

Nvidia today announced that it’s the first manufacturer of graphics processing units to get Microsoft’s DirectCompute driver certification. People running Windows 7 with a GeForce GPU can download the driver (Version 190.62) from Nvidia later today.

Full Story

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

* Setting the language option to Greek no longer results in cropped text being noticed in the Catalyst™ Control Center->Component Video page
* Adobe After Effects: Exiting the application no longer results in the Windows Vista (64 bit version) operating system intermittently failing to respond
* Call of Duty 4: Corruption is no longer noticed when having Quad CrossFire™ enable and an HDMI 1080p display device connected. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35112
* Devil May Cry 4: Anti-Aliasing no longer fails to function when playing the game with CrossFire™ enabled
* Dirt: Playing the German Crossover track (Rally World Event) no longer results in the grand stands and chain link fences not being display correctly when CrossFire™ is enabled and MSAA is disabled

* Many more listed in the Release Notes

Complete ATI Catalyst 8.8 Display Driver Release Notes

Download ATI Catalyst 8.8 Display Driver – Windows XP
Download ATI Catalyst 8.8 Display Driver – Windows Vista

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:

* Assassin’s Creed: Attempting to launch the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product and running the Windows Vista operating system (32 bit version) no longer results in the game exiting to the desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35804
* Crysis: Edge detect is now working when playing the DX9 version of the game with UBM enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35765
* Frontlines Fuel of War: Setting the in-game option to 1152×864 and AA to N/A no longer results in corruption being noticed when playing the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 38×0 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35861
* Hellgate London: Setting the display resolution to 2560×1600 no longer results in the game failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35886
* Mahjongg Artifacts: Launching the game on a system running Windows Vista no longer results in the operating system failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35873
* Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Flickering is no longer noticed when switching between the game and the Windows desktop. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35818
* Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Setting AA to 8x no longer results in AA failing to be applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35823
* World In Conflict: Setting the video quality to high no longer results in corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35884
* World of Warcraft: The game’s log-in background is no longer blank when using OpenGL mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35767
* ZT: Attempting to play the Asian game in a windowed mode or at a display resolution of 1280×1024 no longer results in the game failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-34152
* Running various games on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ X18x0 series of product no longer results in Time-out Detection and Recovery (TDR) when having Catalyst AI set to Advanced. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35828
* A black window is no longer displayed when attempting to play a DVD title using WinDVD 7 when Overlay Theater Mode and clone mode is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-34133
* Connecting an HDMI display device to the DVI port using an HDMI to DVI dongle no longer results in the display mode of 720×480 failing to be in the display mode list after hot-unplugging the HDMI display device and hot-plugging a DVI display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35105
* Clicking on the Scaling Options for the HDMI display device no longer results in the Panel Information and Image Scaling information failing for the graphics adapter failing to be restored. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35874
* Attempting to change to clone or single mode no longer fails when display number 2 is set a the primary display device. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35768
* Connecting a secondary display device no longer results in the secondary display failing to be seen in the Catalyst Control Center when using a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 series of product. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35802
* Adjusting either the gamma, brightness or contrast setting in the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in certain graphics hardware information failing to be displayed in the Information Center. This issue is also resolved for the Windows XP operating system as well. Further details can be found in topic number 737-358633
* Enabling and disabling GPU Scaling no longer results in some of the supported display resolutions no longer being available. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35047
* The OverDrive™ clocks are no longer set back to default setting when exiting the fullscreen samples if the Enable ATI OD For… option is set to Off. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35755
* Using a smart dongle no longer results in the mode of 1080i failing to appear in the display manager of the Catalyst Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-358477

Complete ATI Catalyst 8.7 Display Driver Release Notes

Download ATI Catalyst 8.7 Display Driver – Windows XP
Download ATI Catalyst 8.7 Display Driver – Windows Vista

Download Realtek AC’97 Driver v6.2.85 (Vista 32/64)
Download Realtek AC’97 Driver v6.2.85 (Vista 32/64)
Download Realtek AC’97 Driver v6.2.85 (Vista 32/64)