ATI has released its Catalyst 6.8 driver package for both Windows and Linux. The Windows release targets performance improvements, while the version for the open source operating system - the driver itself isn't open - is more about adding features and broadening hardware support.

ATI said Catalyst 6.8 yields OpenGL application-specific framerate gains of 6.5-16 per cent, largely thanks to shader compiler and transform engine optimisations. Speed-ups of 22-30 per cent under Direct3D arise from tweaks to the code's memory management routines that benefit cards with 256MB of video RAM.

On the Linux side, the drivers gain the ability to support two monitors running at different resolutions and retains such settings even when the hosts system is shut down. ATI said it had also added support for its Radeon Xpress 1200, 1250 and 1300 chipsets. The installer can work with both 32- and 64-bit versions of the operating system, so there's no longer any need to download a platform-specific release.

The drivers can be downloaded from ATI's website here. ®

Read Reg Hardware's ATI Radeon X1950 XTX review here