AMD Delivers OpenGL Performance Increase for Linux Professional Graphics Customers

Sunnyvale, Calif. — June 26, 2008 —AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced new ATI Catalyst™ drivers with major performance enhancements to ATI FireGL™ professional graphics cards. Availability of this enhanced 8.49.7 Linux driver represents a significant leap for Linux customers seeking improved performance of CAD and digital content creation applications that can offer up to approximately 33 percent faster OpenGL performance than the previous driver.¹

“ATI FireGL graphics accelerators beat the competition in application performance at every price point.”² said Janet Matsuda, senior director, Professional Graphics at AMD. “In the past we limited this statement to Microsoft^® Windows® XP and Windows Vista® environments. Now, ATI FireGL graphics outperform the competition across the board from Linux to Windows XP and Windows Vista.”³

ATI FireGL graphics customers using Linux can take advantage of performance enhancements whether using the value ATI FireGL V3600 or the ultra high-end ATI FireGL V8650, which comes with the industry’s largest, 2 GB frame-buffer memory configuration. Additionally, the updated driver is compatible with ATI Radeon™ graphics. Version 8.49.7 of the ATI Catalyst Driver is now available for download via the ATI Catalyst Linux software suite at http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html.

The latest family of ATI FireGL products, introduced last year, continues to win praise across the globe after capturing Tom’s Hardware Guide’s prestigious “Editor’s Choice” award in addition to similar praise and awards from 3dprofessor.org, HotHardware.com, 3D Pro and Digital Arts magazine. In March 2008, AMD extended the product family with the launch of FireGL V7700, the first commercially available 3D workstation graphics card with DisplayPort support.