A few days ago we received word from ATI about their new Catalyst 7.10 drivers which are supposed to bring a list of performance optimizations to the table. The drivers are available for both Windows XP and Vista in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. There is no mention whether the optimizations are OS specific but looking at the list of games that are supposed to get dramatic speed-ups, there is a mix of everything from DirectX9 titles, DirectX10 and OpenGL.

Popular titles like Bioshock, Battlefield 2142, Company of Heroes, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, FEAR, World in Conflict, are all getting substantial performance bumps according to ATI's release notes, from 10% to up to 80% improvements for both single card and Crossfire performance.

Should we even say you must try these? Just pick your OS and download:
ATI Catalyst 7.10 for Windows XP
ATI Catalyst 7.10 for Windows XP 64bit
ATI Catalyst 7.10 for Windows Vista 32bit
ATI Catalyst 7.10 for Windows Vista 64bit

Performance improvements (from the release notes):

* Battlefield 2142: CrossFire™ performance improves 5-23% on ATI Radeon™ HD2600, HD2400 and ATI Radeon™ X1300/X1550
* BioShock DX10 CrossFire™ performance improves 70% or more on all ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 series of products
* Call of Duty 2: performance improves up to 6.7% on both single card and CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD2600 and ATI Radeon™ HD2400 configurations
* Call of Juarez DX10: CrossFire™ performance improves up to 42% and single card performance improves up to 34% on all ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 series of products
* Company of Heroes DX10 CrossFire™ performance improves up to 80% on all ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 series of products and single card performance improves as much as 31% on ATI Radeon™ HD2900 and ATI Radeon™ HD2600 products
* Enemy Territory: Quake Wars CrossFire™ performance improves as much as 23% on ATI Radeon™ X1x00 series products and single card performance improves as much as 23% on both ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 and ATI Radeon™ X1x00 series of products
* FEAR CrossFire™ performance improves as much as 16% on ATI Radeon™ X1950XTX, X1650XT, HD2400 and X1300/X1550
* Lost Planet DX10 CrossFire™ performance improves 20% or greater on all ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 series of products
* Supreme Commander CrossFire™ performance improves up to 30% on all ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 and ATI Radeon™ X1x00 series products. ATI Radeon™ X1650 and X1300/X1550 see even greater improvements of 82% or more
* World In Conflict DX10 CrossFire™ performance improves 14-67% or more and single card performance improves 20% or more on ATI Radeon™ HD2900XT and ATI Radeon™ HD2600 products
* World in Conflict DX9 CrossFire™ performance improves up to 70% or more on all ATI Radeon™ HD2x00 products