AMD published the third performance driver based on Catalyst 11.11, the Catalyst 11.11c. The driver addresses some glaring issues ahead of the upcoming Catalyst WHQL monthly update. The new performance driver addresses the following issue:

Elder Scrolls Skyrim

• Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for the AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series

Apart from the applied changes, the new Catalyst 11.11c includes all the changes brought about by previous Catalyst 11.11 performance drivers.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.11c Performance Driver for Windows 7 and Vista | Windows XP

AMD rolled out its second Catalyst performance driver update in a week, with the Catalyst 11.11b. It follows Catalyst 11.11a, which was released earlier this week. A performance driver update is what AMD used to call "Hotfixes", they are updates for recently-released WHQL-signed drivers, featuring some performance improvements fresh from the Catalyst developer team. In includes all the changes 11.11a brings to the table, plus the ones listed below:
Elder Scrolls Skyrim

• New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossFire performance scaling for AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
  o AMD Radeon HD 5000 CrossFire support will be supported soon in an updated driver

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

• New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossFire performance scaling

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.11b Performance Driver for Windows 7 and Vista | Windows XP

AMD released its latest "performance driver" for Radeon graphics cards, the Catalyst 11.11a. With this release, AMD is using the term "performance driver" to refer to performance-enhancing Hotfix updates it launches between its scheduled monthly WHQL-signed updates. Catalyst 11.11a fixes some outstanding game-related bugs and improves performance and resolves driver-related bugs for a variety of recently-released titles such as Batman: Arkham City, Rage, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Battlefield 3. The rest of the driver is based on Catalyst 11.11.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.11a Performance Driver for Windows 7 or Vista | Windows XP

A list of changes follows.

AMD has now released the CrossFireX Catalyst Application Profiles 2 for their latest 11.11 WHQL drivers. The improvements apply to just two games:

New profiles added to this release:

- Saints Row 3: Resolves stuttering seen when playing in CrossFireX mode. Also provides Single GPU and CrossFireX performance improvements when running in lower resolution configurations
- Gothic 4 Arcania: Fall of Setarrif: Improves CrossFire performance

There's nothing yet for hit game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in this release, unfortunately. CAP 2 can be downloaded here.

Well, this 11.11 release doesn't list any performance improvements unfortunately. It contains just one new unexciting feature and a few fixes, but still has quite a long list of known issues. The new feature is Adobe Flash Player 11 hardware accelerated graphics support, including the A-series and E-series APUs. Fixes include things like Rage texture corruption, bezel compensation working correctly in Far Cry 2 and a screen tearing fix for displays in clone mode. Therefore, if your setup is working fine, there's no rush to update to this driver in case it breaks something. Note the following CAP 1 profile updates added to this release:

- Battlefield 3: Tweaks to the CrossFire profile
- Global Ops: Commando Libya: Improves CrossFire performance
- Driver San Francisco: Disables CrossFire

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.11 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

DOWNLOAD: Release Notes

The driver updates for Rage and the upcoming Battlefield 3 are coming thick and fast now, with every full and preview releases - great news for fans of these games. Note that the BF3 improvements are specified for the beta release, but should also apply to the release version and more will of course follow. Other improvements include Eyefinity 5x1 display implementation on Radeon 6000 & 5000 cards, along with CrossfireX interface enhancements. See the full rundown after the jump!

Good news for hardcore gamers: AMD has just released their 11.10 v2 preview driver and it's heavy on performance and stability improvements for Battlefield 3 beta and Rage. Click the link for the full list.

AMD introduced a special BETA Catalyst driver for AMD Radeon graphics processors, that improves performance on the latest title from FPS pioneer id Software, Rage. Bluntly called the "Catalyst Rage Performance Driver", this driver has been rushed in by AMD to address performance issues. It provides "signifacant performance gains" for Rage in both single GPU and CrossFire configurations. The improvements are effective only on Radeon HD 5000 series and Radeon HD 6000 series graphics processors, and is available only for Windows 7.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst Rage Performance Driver for Windows 7

