AMD released a WHQL-signed version of its Catalyst 14.4 software suite, its first in four months (the previous one being 13.12 WHQL). The driver builds on the Catalyst 14.4 Release Candidate the company shipped out a little earlier this month, to lend immediate support for Radeon R9 295X2, which hit the shelves on the 21st. The four highlights of Catalyst 14.4 include support for the R9 295X2, CrossFire frame-pacing improvements for a number of games, full support for OpenGL 4.4 API, and bug-fixes for AMD Mantle API.

Among the games AMD worked to improve CrossFire performance of, include Crysis 3, which sees improved frame-pacing; Far Cry 3, which sees improved 3-GPU and 4-GPU scaling; Anno 2070, which sees an overall CrossFire scaling improvement of 34 percent; Titanfall, which sees reduced game flickering an micro-stutter; and Metro: Last Light, which sees 10 percent improvement in CrossFire scaling. The driver also addresses bugs related to 3x1 Eyefinity setups using three Ultra HD displays. For gamers running Battlefield 4 with its Mantle renderer, AMD addressed the performance slowdown seen when switching windows using Alt+Tab; and fuzzy textures when playing the game on rotated displays.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 14.4 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Visa 64-bit | Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit

With less than three weeks to go until the official launch of the 9 Series chipsets, Gigabyte has decided to share a few pictures depicting three of its boards powered by the Z97. Seen below are the Z97X-UD5H BK (Black Edition), the Z97X-UD7 TH and the overclocking-ready Z97X-SOC Force which feature support for Haswell Refresh and older LGA1150 processors.

All three boards have an Ultra Durable design, they are SLI and CrossFire capable (the UD5 and UD7 provide three PCI-Express x16 slots while the SOC model offers four such slots), and include four DDR3 memory slots, one SATA Express connector, two (Z97X-SOC) or four (Z97X-UD5H, Z97X-UD7) SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, 7.1 channel audio and Gigabit Ethernet (the UD7 TH and SOC Force pack a Killer E2200 NIC).

AMD has now released a new Catalyst driver build, more specifically, an RC (Release Candidate) of the Catalyst 14.4 which is expected to arrive in its final, WHQL-certified form in the next couple of weeks. The 14.4 brings full support for OpenGL 4.4 as well as some CrossFire and Mantle tweaks. The driver has support for the recently-introduced Radeon R9 295X dual-GPU card as well as for the rest of the Radeon R9 200 Series, the R7 200s, R5 200s, HD 8000s, HD 7000s, HD 6000s and HD 5000s.

The Catalyst 14.4 RC can be downloaded from this page.

AMD has now made available the first beta build of the Catalyst 14.3 graphics driver bringing Mantle and True Audio support for Eidos Montreal's Thief. This release also enables faster loading times in Call of Duty Ghosts (for systems with QUAD CrossFire setups), as well as some bug fixes.

The Catalyst 14.3 v1.0 Beta has support for Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000, HD 7000, HD 8000, R7 200 and R9 200 Series desktop cards (plus Mobility Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000, HD 6000M HD 7000M, HD 8000M mobile GPUs) and is available for Windows 7, 8, 8,1. More details can be found on this page.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 14.3 Beta 1.0

AMD announced its 2014 A-Series APU for the desktop platform, code-named "Kaveri," after the southern-Indian river. Built in the new FM2+ package, the APUs run only on socket FM2+ motherboards based on the AMD A88X, A78, and A55 chipsets; while the socket itself can seat older FM2 APU families, "Trinity" and "Richland." In many ways, the socket transition is similar to that of socket AM3+. "Kaveri" sees AMD integrate two of its newest CPU and GPU micro-architectures, "Steamroller" for CPU, and Graphics CoreNext 2.0 for the GPU. "Kaveri" is also built on newer generation 28 nm silicon fab process.

"Steamroller" is an evolution of the same modular CPU core design as its predecessors, "Piledriver" and "Bulldozer." AMD promises a 10 percent improvement in performance clock-by-clock, per core, which falls in line with AMD's normal scheme of annual incremental performance updates on its CPU micro-architectures. A "Steamroller" module is a combination of two 64-bit x86 cores, which feature dedicated and shared components. "Kaveri" has two such modules, and so physically, it features a quad-core CPU.

