ATi have released their latest driver, less than a month after Catalyst 6.7. So it seems ATi's driver team have not been disturbed much during AMD's takover. On the surface this looks like a nice update with numerous improvements in performance, especially in OpenGL -- where nVidia's cards still rule supreme. It's nice too see ATi's drivers are improving and, perhaps, the common belief that their drivers and support are inferior to nVidias may now be invalid; after all, when was the last nVidia driver out?

Sadly, I am still not completely satisfied by the ATi drivers; and like many, I will be waiting for some third party optimised versions. My gripe with the drivers, similar to others, is the Catalyst Control Center. This bloated spawn of .Net programming is, well, how can I put it? Crap. ATi force users to download the .Net Framework files, which are around 45 megabytes, to install their drivers. The Catalyst Control Center drivers weigh in at around 38 megabytes, whilst the Omega Drivers are only 23 -- talk about unneeded bloat. The Omegas even have the superior ATi Tray Tools, which is a very nifty peice of software.

So when will I be happy with ATi's offerings? Well the drivers are good these days -- they are very stable and fast; all ATi need to do is axe the Catalyst Control Center, and fast.