I just had a look at this thread:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3356.0 about driver installations. I'm about to build a system and my parts are in the mail still. I remember installing 11.04 on my laptop which also has ATI graphics and the autoupdate asked if I want to upgrade my drivers to the proprietary AMD ones. Would these be the same thing as following the instructions in the aforementioned thread?