AMD Releases Industry's First WHQL-certified Drivers for Windows 7 AMD Releases Industry's First WHQL-certified Drivers for Windows 7 AMD is ready with the industry's first WHQL-certified set of drivers for Microsoft Windows 7. The Catalyst WHQL Windows 7 driver comes as yet another first for AMD, and a first for Microsoft's Windows 7 certification program. Dated 5/5/2009, the drivers carry the version 8.612, feature full support for Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.1 and works with ATI Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000 series. The drivers also provide support for ATI Stream GPGPU technology. Windows 7 x64 Windows 7 x86
ATI Catalyst 9.5 Software Suite ATI Catalyst 9.5 Software Suite Performance improvements: * Unigine Tropics DX9 - performance gains of up to 11% for single GPU and ATI CrossFireX configurations with anti-aliasing enabled. * Company of Heroes - performance gains of up to 10% for both single GPU and ATI CrossFireX configurations. * BattleForge - performance gains of up to 10% for ATI CrossFireX configurations. New Features: * AMD has delivered a single unified graphics driver that has received WHQL certification for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista * ATI Catalyst 9.5 - Unified Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista Meeting Microsoft's WHQL certification requirements in the ATI Catalyst 9.5 driver for Windows 7 clearly demonstrates AMD's focus and determination to deliver an extremely stable and robust Windows 7 experience on AMD's ATI Radeon Graphics accelerators * ATI Catalyst 9.5 - Unified Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista Delivers full WDDM 1.1 WHQL certified support under Windows 7 on the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of products ATI Stream: * ATI Video encoder update * ATI Catalyst 9.5 resolves a number of issues previously seen in the ATI Video Converter and is supported under Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit * Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in ATI Catalyst Control Center Basic View) to achieve substantial performance improvements when transcoding video files Windows 7/Vista x64 | Windows 7/Vista x86 | Windows XP x64 | Windows XP x86
ATI Catalyst 9.6 Software Suite ATI Catalyst 9.6 Software Suite AMD announced the availability of ATI Catalyst version 9.6 driver suite, that provides driver support for ATI Radeon series graphics processors (driver version 8.62), Hydravision, AMD Southbridge/Chipset driver, and Catalyst Control Center (version 8.62). The new version brings along the following application-specific performance increments: * Company of Heores – performance gains of up to 25% for the ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series, and performance gains of up to 10% for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series. * Crysis Warhead – performance gains of up to 11% for ATI CrossFireX configurations. * Crysis – performance gains of up to 13% for ATI CrossFireX configurations. * World in Conflict – performance gains of up to 30% for settings are were previously CPU limited. The Linux version of this driver suite adds production support for SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and SLED 11. It also provides early support for RedHat Enterprise Linux 4.8.
AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver Suite AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver Suite AMD today sneaked in the latest version of its ATI Catalyst driver suite that provides support to several AMD/ATI components such as ATI Radeon series GPUs, AMD desktop chipsets, AMD FireStream GPGPU, and ATI Theater multimedia products. As revealed by the release notes document, AMD introduced several performance and feature-set changes, along with timely bug-fixes. Highlights include: * Crysis performance at very high quality preset increases by up to 8% on Radeon HD 4800 series * Lost Planet Colonies - performance increases by 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing is used on the HD 4800 series products * Introduces support for the ATI Video converter under Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit * A newly designed Desktops & Displays Manager * Added support for new OpenGL extensions: EXT_provoking_vertex and EXT_vertex_array_bgra At this point in time, Catalyst 9.7 is only available for Windows 7 and Vista. The Windows XP version will be published by AMD soon. Windows 7/Vista x64 | Windows 7/Vista x86
AMD Sneaks in ATI Catalyst 9.8 Driver Suite AMD Sneaks in ATI Catalyst 9.8 Driver Suite Without much of a buzz except past leaks suggesting that the company would roll out a beta at this year's Quakecon, AMD released the ATI Catalyst 9.8 WHQL driver suite to readers of the company blog, before formally announcing it and adding it to the AMD Game portal. The package installs drivers for ATI Radeon graphics hardware, including its discrete and integrated graphics processors, AMD 7-series chipsets, and ATI Theater series multimedia products. With lack of proper documentation (read: release notes) at hand, there are no specifics available about the driver, though one could expect the usual application/hardware/OS-specific enhancement, a possibly expanded supported products list with new SKUs in the Radeon HD 4700/4800 series that surfaced over the last month. AMD today made ATI Catalyst 9.8 driver suite available to the masses through its proper channel of posting it on the AMD Game portal, complete with related documentation. The company released the software last friday to readers of the company blog, just so it could loosely coincide with the bulk of activity during Quakecon 2009, when the company also carried out a series of private demonstrations of its upcoming DirectX 11 compliant graphics hardware to sections of the media. Catalyst 9.8 has an unusually long changelog this time around, which can be attributed to two important changes: a series of CrossFireX performance enhancements that are game-specific, and the inclusion of OpenGL 3.1 support. Performance Enhancements: * Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance improves up to 15-50% in CPU limited settings with the largest gains in CrossfireX configurations. * Company of Heroes DirectX 10 performance improves by up to 10-77% in CPU limited settings. * Crysis DirectX 10 Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 10% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 34% in CPU limited settings. * Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 7% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 69% in CPU limited settings. * Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 Dual CrossfireX performance improves as much as 50% and Quad CrossfireX performance improves as much as 88% in CPU limited settings. * Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 Dual CrossfireX performance improves up to 40% in CPU limited settings with Quad CrossfireX performance improving up to 60%. * UnigineTropics OpenGL performance improves 