Just hours after NVIDIA released its Battlefield 3 optimised GeForce driver suite, AMD is ready with a similar piece of software of its own, the AMD Catalyst 11.10 Preview. Preview drivers are essentially BETA hotfix drivers. The new Catalyst software suite makes your ATI/AMD Radeon graphics card (that meets minimum/recommended requirements) optimized for Battlefield3. Its changelog follows:

• Improves performance in Battlefield 3 Open Beta release for both non-Anti-Aliasing, and application enabled Anti-Aliasing cases on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series for single GPU configurations
• Enables support for Eyefinity 5x1 display (portrait and landscape) configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
• Vision Engine Control Center: User Interface enhancements have been implemented for the CrossfireX, GPU Overdrive, and Information Center pages.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.10 Preview Driver Suite

AMD today rolled out this month's major Catalyst software suite release, Catalyst 11.8 WHQL. The software provides the latest WHQL-signed drivers for AMD Radeon GPUs, AMD accelerated processing units (APUs), and AMD chipsets with integrated graphics. This release sees the fusion of AMD Overdrive System (CPU) with GPU overdrive. Both AMD processors and Radeon GPUs can be tweaked using a single application in the Vision Control Center. CPU Overclocking in Vision Center, however, is only supported on Black Edition processor models.

In the GPU driver front, Catalyst 11.8 brings a few major performance improvements, including a 10% performance improvement for Crysis 2 DirectX 11, for both non-Anti-Aliasing, and application enabled Anti-Aliasing modes; 8% performance boosts in FEAR 3 DirectX 11 with application enabled Anti-Aliasing; and a significant 20% boost in Call of Duty Black Ops for single and multi-GPU setups. AMD has redesigned Morphological Anti Aliasing (MLAA) code to boost performance of all applications with MLAA enabled, by up to 30%.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.8 WHQL

AMD today released this month's major update to its Catalyst software suite, Catalyst 11.7 WHQL. The new driver introduces a few major bug fixes, and provides WHQL-signed support for the recently released AMD A-Series APUs, apart from Radeon GPUs and AMD 8-series and 7-series chipset-integrated graphics. AMD claims to have fixed all outstanding issues related to cursor-lag; a variety of system hangs noted when using HDMI or DisplayPort outputs have been fixed; a number of video playback issues, some generic and some application-specific, were resolved; the "checkerboard" pattern display corruption issue related to Eyefinity on CrossFire setups in DirectX 10 games was fixed; and flickering issues related to Portal 2 were fixed. The driver doesn't introduce any new features or performance improvements, but with greater stability, improved performance should naturally follow.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.7 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.

Eurocom Corporation, a developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable notebooks is adding AMD's newest AMD Radeon HD 6990M GPU to their extensive options list of high performance notebook computers. Eurocom will offer both HD 6970M and HD 6990M in its products. The addition of the AMD Radeon HD 6990M offers users a new level of high performance GPU computing in single and CrossFireX (dual) configurations. Eurocom will also offer the AMD Radeon HD 6990M GPUs separately to existing customers as an upgrade option.

"Together with support from Eurocom, AMD is able to provide notebook users with the world's fastest single mobile graphics processor - AMD Radeon HD 6990M," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of the graphics division, AMD. "AMD's graphics offer massive computing power for mobile users and hardcore gamers can experience even more gaming performance through AMD CrossFireX technology."

AMD today released the second hotfix update to Catalyst 11.6, which provides immediate fixes to bugs found with the previous hotfix. Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix update fixes a BSOD error noted when connecting a HDMI and DisplayPort based display to an AMD Radeon HD graphics card running on Catalyst 11.6. It also fixes random screen flickering noted when idling, as well as a mouse pointer corruption issue found with older Catalyst releases. Apart from this, it packs the key feature of Caralyst 11.6a Hotfix, support for AMD A8-3800 and A6-3600 series accelerated processing units.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix Update

It was discovered that an early version Catalyst 11.7 contains entries for new GPUs, spelling out the possible codenames of upcoming AMD Southern Islands GPUs. Southern Islands is the next generation of AMD Radeon GPUs, which will possibly see propagation of VLIW4 SIMD design to GPUs in all market segments, and possible adoption of 28 nm manufacturing process. Moving on to codenames, 3D Center observes that the top of the line GPU is codenamed "Tahiti", there is a possibility of two single-GPU variants.

