AMD Catalyst 12.10 and Catalyst 12.11 beta are out

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 supported 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/ AMD Vision Engine Control Center

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 – additional products will be supported in future Catalyst releases.”

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

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA DRIVER:
This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD7800 and HD7900.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

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

Resolved issue highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta Driver

Resolves performance issues (where GPU activity runs at lower values than expected) seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870

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%