ATI 7.2 for Vista

as you might not know, I'm running a PC with a P4 2,8 GHz from 2003, and only 512 MB of RAM. So running Windows Vista in those conditions is not always easy, as the new OS is very demanding in resource when running Aero for instance. My graphic card, an "old" ATI 9800 pro 256 MB supports all the features from Aero...but everytime I've installed Vista, the whole system became like crippled after the installation of ATI drivers 7.1. These drivers might have been good, in compare with the ones provided by NVidia for their cards, but not good enough anyway. And yesterday at last, new drivers were released. Catalyst Suite 7.2 for Vista ( think they work on XP too, same file with a different name, but just the same file). These new drivers are awesome! They made my PC run suddenly twice faster as before under Windows Vista. So if you're running a PC with an ATI card under Windows Vista, I can only recommend to install those drivers as soon as you can, the difference is amazing.

ATI drivers for Vista (part 3)

now definitely available from the links I mentioned in my previous post.

updating: the update manager is already included into ATI drivers for Vista.

ATI final Catalyst drivers for Vista ! (part 2)

a couple of screenshots from the new Catalyst CC for Vista

ATI final Catalyst drivers for Vista !

as you'll find in the following links, the drivers are released, but not yet allowed for download. You'll probably have to wait for Microsoft to give a green light, and that's in a few hours from now.
Anyway, 64 bit drivers, 32 bit drivers, some comments.

updating this post: there's no way to download anything, any driver at all from the AMD-ATI website at the moment, don't know what's going on...

the best news I've had so far about these new drivers is the announcement of an upcoming download manager allowing to update future releases without going through the old procedure: unintall, reboot, reinstall, reboot...this has of course to be confirmed by ATI, or AMD...

you might want to read this other article from BetaNews relating interesting details on the development of these drivers, and DirectX 10, in the context of a close collaboration between AMD/ATI and Microsoft. Here's an extracted part from this article:

"It has been no secret that ATI has worked in tandem with Microsoft in the development of DirectX 10, the new Windows software drivers built specifically for Vista. Most likely, a new slate of games -- or, at the very least, new and unique features for existing franchises -- will take advantage of DirectX 10, including Electronic Arts' heavily promoted Crysis. When AMD acquired ATI, it may have also gained an advantageous relationship with Microsoft that may not be at quite the same level as rival nVidia in recent months, although nVidia would beg to differ."

ATI R600 will consume over 250 W

according to this article, the new baby will be rather hungry
read here ( in the Inquirer)
that reminds me of that guy...OK, not again.