Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.10: Ready for Windows 8

For AMD Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000 and HD 7000 Series users, Microsoft has certified today’s AMD Catalyst 12.10 release as “compatible with Windows 8.” With this driver, these products offer full support for WDDM 1.2, which is an updated model for graphics drivers that Microsoft has developed to ensure smooth performance and wide compatibility in their new operating system.

  • Target-Independent Rasterization (TIR): TIR is a new rendering path that enables superior anti-aliasing in Direct3D driver applications
  • Native Stereo 3D Support: Windows 8 natively supports stereoscopic 3D gaming and videos via compatible applications
  • Unified Video API: Video playback has been integrated into the DirectX 11 API, enabling simultaneous video and gaming content. Transcoding performance may also be improved for supporting applications.
  • Optimized screen rotation for rotation aware devices Improved sleep/resume performance
  • Optimized GPU power consumption
  • Major technologies / features also supported under Windows 8:
    • AMD Eyefinity technology
    • OpenCL
    • OpenGL
    • Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
    • AMD Dual Graphics
    • AMD CrossFire technology
    • AMD Overdrive
    • AMD Catalyst Control Center
    • Vision Engine Control Center

Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.10: AMD Catalyst Mobility support for AMD Enduro Technology

AMD Catalyst Mobility now includes support for AMD Enduro Technology. AMD Enduro Technology is currently supported on all notebook Intel IvyBridge platforms and AMD Comal platforms that support the AMD Radeon HD 7900M, 7800M, 7700M.

AMD Enduro Technology for Notebooks delivers:

  • Unbeatable battery life
  • GPU accelerated performance for gaming, video, and compute apps
  • A Seamless and automatic experience

New Enduro Technology features found in Catalyst 12.10:
Re-designed Catalyst Control Center user interface View all profiled applications View recently run applications Profile applications based on power source Expert mode control and customization Performance centric AC Battery centric DC

AMD’s latest Catalyst Application Profile:AMD Catalyst 12.10 CAP1 (to be used with AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta as well)
Find the latest available AMD Catalyst CAP here http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

  • Crysis 2: Resolves performance issues seen in CrossFire mode
  • Darksiders 2: Resolves screen flickering seen in CrossFire mode
  • Max Payne 3: Resolves Menu flickering when Anti-Aliasing is enabled through the Catalyst Control Center
  • FIFA 13: Improves CrossFire performance, and improve single GPU performance ·
  • Project C.A.R.S.: Resolves screen flickering seen in CrossFire mode
  • Natural Selection 2 – Resolves Menu flickering when Anti-Aliasing is enabled through the Catalyst Control Center

Resolved issue highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.10 (from AMD Catalyst 12.8)

Tri and Quad CrossFire + Eyefinity configurations

  • Users will no longer see lower than expected performance in certain DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications
  • FireFox – corruption is no longer observed on CrossFire configurations
  • Enabling Overdrive settings no longer increases clocks in all power states
  • AMD Video Converter support is available in AMD Catalyst 12.9 Beta Windows 7 and Windows Vista packages
  • Resolves the system delay observed when opening the Windows Audio system tray on Multi-GPU configurations to configure HDMI Audio settings

Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.10 Linux Driver: New OS Support

This release of AMD Catalyst Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems
Ubuntu 12.10 early look support RHEL 6.3 production support

Click for the Beta driver details

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta:
More Performance on the World’s Most Popular Games

For more advanced users, we are also making the AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta available today. This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD 7800 and HD 7900.

Check out our blog posting on Catalyst 12.11 Beta for more information

Highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta

Performance gains seen on the entire AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series: 

  • 10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
  • More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
  • Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
  • Up to 10% more performance in DiRT Showdown
  • Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
  • Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
  • Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
  • Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2

AMD Catalyst Mobility 7970M performance for AMD Enduro Technology supported platforms has been substantially improved for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications. An updated driver for 7970M users featuring AMD Enduro Technology with additional DirectX 9 performance improvements will be released soon.

  • 3DMark Vantage – Up to 15%
  • 3DMark 11 – Up to 12%
  • AvP – Up to 11%
  • Battlefield 3 – Up to 25%
  • Crysis 2: Up to 45%
  • DiRT Showdown – Up to 62%
  • ETQW – Up to 8%
  • Hard Reset – Up to 8%
  • Just Cause 2 – Up to 90%
  • The Chronicles of Riddick – Up to 4%
  • Shogun 2 – Up to 56%
  • Sniper Elite V2 – Up to 60%
  • Tom Clancy’s HAWX – Up to 56%
  • Unigine Heaven – Up to 33%
  • Wolfenstein – Up to 9%
  • Super Sample Anti-Aliasing has now been enabled in the AMD OpenGL driver

Resolved issue highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta
Resolves performance issues (where GPU activity runs at lower values than expected) seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870