Coinciding with the launch of its latest and greatest desktop graphics powerhouse today, the HD5970, AMD has also announced the release of a new set of Catalyst drivers, these being the 9.11s.

New Features include the following :-

GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta

- This release of ATI Catalyst™ supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduce system resource utilization, and preserve battery life. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is expected to be available for download from Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com) before the end of the year. This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5800, ATI Radeon HD 5700 and ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series of products.

High Quality downscaling for video transcoding MSE

- This release of ATI Catalyst™ includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920x1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320x240 @30p - iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive.

There are of course the usual run of bug fixes and the like as well; you can get the full scoop on what's been adjusted within the official release notes here.

To download the drivers for XP, Vista or 7, head over to the AMD GAME! website.