AMD Unveils Version 8.702 of the ATI FirePro Graphics Driver

AMD has announced version 8.702 of the ATI FirePro graphics driver, bringing in considerable performance improvements for Dassault Systèmes CATIA, Autodesk (News - Alert) 3ds Max and PTC ProENGINEER users.

Offering a new level of graphics performance and reliability for professional 3D graphics users, the ATI FirePro 3D family of workstation graphics cards combines a new ATI OpenGL optimized driver with the award-winning ATI FireGL graphics technology. These cards are ideal for Computer Aided Design (CAD), Digital Content Creation (DCC) and simulation markets.

The Dassault Systèmes CATIA users now get more than 25 percent performance improvement compared to previous drivers. Also, the Autodesk 3ds Max and PTC Pro/Engineer users more than 20 percent performance improvement. Also, Adobe Photoshop CS4 users can now render images with 10-bit² per component color, helping provide exact representation of colors.

“With more than 20 percent performance improvement for many industry leading applications, this new performance driver increases the value for both existing and new ATI FirePro users,” said Janet Matsuda, senior director, AMD (News - Alert) Professional Graphics. “Certified on more than 90 professional applications, ATI FirePro graphics drivers provide the right combination of application performance, reliability and feature support today’s professional need.”

The new addition now supports passive and autostereoscopic displays, blue-line stereo for synchronizing 3D glasses. Also, with support for 5.1 Dolby Digital and 5.1 DTS (News - Alert) surround sound as well as 8-channel and 2-channel uncompressed audio, DisplayPort audio is now enabled on select ATI FirePro professional graphics cards. AMD is also planning to issue reliability, application performance and feature enhancements in bi-monthly driver updates later this year.

In January 2010, the company announced that Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., a U.S.-based software company that develops and markets the software SolidWorks and related applications for design and engineering, has certified its entire family of ATI FirePro professional graphics to support the SolidWorks 2010 on Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows 7.1. The new version of the software, SolidWorks 2010, has been optimized to work in tandem with ATI FirePro professional graphics and Windows 7.1.