In one day or so depending on where you are sitting, Microsoft is set to release all versions of their latest operating system into the consumer world. AMD’s ATI driver team in Canada has seemingly saved all for the last minute. They sent us their Catalyst 7.1 graphics card driver for Vista to check out last week and have promised not just DirectX 3D performance and stability increases over the previous release but also an improved Catalyst Control Center, HD-DVD and Blu-ray support through AVIVO, a new installer and Crossfire support for the full range of X1000 series Radeon cards.

We’ll examine the changes in the WHQL driver going through the PDF presentation which they sent to us and then run some 32-bit based benchmarks under Vista Home Premium to try and backup their claims. Let’s get started and see if AMD finally have a Vista driver for their Radeon cards, which is actually worth installing and using.