A graphics card that makes use of two Tahiti chips is codenamed "New Zealand". "Thames" is the codenamed of a possible low cost mobile chip, it could also be a performance chip. There's some uncertainty here. Not much is known about another chip codenamed "Lombok", either. Perhaps it's a performance desktop chip.

AMD released a new Catalyst hotfix driver update, 11.6a. This release comes 15 days after the month's main version, 11.6 WHQL, was released. The updated driver otherwise has the same exact feature-set as 11.6 WHQL, but adds support for graphics processors embedded into AMD's new Vision A-Series accelerated processing units, namely Radeon HD 6550D inside A8-3800 series, and Radeon HD 6530D inside A6-3600 series. Available for Windows XP, and Windows 7/Vista in both x86 and x86-64 forms, the Catalyst 11.6a Hotfix update can be downloaded from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.6a Hotfix Update

The enthusiast community's favourite trial-by-fire for graphics cards, FurMark, has been updated to versions 1.8.5 and 1.9.1. Its developers maintain two branch versions of the program, since version 1.8 is popular, and 1.9 is the latest, bleeding-edge in the suite of stress test routines it has. FurMark is an OpenGL-based 3D graphics hardware stress-testing and benchmarking program. Its stress-testing functions are widely used to test stability of overclocked graphics hardware, and is dreaded by GPU manufacturers.

Version 1.8.5 is a maintenance release, which packs improved score submission, an updated number of window resolutions available, and improved graphics hardware detection using an updated ZoomGPU code. The FurMark 1.7 mode is removed. A bugfix filters the spikes in temperature graphs. Minimizing the window now can't be done in full-screen mode. Version 1.9.1, on the other hand, adds support for new AMD and NVIDIA GPUs with updated detection code, supports GPU-Z 0.5.1 and GPU Shark 0.5.1; added a workaround for a bug in AMD Catalyst GLSL compiler, which led to wrong lighting of the furry donut.DOWNLOAD: FurMark 1.8.5 and 1.9.1

AMD Catalyst received its monthly major update with version 11.6 WHQL. The driver isn't posted on AMD Game website, but leaked to the media. The new drivers bring support for AMD's new Fusion "Llano" A-series accelerated processing units (APUs), which embed AMD Radeon HD 6000 series GPU components. The new drivers also introduce the new AMD Steady Video Technology, which is an AMD APP-based software that works on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series graphics cards (only on systems that also run AMD processors), AMD E450, AMD E300 APUs, and AMD A8, A6, and A4 series APUs. The technology processes videos for image-stabilization of each frame, giving out a "steady" video output. Videos processed by Steady Video are compatible with any of the popular video players, including Adobe Flash player, Windows Media player, Cyberlink PowerDVD, Corel Win DVD, ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater.

With the new driver, AMD enabled decode acceleration of MPEG-4 part-2 content in Microsoft's video player applications (through MFT support) for all AMD Radeon 6000 Series GPUs. The new driver also packs a number of game-specific performance enhancements, for applications such as Dirt 2, F1 2010, Tom Clancy's HAWX, Crysis Warhead, and Unigine Heaven (OpenGL). For more information, refer to the Release Notes article.

AMD was a little too early in May with its monthly Catalyst driver release, with the Catalyst 11.5 WHQL reaching the web as early as 9th May (typically monthly Catalyst updates are released after the 24th). On the same date, AMD also released its first hotfix update for the Catalyst 11.5, the 11.5a Hotfix Update, which packed a number of game-specific performance improvements. Today, the company released its second such update for the month, with Catalyst 11.5b Hotfix.

The update is rushed in to fix a number of issues found with the recently-released game, Brink. It also fixes a number of non-gaming application issues, particularly related to media decoding. In the process, the driver also brings with it a number of game-specific performance improvements, games including Civilization 5, Dead Rising 2, Fallout 3, Mafia 2, NBA 2010, ShenGuiChuanQi, Starcraft 2, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, and Dirt 3.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.5b Hotfix Update.

