For the first time in a while a set of new ATI Catalyst drivers have been released which look much more worthy of your time in going out with the old, in with the new.

The new Catalyst 10.8 driver suite give a solid amount of promised performance improvements along with some additional functionalities in the way of better optimied video playback quality, support for hardware-accelerated 3D content in web browsers, anti-aliasing support in StarCraft II and OpenGL ES 2.0 support.

If you're running a Quad CrossfireX configuration with Eyefinity enabled you will also appreciate greatly improved performance with this particular driver update.

As for the gaming performance highlights, AMD gives the following claims :-

Far Cry 2:

• Performance increases 2-6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations.
• Performance increases 2-4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series single and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations.
• Performance increases 3-8% on ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series single and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations.

Left 4 Dead 2:

• Performance increases 3-5% on ATI CrossFireX™ configurations using the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 series and ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 series.

Stormrise:

• Performance increases 5-10% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5600 series and ATI Radeon™ HD 5500 series configurations.

Head over to the Game.AMD website to grab the new Catalyst 10.8 driver suite in either 32 or 64-bit form for Windows XP, Vista or 7.