A preview of the forthcoming Catalyst 10.4 driver has been rushed out by AMD for those of you that own a Radeon HD 5xxx series video card and are having problems with long load times in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The company isn't mentioning any other changes, but cautions that the preview driver has not completed full testing, and is only recommended for users experiencing the particular issue described above.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is one of the first high-profile PC titles with DirectX 11 support, which explains AMD's eagerness to get this driver into the hands of gamers as soon as possible. The knowledge base article even provides some additional recommendations on how to speed up load times if the problem persists.

Owners of Radeon HD 2000, 3000 and 4000 series graphics cards will get a further hotfix dubbed Catalyst 10.4a "in the next few days." If you've been experiencing the issue and own DirectX 11 ATI hardware, download links are available here for Windows XP Professional, Vista and Windows 7 systems in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.