A complete list of changes follows:

It's not even 15th of the month, and AMD already released its monthly update of the Catalyst driver suite, which is normally reserved for the last week of the month. Catalyst 11.5 WHQL doesn't come with any performance enhancements as such, but apparently AMD found that a certain feature-enhancement in HydraVision was important enough to warrant a WHQL release. HydraGrid feature found in HydraVision is now aware of custom (user-created) Bezels. There's now also a "Automatic Grid" option that aligns to the user defined Eyefinity display layout.

The rather dull WHQL release is backed by a Hotfix release that comes with a lot more outstanding issues. Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix update includes fixes concerning quality of videos GPU-transcoded from H.264 clips to MPEG2 Blu-ray video, intermittent cursor lag, performance and quality enhancements for the upcoming game Brink, and flickering noted by Radeon HD 6600 series graphics cards with DDR3 memory running in DX9.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.5 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix Update

AMD today released this month's timely release of its Catalyst software suite, a unified software package that installs the latest drivers for AMD Radeon graphics processors, AMD HDMI audio device, 7-series and 8-series chipsets, and related system software. This particular release has been touted by its makers within the community to provide significant performance improvements, some of which have been demonstrated by a "preview" version of Catalyst 11.4 released last month. A partial list of those games can be found here. Apart from performance enhancements, Catalyst 11.4 WHQL includes new features such as task based display management controls, an improved Eyefinity setup group, and a new Catalyst update notifier that lets your know if a newer version of AMD Catalyst is available online. There are some OpenCL GPU compute enhancements, and a list of bugs fixed, as listed in the Release Notes document.

DOWNLOAD:AMD Catalyst 11.4 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

AMD released a timely update to its Catalyst software suite, the package that provides display drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD chipset video, APUs, HDMI audio, and related software. The AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL release itself packs very little changes. At least the communication sent to us by AMD only mentioned one significant change: that the Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) OpenCL runtime is enabled by default within Catalyst.

Other than that, AMD advertised its next Catalyst release, which is now just a "Preview" driver (not WHQL-signed, use isn't covered under warranties). The Catalyst 11.4 Preview comes with a much larger changelog, which is listed below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

AMD today released version 11.2 of its Catalyst software suite. AMD's latest release has come a little early for this time of the month. With this release, AMD focused on improving features, and introducing new ones. To begin with, tessellation controls that were first introduced with Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix, has been finalized, including a fully-functional "AMD Optimized" setting, which sets the best tessellation level while maintaining optimal frame-rates. The setting is per-application, and relies on AMD profiling applications. Next, Catalyst AI Texture Filtering received updates including a new method to improve image quality with minimal performance impact. Last of the big three feature updates is the official extension of the morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) to AMD Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs. Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Batman Arkham Asylum got some GPU-specific performance improvements.

DOWNLOAD:AMD Catalyst 11.2 for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

AMD today formally introduced Catalyst 11.1 WHQL software suite and Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix update. AMD Catalyst installs drivers and system software for ATI/AMD Radeon graphics processors (HD 2000 series and above), AMD chipset integrated graphics, and other ATI multimedia products. The Catalyst 11.1 WHQL finalizes the new Catalyst Control Center (referred to so far as CCC2), as the default control center, which simplifies control for mainstream and advanced users. It also formally introduces support for OpenGL 4.1. Catalyst 11.1 WHQL adds performance updates to F1 2010 and Left 4 Dead 2, the performance increments are more for the HD 6000 series GPUs. Next up is the 11.1a Hotfix update, which packs all the features of 11.1, plus performance improvements for Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs. It also adds new tessellation level controls. A number of Catalyst AI texture filtering updates are also added.

DOWNLOAD:
AMD Catalyst 11.1 WHQL
Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix Update

A list of changes follows.

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.

AMD today released the first hotfix update to the recently released Catalyst 10.12 driver suite. A hotfix is an interim update before the next driver release. The new hotfix introduces two important things: first, it adds official support for the newly-released AMD Radeon HD 6970 and AMD Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards; and second, it adds a new Eyefinity mode that lets you use all five display outputs on the HD 6000 series graphics cards (i.e. two DVI, two mini-DP, one HDMI) for a 5 x 1 Eyefinity configuration.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 10.12a Hotfix Update