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It's time for yet another monthly graphics driver update from the folks at AMD via their ATI unit. The newly released Catalyst 10.5 drivers are now available to download via AMD's Game web site. The drivers for the ATI Radeon graphics chips are available for Windows XP, Vista and 7 users in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.

The release notes for the new drivers reveal the driver's new features and more importantly the driver's various bug fixes for quite a number of recent PC games. The titles with bug fixes include Alien vs. Predator, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Splinter Cell Conviction. The bug fixes for the games sometimes depend on which version of Windows you currently use.

With just a couple of days to go before the end of April, AMD has at last released the final and official 10.4 version of their ATI Catalyst graphics drivers for their Radeon graphics card products. A preview version of the drivers was released earlier this month that fixed some large level load times for Battlefield Bad Company 2.

The release notes give all the details on what's new and cool with these 10.4 drivers. The new drivers have some small performance gains in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and fix some bugs in a number of games such as Shattered Horizon and Napoleon Total War.

AMD is getting close to releasing their monthly driver update for their ATI Radeon graphics cards. This week the company released some preview drivers before the full 10.4 version is released. The preview release fixes one issue for one ATI Radeon family of cards.

Specifically the preview drivers fix an issue with long loading times for the new maps that were released for Digital Illusions' recent first person shooter Battlefield Bad Company 2. The fix is only for the ATI Radeon 5XXX family of cards (that's the ones with the DirectX 11 support). If you have the older ATI Radeon 4XXX cards you can expect to get a driver update that deals with the same issue next week.

AMD has been promoting their Eyefinity technology in their ATI Radeon cards that allows one of their cards to run up to three monitors. Today AMD announced their latest card, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition. As you can guess from the "6" in the product title, this graphic card is the first to allow up to six monitors to be run with just one card installed in your PC.

While AMD didn't announce a price for this card a quick check of the internet shows that the product is going for $700 or more on retail sites. Reviews of the card on hardware web sites have been a little mixed with some saying playing games with six monitors can be a pain with the bezels of the various monitors obscuring critical parts of the game's viewpoint.

On the evening of March 26th, NVIDIA's GeForce General Manager Drew Henry officially announced the launch of the cutting edge GeForce GTX 470 and 480 video cards in front of packed crowd at PAX East in Boston. The 400 series ushers in the next generation of PC gaming as the company's most powerful graphics cards to date. The GPU includes 3 billion transistors, which equals four Intel Quad Core i7 processors, which gives a clear indication of the kind of might this card packs. What it comes down to for gamers is a chance, in Drew Henry's words, to "blow some sh#t up." When summed up, gamers can expect the GTX 480 to double the performance output of the GTX 285, NVIDIA's previous top-of-the line GPU, for many games. According to the chart shown at the presentation, there will be at least a 50% boost in performance for most games, including recent ones like Battlefield Bad Company 2. In any case, players will be free to dial up to detail levels to their most extreme levels without worrying about a single particle effect or lighting and shadow feature to hinder performance. In addition to blowing stuff up, the 400 series motto invites you to "Crank that sh#t up!"

While they were released in a preview form earlier this month, AMD has now released the full 10.3 version of their ATI Catalyst drivers designed for their Radeon graphics chips. Unlike the preview release, this official version now includes support for Windows XP in addition to the Windows Vista and Windows 7 versions.

The release notes for the new version shows that the new version adds support for the 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 series of ATI Mobility Radeon HD notebook chips. There are some performance improvements for a number of PC games in the drivers including Aliens Vs. Predator, Dirt 2, Battleforge and other games.

[Via Blue's News]

Just as Nvidia released some new beta GeForce drivers today, so did AMD with the early release of their official ATI Catalyst drivers for both desktops and notebooks (version number 10.3). This early release is for Windows Vista and Windows 7; there are no Windows XP versions available yet. This is the regular monthly update to the drivers and AMD's Underground site has the info on the big additions and changes.

There are quite a few changes and additions for AYI Eyefinity multi-monitor technology in the new drivers. There's also added support for 3D Stereoscopic glasses. The official versions, with Windows XP support, should be released later this month.

[Via Voodoo Extreme]

Technically Nvidia isn't suppose to launch their next-gen graphics card until March 26 at PAX East but in the meantime the company keeps teasing us with some more info about the capabilities for their their GeForce GTX 480 and 470 products. The company put up a new YouTube video that shows off the product's DirectX 11 features, such as tessellation.

At the end of the video they also show off Nvidia's answer to ATI's Eyefinity multi-monitor tech. It's called 3D Vision Surround and lets players hook up three 1980p 3D supported monitors with the appropriate GeForce graphics card and see the view in full 3D with Nvidia's 3D Vision glasses. Yes, it's really cool but yes it's also really expensive to buy all the things needed for it to work. Our sister site Engadget has posted up a video that shows more 3D Vision Surround in action which you can check out after the jump:

This pre-release patch for Assassin's Creed 2 adds ATI Eyefinity support to the game in addition to enhancing performance and addressing a reported problem with the DRM. A list of changes can be seen after the jump.

Download Assassin's Creed 2 v1.01 Patch (19 MB)
Check out all Assassin's Creed 2 downloads

This patch for the ATI Catalyst drivers addresses an issue with Aliens vs Predator where the game would hang or freeze when switching to DirectX 11 graphics from within the game using the ATI Radon HD 4700 and 4800 series video cards. It also resolves an issue when mouse cursor becomes enlarged at random while using Windows 7.

Download ATI Catalyst 10.2 Hotfix Patch (112 MB)