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AMD releases first WHQL Windows 7 graphics driver
Author: Ben HardwidgePublished: 7th May 2009
AMD's Windows 7 graphics driver received WHQL certification on the first day of the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo program.
The driver received certification on the first day of the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo program, and it supports all of the ATI Radeon HD GPUs, from the 2000 series to the 4000 series. According to AMD, the driver is stable and reliable, and also features AMD’s Stream technology for GPGPU apps. The company claims that it will continue to add performance improvements and new features every month, just as it does with its Catalyst drivers for other operating systems at the moment.
AMD’s corporate vice president of software engineering, Ben Bar-Haim, claimed that the quick certification of the driver meant that “AMD has once again demonstrated its driver leadership.” He also added that “AMD is working closely with Microsoft to ensure superior performance and a reliable Windows 7 experience throughout our line of graphics processors.”
AMD is keen to point out that it’s the first company to release a WHQL-certified Windows 7 graphics driver, and AMD’s Catalyst product manager Terry Makedon said that it was an example of AMD being “first yet again”. However, although AMD is the first company to get its WHQL graphics driver out the door, Nvidia says that it’s not far behind either. A spokesperson from the company told bit-tech that although Nvidia's drivers are currently in the BETA stage, they’re in the process of being WHQL-certified at the moment. The company expects to have a WHQL Windows 7 graphics driver soon.
In the meantime, owners of ATI Radeon HD GPUs can grab the new WHQL Windows 7 driver from here, and owners of Nvidia GPUs can download the BETA of ForceWare 185.51 for Windows 7 from here. AMD says that it also plans to release a unified WHQL-certified driver for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista when it releases Catalyst 9.5 later this month.
Have you tried out Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 yet, and do you care if you have WHQL-certified drivers or not? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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i'll have to try a clean install rather than an upgrade i did to test how well it worked (upgraded from 7077) but the WHQL driver was an utter bitch, making windows really slow to open and render etc so i had to roll back to 9.2, so im assuming a clean install will fix that so ill do that tonight
but so far i havent liked the windows 7 drivers (except 8.12)
And I might give it another go on my main PC even though the drivers were way to unstable for my [supposedly] dying 8800GTS which runs 100% under XP and Vista. :|
Downloaded the x64 in less than 2 hours from MS yesterday and the x86 in roughly 3 hours due to x64 being prioritized by 4:1 [450k vs 110k]. Cheers, MS! ;)
As it states here:
Note: The Windows 7 driver is not final and is provided "as is." It is not supported by AMD, and may contain software bugs. It has not completed full AMD testing. Use of this software is at your own risk.
I'm pretty sure it works fine, though. :)