Present at WinHEC 2006, ATI had 35 gaming systems and over 185 desktop systems, all running Windows Vista Beta 2. This allowed visitors to experience Windows Vista with ATI videocards.

“Windows Vista represents a huge opportunity for ATI because it makes dedicated, high performance graphics matter to everyone, not just gamers,” said Ben Bar-Haim, VP of Software, ATI Technologies. “The fact that ATI is driving the vast majority of publicly displayed Windows Vista demo PCs at WinHEC demonstrates we are more than ready for the new operating system when it launches- with our complete top-to-bottom line of graphics processors.”

And here are the products supported by Windows Vista:

• Radeon® 9500, 9550, 9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, X850
• Radeon® X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900 series
• Mobility™ Radeon® 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800
• Mobility™ Radeon® X1300, X1400, X1600, X1800
• Radeon® Xpress 200, 200M
• FireGL™ V7350, V7300, V7100, V5100, V5000, V3200, V3100
• Mobility™ FireGL® V5200, V5000, V3200, V3100
• FireMV™ 2200 PCIE, FireMV™ 2400 PCIE

More, ATI released also the latest drivers for their videocards.

“ATI has played an important role in helping us design and validate the new graphics driver model in Windows Vista,” said Chris Jones, Corporate VP Windows Core OS Division, Microsoft Corporation. “ATI has since developed extremely robust, high performance drivers that highlight many of the new capabilities of our new operating system.”ATI’s Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) drivers and graphics processors (GPUs) deliver outstanding stability and performance in Windows Vista-minimizing the possibility of system crashes, freezes or hangs, as well as unlocking the full 3D functionality of the Windows Vista desktop user interface, known as Aero.

“ATI’s Windows Vista drivers are shipping quality today, which we believe will help mitigate any risk for OEMs which are planning to ship Windows Vista on the day it is released,” said Ben Bar-Haim, Vice President of Software Engineering, ATI Technologies. “We treat our Windows Vista drivers the same as our Windows XP drivers-meaning all of the new features and capabilities we put into our XP driver are added to and tested in parallel with our Windows Vista drivers. This ensures ATI has advanced support of Windows Vista today as well as when it is released.”

The drivers (ATI WDDM Drivers for Windows Vista) can be downloaded from [1] here.