AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta & Win 8 Feature Preview Available

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crazyeyesreaper
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AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta & Win 8 Feature Preview Available

Post by crazyeyesreaper »

AMD releases Catalyst 12.6 Beta and Windows 8 Feature Preview both available now.
We have just released the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... 6beta.aspx

With the release of the Catalyst 12.6 Beta driver, AMD would also like to announce that we are moving away from our Monthly Catalyst release plan. Our goal is to ensure that every Catalyst release delivers a substantial benefit to our end users; as we have today with the release of the Catalyst 12.6a Beta. We will still continue with the Catalyst naming convention; Catalyst: Year.Month., You just won’t see a new driver every single month. We are confident that this will only benefit the end user; you’ll only need to upgrade to a new Catalyst driver, when it makes sense.

We would also like announce the introduction of our new AMD Issue Reporting Form. We made a number of improvements to the older Catalyst Crew Feedback form, making it more comprehensive, ensuring we get the best feedback possible. Feedback is very important in every product company’s life, especially in our fast paced environment. This is not just a check-box for us – we take these reports very seriously. We will review every report posted here and investigate every issue encountered. Please use this form whenever you encounter something worth mentioning.




Resolved issue highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta


· AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Tri-CrossFire configurations + Eyefinity no longer results in a BSOD when launching a DirectX application

· AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations no longer results in a BSOD when using desktop applications

· AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards no longer hang when system goes to sleep

· Please ensure that your System BIOS is up to date – some occurrences of this issue are related to outdated SBIOS
Resolves CrossFire scaling issues seen in AMD Catalyst 12.4 with Elder Scrolls: Skyrim CrossFire
AMD Catalyst Control Center – Overdrive page is no longer intermittently missing
AMD Catalyst Control Center – GPU Activity gauge is no longer missing
AMD Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Configuration – no longer results in system hang after cinematic in Call Of Duty: Black Ops
Heroes and Generals: Blocky corruption in scenes with smoke effects when run in DirectX 11 mode are no longer experienced.
Dirt Showdown: Improves scaling for CrossFire configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
HDMI audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV is powered Off/On.


Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta:




Dual Graphics enhancements – new application profiles

· Supported Dual Graphics configurations:

AMD Accelerated Processors for Desktop PCs

· AMD Radeon™ HD 7660D (A10-5700)

· AMD Radeon™ HD 7560D (A8-5500)



Notebooks with AMD Accelerated Processors

· AMD Radeon™ HD 7660G (A10-4600M)

· AMD Radeon™ HD 7640G (A8-4500M)

· AMD Radeon™ HD 7520G (A6-4400M)

· New profiles have been added for the following titles:

o Diablo 3

o Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

o StarCraft 2

o Portal 2

o Call of Duty Modern Warfare

o Call of Duty Black Ops

· Future Catalyst releases will continue to add Dual Graphics support for additional titles




Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta Linux driver:




This release of AMD Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems

· SLED 11 SP2 production support

· RHEL 5.8 production support




New AMD Catalyst Application Profile is now available


http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/ ... files.aspx



Catalyst 12.6 Beta CAP1

· Max Payne 3 (DirectX11 version): Improves CrossFire scaling performance

· Krater: Resolves full screen flickering issue

AMD has also just released a new AMD Catalyst™ feature preview driver for the Windows 8 Release Preview:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... ivers.aspx


Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ feature preview driver for the Windows 8 Release Preview




Featuring full support for the new WDDM 1.2 driver model, this new driver enables customers to take full advantage of the model’s features as applications are updated to leverage them. These features include:

· Support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

· Native Stereo 3D support: Windows® 8 natively supports stereoscopic 3D gaming and videos via compatible applications. Middleware applications will not be required for such apps.1

· 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.

· Support for AMD Features:

o AMD Eyefinity

o OpenCL™

o OpenGL

o UVD

o AMD Dual Graphics / AMD CrossFire™ Technology

o AMD Overdrive™

o AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center

Known issues found in the AMD Catalyst feature preview for Windows 8 (these issues will be resolved in the AMD production release for Windows 8)



· AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 performance in DirectX 9 applications may be slower under Windows 8 vs. Windows 7

· AMD CrossFireX configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 in DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 applications may be slower under Windows 8 vs. Windows 7

· AMD CrossFireX configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 in OpenCL accelerated applications may cause a BSOD or system hang

· Blacklight Retribution (DirectX11 mode) played with a CrossFire configuration can result in a system crash when launching the application (32-bit OS only)

· Video corruption can be seen when playing back movie trailers with the Windows 8 Metro video player
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