Friday, June 29th 2012
AMD Releases Catalyst 12.6 WHQL and 12.7 Beta
Finally, AMD released a new WHQL-signed Catalyst driver. Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, along with Catalyst 12.7 beta, were released on Thursday. Catalyst 12.6 WHQL ships with a wide range of stability optimizations, while 12.7 beta ships with the same, plus performance optimizations for a wide range of games.
With Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, AMD fixed several outstanding bugs such as GPUs with ZeroCore hanging when the system goes to S2/S3 sleep, certain CrossFire setups hanging after cutscenes in Call of Duty: Black Ops, display corruption in Heroes and Generals in DirectX 11 mode, CrossFire + Eyefinity with Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs resulting in BSOD errors, etc. Catalyst 12.7 beta includes all these, plus performance improvements for games, except that it lacks WHQL certification. Optimizations include up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, 15% in Total War: Shogun, 10% in DiRT 3, 6% in Batman: Arkham City, and 3% in Battlefield 3.
DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.6 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit
A list of changes follows:
Resolved Issues:
With Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, AMD fixed several outstanding bugs such as GPUs with ZeroCore hanging when the system goes to S2/S3 sleep, certain CrossFire setups hanging after cutscenes in Call of Duty: Black Ops, display corruption in Heroes and Generals in DirectX 11 mode, CrossFire + Eyefinity with Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs resulting in BSOD errors, etc. Catalyst 12.7 beta includes all these, plus performance improvements for games, except that it lacks WHQL certification. Optimizations include up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, 15% in Total War: Shogun, 10% in DiRT 3, 6% in Batman: Arkham City, and 3% in Battlefield 3.
DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.6 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit
A list of changes follows:
Resolved Issues:
- 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 Catalyst 12.6 includes some additional fixes(not found in the AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 graphics cards for issues related to the GPU hanging when the system goes to sleep. Please ensure that your System BIOS is up to date. Some occurrences of this issue may be related to outdated System BIOS.
- 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.
- Up to 25% in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
- Up to 3% in Battlefield 3
- Up to 6% in Batman: Arkham City
- Up to 3% in Dues Ex: Human Revolution
- Up to 6% in Crysis 2
- Up to 15% in Total War: Shogun
- Up to 8% in Crysis Warhead
- Up to 5% in Just Cause 2
- Up to 10% in Dirt 3
44 Comments on AMD Releases Catalyst 12.6 WHQL and 12.7 Beta
Cheers m8
support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalystbetadriver1.aspx
:)
A 12.6 without having a 12.5... that will only create more confusion.
I say, they better drop this version method and stick to 8.98, 8.99 9.01 etc.
(A6 'dual graphics' is not... simple)
And Mussels, been there and done that with my HD4250 + HD 5650 PowerXpress setup in my laptop. Got tired of updating them as something else was always wrong. OpenGL was broken on my 5650 for about 5 driver releases (Minecraft froze and crashed countless times, but not on the IGP) and my latest issue is the backlight being stuck on minimum is quite annoying.
[INDENT]Desktop Graphics
Radeon HD Series
Radeon HD 2xxx Series PCIe
Windows 7 - 64 Bit
[/INDENT]
AMD told me that the latest release was Catalyst Software Suite 12.6. A 2000-series card is a lot older than a 5000-series, yet the latest driver still works with it.
@Mussels: lol
Maybe now I won't have to disable CFX when I want to play Skyrim...
Edit: Never before have I seen a game with negative scaling for Crossfire, Skyrim was the first. The fact that it's taken AMD this long to address the issue is a bit unsettling. I hope this actually fixes the issue and doesn't just "improve" the scaling to be less negative.
Source: CatalystCreator via Twitter
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i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/rpsgc/TESV2012-06-2915-22-29-05.jpg
As always, great job AMD
We all setup our pc's diffrent so some of us will have problems while others don't.