Shortly after the Khronos group announced the OpenGL 4.0, the newest version of the multi-platform graphics API, AMD is out with a preview graphics driver for its ATI Radeon, FireGL, FirePro, and Mobility Radeon graphics accelerators, which includes the OpenGL 4.0 ICD (installable client driver). The driver is available for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux. OpenGL 4.0 is comparable and up to times with Microsoft's DirectX 11 API, it makes use of hardware features such as tessellation on the GPU, per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions, 64-bit double precision floating point shader operations, etc., and has no restrictions on which later version of Windows it can run on. With OpenGL 4.0 for example, one can expect 3D graphics with the complexity comparable to DirectX 11 on Windows XP.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst OpenGL 4.0 Preview Driver for Windows 7/Vista, Windows XP, and Linux.

AMD today raised the bar for Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Digital Content Creation (DCC) application performance with the announcement of two new professional graphics accelerators - ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700. As a part of that announcement, AMD also introduced a new brand for the company's professional graphics accelerators, ATI FirePro, reflecting AMD's continuing and evolving commitment to the professional graphics market.

ATI has released new Catalyst drivers for all Linux OS users, that bring major performance enhancements to ATI FireGL professional graphics cards. The enhanced 8.49.7 Linux driver represents a significant leap for Linux customers seeking improved performance of CAD and digital content creation applications, offering up to 33% faster OpenGL performance than the previous 8.433.1 driver. If you need them, you can grab them here at any time.

AMD today announced it is advancing application performance with stunning imagery through the introduction of the first commercially available 3D workstation graphics card with DisplayPort support. The ATI FireGL V7700 professional graphics accelerator provides superior rendering speed, 3D performance and color fidelity for Computer Aided Design (CAD), Digital Content Creation (DCC) and Medical Imaging professionals.

AMD/ATI is promising workstation graphics professionals a 300% improvement in performance compared with previous 3D products following the introduction of five graphics accelerators. The GPUs are targeted at CAD, DCC and medical imaging professionals and come with a new unified shader architecture featuring up to 320 individual stream processing units. The boards that are based on the new GPUs are the ATI FireGL V8650, V8600, V7600, V5600 and V3600. They are being touted as the first to sport 2GB of onboard memory. ATI has claimed that when running DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1-based professional applications, the cards are 300 per cent faster than the previous professional ATI products. The new series of ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators are expected to start shipping next month and will appear in cards and systems from workstation OEMs, system integrators and channel partners.

At SIGGRAPH 2007 today, AMD announced five new high-performance ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators for CAD, DCC and medical imaging professionals. The ATI FireGL V8650, FireGL V8600, FireGL V7600, FireGL V5600, and FireGL V3600 graphics boards are based on the next-generation ATI graphics processing unit (GPU) with an innovative unified shader architecture featuring up to 320 individual stream processing units. These new boards deliver acceleration of DirectX 10- and OpenGL 2.1-based professional applications resulting in increased performance of more than 300% as compared to the previous generation of product.