AMD ha oggi reso disponibile due nuove versioni di driver Catalyst: i 12.10 WHQL e 12.11 Beta.Questi driver sono compatibili a partire da tutte le Radon HD 5000 in poi.

I driver Catalyst 12.10 WHQL sono un'evoluzione della precedente release ed integra alcune miglioramenti e fix in generale; questo fa in modo che la situazione rispetto ai precedenti driver non cambi in maniera radicale. Questi driver sono scaricabili dal seguente link: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/Pages/desktop-graphics.aspx

I driver Catalyst 12.11 Beta introducono numerosi miglioramenti ed ottimizzazioni prestazionali per le schede Radeon HD 7000. Consigliamo a tutti i videogiocatori più esigenti di installarli. Questi driver sono invece scaricabili al seguente link: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst1211betadriver.aspx

Ecco le release note che fornisce il produttore:

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

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