Today AMD released the finalized Catalyst 11.4 drivers for most modern Radeon HD cards, from the Radeon HD 2400 series and up. Besides the usual bugfixes, some interesting bits for techies include improved GPU Compute performance and vastly improved ease-of-use for Eyefinity multi-monitor setups. For gamers, we have performance improvements on several popular titles (and some not-so-popular), including Call of Duty Black Ops. Most of the performance improvements, however, come from multi-GPU configurations.
You can download Catalyst 11.4 right now from AMD’s download page.
Here are the full release notes:
Enhancements to the AMD VISION Engine Control Center / AMD Catalyst Control Center
- New task based Display Management controls
- Simplifies the configuration of displays and display settings
- New Eyefinity setup group
- Setting up an Eyefinity group has never been easier
- AMD Catalyst update notification (found within the Information Center)
- This feature notifies users that new AMD Catalyst software packages are available
GPU Compute enhancements:
- The OpenCL runtime (included in AMD Catalyst 11.4) includes performance enhancements supporting zero-copy on APUs and increased performance for PCIe transfers between a CPU and discrete GPU.
Performance Enhancements
A number of performance enhancements are seen with the AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series and AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series:
- Call of Duty Black Ops – gains of up to 15% with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on single GPU configurations.
- Battleforge – gains of up to 15% with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on single and multiple GPU configurations.
- Batman Arkham Asylum – gains of up to 20% with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on single and multiple GPU configurations.
- Aliens vs. Predator – gains of up to 8% with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on single and multiple GPU configurations.
- Civilization 5 – gains of up to 15% on single and multiple GPU configurations.
- Far Cry 2 – gains of up to 6% on single and multiple GPU configurations.
- Just Cause 2 – gains of up to 9% on single and multiple GPU configurations.
- Lost Planet 2 – gains of up to 10% on single and multiple GPU configurations.
Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 11.4 software suite for Windows 7. These include:
- The GPU no longer shows high GPU usage after running Firefox 4 with hardware acceleration enabled.
- Bioshock no longer displays random tearing and screen corruption with Vsync and MLAA enabled.
- Water textures no longer flicker in Two Worlds II in Crossfire mode.
- Bulletstorm lightshafts no longer appear broken when running on a HD 6970 series product.
- Bulletstorm no longer displays random texture corruption when running in Crossfire mode.
- FI 2010 no longer slows down intermittently when in Crossfire mode.
- PowerDVD no longer crashes if Crossfire is enabled / disabled during playback of a BD title.
- WinDVD no longer displays corrupted BD playback when the monitor is rotated to portrait mode.
- Crysis Warhead corruption is no longer randomly observed when launching the game.
- Running the Heaven benchmark no longer displays graphics corruption during DirectX 11 tests.
- Catalyst Control Center Avivo settings are now correctly displayed after connecting a secondary display.
- The Catalyst Control Center screen no longer flickers while adjusting screen brightness.
Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System
This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 11.4 software suite for Windows Vista. These include:
- Mpeg2 video clips now use hardware acceleration when played using Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.
- Adding bezel compensation to a 2×1 Eyefinity configuration no longer causes both displays to blank out.
- The Catalyst Control Center screen no longer flickers while adjusting screen brightness.
Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System
- System no longer displays random corruption when playing World of Warcraft.
Star Wars –The Force Unleashed no longer causes random system reboots.
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