ATI drivers to be delivered through Steam

One of Steam's earliest goals realised :: May 19th, 2007 :: New products :: 18 Responses

One of Valve’s earliest hopes for Steam was to use it to keep users’ display drivers up to date. Now, at long last, ATI have agreed to distribute their Catalyst drivers:

I’m pretty excited about finally getting some display drivers – the ATI announcement included that – where rather than having the situation they have right now where they literally tens, close to hundreds of display drivers out there on people’s machines, that everybody will have the most current, the most up-to-date driver, automatic bug-reporting and things like that. That’s a nice step forward.

As far as I’m aware the current Catalyst drivers don’t have a bug reporting system, meaning that the version that will be distributed over Steam has been integrated (or at least customised) to some extent. The download’s management, what with drivers being system tools that can’t realistically reside in SteamApps, may also break some new ground.

Looking at the hardware survey, there are tens of thousands of people playing with drivers over three years out of date! Many will have older hardware not supported by newer driver releases, but there are sure to be a fair chunk of gamers with old drivers holding back their performance and stability who will benefit from ATI’s decision.

Tags: ATi

18 Responses to this post:

Comments

May 19th, 2007 at 3:08 pm ::
Garry Newman Says:

Yay!
May 19th, 2007 at 4:13 pm ::
Matthijs van der Vleuten Says:

If ‘bug reporting’ actually means ‘crash reporting’, that’s been available in ATI drivers for ages.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:06 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

I’ve never had a crash! 🙂
May 19th, 2007 at 11:57 pm ::
DosFreak Says:

“are sure to be a fair chunk of gamers with old drivers holding back their performance and stability who will benefit from ATI’s decision.”

or mabye some people are using older drivers becaue you know they actually work better on their cards than newer drivers?
May 21st, 2007 at 10:18 pm ::
kadayi Says:

I recall that 1up video interview about a year back where Gabe slammed M$ for not automating Graphic driver updates. I guess he opted to handle it himself. It’s a good move it has to be said.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:43 pm ::
ATimson Says:

I think it’s not Microsoft’s fault that they aren’t included in Windows Update, but rather the video card manufacturers for not bothering to get WHQL certification on every release…
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 am ::
Tom Edwards Says:

I’ve never installed an ATI driver that hasn’t had WHQL…
May 24th, 2007 at 2:22 am ::
Andy Simpson Says:

WHQL’d graphics drivers now show up on Windows Update on Windows Vista, and the default setting is (I’m fairly sure) Windows to bug you until you install them.

Microsoft is fixing some things, thankfully.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:39 pm ::
HaZaRd ArEa Says:

All I say is ” IF it ain’t broke,don’t fix it !! ”
I have an old Ati card(9600)and I have had some problems with new drivers.So I really dont like to install them for the reason I said.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:48 am ::
Tom Edwards Says:

Fixed a huge typo in the title! 😮
September 14th, 2008 at 7:26 pm ::
74-68-75 Says:

I cant see how gamers DONT know what drivers to use. I use Steam about everyday and i honestly dont want it to change or Update my drivers. I have a Ati Rad 9550 agp x4 and i dont have any problems at all with it, and i can overclock the card from 250 Mhz to 500 mhz with no problems and only Slight Temp changes. Played many many new games on it with no problems. Jerico i cant play =( , But Bioshock i have to use the 2.0 Shader packs, The rest ran great, Hl2Ep2, Cod4, Crysis, The card lacks a few things like Motion blur, but i can live with that. Win Xp Pro, 2.4 P4 ,1256mb DDr, Raid 0. Omega driver 48442.
September 14th, 2008 at 8:50 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

If you have an older card then it can very well be better to stick to an older driver release. But…

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