5-20% * UnigineTropics DirectX 10 Quad CrossfireX performance improves 5-20% in CPU limited settings. * World in Conflict DirectX 10 performance improves by 5-10%. OpenGL 3.1 Support * Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40. * Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced). * Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer). * Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the NV extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens. * At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders. * Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object). * Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle). * Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object). * SNORM texture component formats. The complete Release Notes document for ATI Catalyst 9.8, that covers a list of fixed and known issues, can be read here. Pick Catalyst 9.8 for your version of Windows below. Windows 7/Vista x86 | Windows 7/Vista x64 | Windows XP x86 | Windows XP x64 9.7 with 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire 9.8 with the same 4890/4850 1GB Crossfire
ATI Catalyst 9.9 WHQL Released ATI Catalyst 9.9 WHQL Released AMD released version 9.9 of its ATI Catalyst driver suite that provides drivers and related essential software for ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD 7-series core-logic, and ATI Multimedia products. This release mainly intends to fix application-specific issues, and features related to Catalyst Control Center application. For more details, refer to the Release Notes document. Highlights include: * Anti-Aliasing support for Ghostbusters * ATI CrossFireX support for Resident Evil 5 * Graphics corruption fix for Sims 3 * Catalyst Control Center - Basic now responds properly after exiting Quick Adjust Video Settings * Edge enhancement and de-noise sliders in Catalyst Control Center no longer lags or appears out of sync with mouse movement * Launching Hotkeys Manager in Catalyst Control Center no longer causes an unhandled exception error * The "Desktop Rotation" page in Catalyst Control Center no longer shows additional information for the second display when the secondary adapter is connected * HDMI is now detected properly as DTV (HDMI) instead of DTV (DVI) when the HDMI display is hotplugged for the first time * Catalyst Control Center no longer displays error message when specific HDMI displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back * Intermittent failures no longer occur with MediaShow Espresso once a transcoding process has been completed
ATI Catalyst 9.10 WHQL Released ATI Catalyst 9.10 WHQL Released AMD released the latest version of its ATI Catalyst software suite. Version 9.10 WHQL brings with it official support for the company's newest ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics processors, adds features that enhance usability under Windows 7, along with the usual list of bug fixes. The driver also adds support for Super Sample Anti-Aliasing, for Radeon HD 5800 GPUs. A complete list of changes can be read in the release notes document. The most important of them are listed below: * ATI Catalyst 9.10 now includes full GPU support for the award winning ATI HD Radeon 5800 series GPUs. * Provides support for a new Anti-Aliasing method on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. Users can now experience the high level of anti-aliasing image quality using Super Sampling anti-aliasing while maintaining good performance levels * Adds GPU acceleration for the Windows 7 Drag and Drop video converting application DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.10 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bitApplication-specific Changes * Ghostbusters video game no longer flickers between desktop and game play when anti-aliasing is set to 8X and game resolution set to 2560×1600 * Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" no longer causes the game to fail under Multi-GPU configurations * Severe flickering no longer observed while running 3D games/samples on specific HDMI displays with configurations using ATI CrossFireX technology in tri and quad modes * Desktop flashing no longer observed after driver installation and reboot with systems configured with Radeon ASIC in the primary PCIe slot and ATI Fire Stream ASIC in the secondary PCIe slot * "Combat Mission Shock Force" no longer fails after a duration of game play * Underscan/Overscan settings for TV can now be applied from the ATI Catalyst Control Center - TV Properties Adjustments page * Changes to the "All Settings" and "Basic Quality" pages in ATI Catalyst Control Center - Avivo Video will now be retained after reboot Windows 7/Vista x86 | Windows 7/Vista x64 | Windows XP x86 | Windows XP x64
ATI Catalyst 9.12 - Support for DirectComputer 10.1 - provides full support for DirectCompute 10.1 for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4700 Series for both single card and ATI CrossFireX supported configurations. - OpenGL 3.2 extension support - provides support for OpenGL 3.2 extension support on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series. - Performance improvements: 3DMark Vantage - overall performance improves as much as 9% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 and ATI Radeon HD 5700 series products. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat - Performance improves as much as 6% on single card configurations To download the Catalyst 9.12 driver click on the following links: - Catalyst 9.12 (Windows XP 32bit) - Catalyst 9.12 (Windows XP 64bit) - Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7/Vista 32bit) - Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7/Vista 64bit)
ATI Catalyst 9.12 WHQL Released ATI Catalyst 9.12 WHQL Released AMD released its latest version of the ATI Catalyst Software Suite to date, Catalyst 9.12 WHQL, which provides drivers and system software for the company's ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD 7-series chipset IGPs, ATI multimedia products, and the AMD FireStream GPGPU processors. Version 9.12 announced today, comes with expanded GPU support for DirectCompute 10.1 for specific GPUs, includes performance increments, OpenGL 3.2 extension support, along with the usual application-specific fixes. To begin with, application-specific performance increments include an overall performance improvement as high as 9% on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, for 3DMark Vantage. GT1 - Jane Nash performance improves as much as 15% and FT4 - GPU Cloth improves up to 15%. Performance improves as much as 6% on single card configurations for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat. The release provides DirectCompute 10.1 support for ATI Radeon HD 4800 and HD 4700 GPUs in both single and multi-GPU configurations. Lastly, this release adds support for certain OpenGL 3.2 extensions for all GPUs from Radeon HD 2000 series and upward (HD 3000, HD 4000, and HD 5000). Windows 7/Vista 32bit | Windows 7/Vista 64bit | Widnows XP 32bit | Widnows XP 64bit
