In the wake of impending competition from NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560Ti, AMD is busy fine-tuning its performance-segment offer. It is lowering prices of Radeon HD 6950 with the introduction of a new 1 GB variant, and reportedly working on Radeon HD 6870 "Turbo" models. Combined with the two, AMD is also planning a new driver which is out and out focussed on performance enhancements for Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs.

Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix introduces performance improvements specific to Radeon HD 6800 and HD 6900 series, in turn specific to games. One can expect performance improvements of up to 35% with Anti-Aliasing in some games. Catalyst 11.1a is also going to give users full control over the way the driver handles tessellation, allowing users to override applications' tessellation settings (much like AA and AF). In the future, there's also scope for an AMD-optimised tessellation setting that adjusts tessellation detail to give the best details with minimal performance impact.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix Update

A list of changes follows.

Performance improvements for the AMD Radeon HD 6800 & HD 6900 series include but not limited to:

AMD Radeon HD 6900 and AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series:

• 3DMark Vantage improves ~7%
• 3DMark06 improves ~3%
• Call of Duty Black Ops improves ~20% at 4xMSAA and up to 35% at 8xMSAA
• Riddick Assault on Dark Athena SSAO performance improves ~20%
• Unigine Heaven OpenGL performance improves ~10% at moderate, 30% at normal and 100% at extreme tessellation levels

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series:

• Aliens vs. Predators improves ~9% at 2xMSAA and up to 20% at 4xMSAA
• Batman Arkham Asylum improves ~4%
• Crysis Warhead improves ~2-4%
• Metro 2033 improves ~28% at 4xMSAA

AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series:

• Battleforge DirectX 11 performance improves as much as 6%

New Tessellation Controls:
The Catalyst Control Center includes an early prototype of some new tessellation controls. Our goal is to give users full control over the tessellation levels used in applications. The default selection "AMD Optimized" setting allows AMD, on a per application basis, to set the best level of tessellation. The intention is to help users get the maximum visual benefit of Tessellation, while minimizing the impact on performance. Currently no applications have been profiled, so the "AMD Optimized" setting will be non-operational until further notice.

• The "Use Application Settings" option gives applications full control over the Tessellation level. Users can also manually set the maximum tessellation level used by applications with the slider control
• The long term goal for the "AMD Optimized" setting is to use the Catalyst Application Profile mechanism to control the AMD recommended level of tessellation on a per application basis. AMD's intention is to set the tessellation level such that we will not be reducing image quality in any way that would negatively impact the gaming experience.