AMD has just made available a new build of its still-in-beta Catalyst 13.11 graphics driver. Dubbed Beta9.5, this latest release fixes the graphics corruption seen in Starcraft, the intermittent flickering seen on some Radeon R9 270x cards, and makes sure that the Overdrive feature doesn't disappear from the Catalyst Control Center (bug which was experienced by owners of Radeon R9 290 Series cards). Moreover, the driver improves frame pacing results in AMD Quad CrossFire configurations for Hitman: Absolution, and Total War: Rome 2.

The Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.5 is available for Windows 8.1/8/7 and features support for the Radeon R9, R7, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

Download: Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.5 for Windows

As a little weekend treat AMD has rolled out a new build of the Catalyst 13.11 graphics drivers, the Beta9.4. This release improves CrossFire scaling in Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer and is claimed to 'maybe' fix the intermittent black screens or display loss observed on some Radeon R9 290X and R9 290 cards. The mobile-friendly version of the driver comes with Enduro profiles for XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Need for Speed Rivals.

The Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.4 is available for Windows 8.1/8/7 and features support for the Radeon R9, R7, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

Download: Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.4 for Windows / Mobility Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.4 for Windows

AMD has made available a fresh beta build of the Catalyst 13.11 graphics driver. This latest release is the Beta 9.2 and it brings improved anti-aliasing performance in Call of Duty: Ghost (and an updated CrossFire profile for the game), a PowerTune tweak to 'reduce variance of fan speed / RPM' on Radeon R9 290 Series cards, plus fixes for crashing bugs seen in legacy DirectX 9 applications.

The Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.2 is available for Windows 8.1/8/7 and features support for the Radeon R9, R7, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

Downloads: Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.2 for Windows

Just like its arch-rival NVIDIA, AMD has kicked off the week by rolling out a new graphics driver, the seventh beta build of the Catalyst 13.11. This fresh release includes all the features found in the previous betas and brings improved (by up to 20%) CrossFire scaling in EA's Battlefield 4.

The Catalyst 13.11 Beta7 is available for Windows 8.1/8/7 and offers support for the Radeon R9, R7, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

Download: Catalyst 13.11 Beta7 for Windows

An alleged company slide detailing the architecture of AMD's upcoming "Hawaii" GPU was leaked to the web, revealing a monstrous combination of components. The GPU maintains the same component hierarchy as "Tahiti." The most distinguishing feature here is that whereas "Tahiti" features two shader engines, "Hawaii" features four. What it translates to, is double the geometry processing power, four independent geometry processors with a tessellation unit each, and double the number of ROPs, at 64. Each shader unit features 11 compute units (CU), the number-crunching machinery of the GPU. Each CU holds 4 TMUs (texture memory units), and 64 stream processors.

The four shader engines of "Hawaii" are tied to a unified command processing structure, a 1 megabyte L2 cache, a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interfaces, and the ancillaries, that include the PCI-Express 3.0 x16 bus interface, six display controllers (six TMDS links in all), CrossFireX XDMA, and multimedia accelerators that include UVD (accelerates high-def video), VCE (video codec engine, accelerates multimedia codecs), and the new TrueAudio hardware DSP.

AMD offers greater flexibility with its multi-GPU solutions, letting you mix and match any two GPUs based on the same silicon. It was quite natural to expect a Radeon R9 280X to work in tandem with a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition from the previous generation, since the two are based on the same "Tahiti" GPU, which is now proven. HardwareCanucks managed to run that combo without a hitch, and log performance results across a bouquet of game tests. The publication also notes that one should be able to similarly pair a Radeon R9 270X with a Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition (the one based on "Pitcairn," not "Tahiti LE"). Have a Radeon HD 7950? Feel free to add an R9 280X to the mix.

AMD has now let loose the second beta version of the Catalyst 13.10 graphics driver. The Beta2 features support for Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000, and HD 7000 Series desktop cards and HD 5000M, HD 6000M, HD 7000M and 8000M Series mobile GPUs, and is available for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 systems. Download links are just below.

• AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta2 for Windows
• AMD Mobility Catalyst 13.10 Beta2 for Windows (64-bit)
• AMD Mobility Catalyst 13.10 Beta2 for Windows (32-bit)

AMD posted Catalyst 13.9 WHQL software suite, which is logo-certified for Windows 8.1, and Catalyst 13.10 Beta for everyone else. Catalyst 13.9 Windows 8.1 driver is logo-certified (i.e., it complies with the newest Windows Display Driver Model 1.3), yet the it isn't quite WHQL-certified. You're at the very least assured that the driver will make your hardware work on Windows 8.1, and support Direct3D 11.1 on compatible Radeon HD 7000 series, HD 8000 (OEM) series, and the upcoming Rx 2xx series hardware. Direct3D 11.1 should get its first major outing with Battlefield 4.

Catalyst 13.9 for Windows 8.1 supports all AMD Radeon GPU families since HD 5000 series, and integrated graphics for all APUs AMD ever sold. The new Catalyst Control Center requires .NET 4.5 runtime environment. Moving on, Catalyst 13.10 Beta is being released to users on older operating systems. It brings game-specific performance improvements, including 20% performance scaling on Rome Total War 2 for CrossFire setups and display corruption issues associated with it; 20% performance scaling on Saints Row 4 for CrossFire setups; and 10% performance scaling on Metro: Last Light for CrossFire setups. Frame-pacing (fluidity) is improved for six games, including Tomb Raider (2013), Metro: Last Light, Sniper Elite V2, World of Warcraft, Max Payne 3, and Hitman: Absolution. The driver also fixes a bug that spools down PCIe link speeds of secondary graphics cards in CrossFire setups down to x1, when idling.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.9 WHQL (64-bit) | AMD Catalyst 13.9 WHQL (32-bit) | AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta

AMD has now made available a new Catalyst driver, the 13.10 version for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. This driver comes with a beta tag and supports the Radeon HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards. There's also a mobile version of 13.10 which supports the Mobility Radeon HD 8000M, HD 7000M, HD 6000M and HD 5000M cards. Download links are just below.

• AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta
• AMD Mobility Catalyst 13.10 Beta

AMD released the second edition of Catalyst 13.8 Beta driver suite, marked by "V2." The drivers bring with them a bucket-list of game specific performance improvements, beginning with up to 25 percent on Saints Row 4 at 1920 x 1080 and Ultra settings enabled; up to 9 percent on Splinter Cell: Blacklist at 2560 x 1600 and Ultra settings; improvements on single-GPU and CrossFireX performance with Final Fantasy XIV; improves single-GPU performance on RIPD; CrossFire performance on Minimum and Castlevania Lords of Shadow.

Catalyst 13.8 Beta V2 also fixes image quality issues with Van Helsing, display corruption when enabling anti-aliasing through Catalyst Control Center, for Far Cry 3 and FC3: Blood Dragon; random corruption issues on Doom 3 BFG Edition, and CrossFire frame-pacing issues with World of Warcraft, Sniper Elite, Watch Dogs, and Tomb Raider.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta V2

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced Maximus VI Formula, an ATX gaming motherboard ready for the latest 4th generation Intel Core processors and packed with exclusive ROG features.

Based on the new Intel Z87 chipset, Maximus VI Formula is brimming with the kind of innovative and exclusive features that ROG fans expect. CrossChill hybrid air and water-cooling gives efficient heat dissipation for extreme overclocked performance, SupremeFX Formula onboard audio with a dedicated 600ohm headphone amplifier ensures immersive high-quality audio and a mini-PCIe Combo II card adds dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi for next-generation wireless networking. Maximus VI Formula also features Extreme Engine DIGi+ III technology and high-quality electronic components for precise power delivery with stable performance.

Z87 MPOWER and Z87 MPOWER MAX, two of MSI's top overclocker-targeted socket LGA1150 motherboards, are joined by the company's new flagship motherboard, the Z87 XPOWER. Built in the XL-ATX (345 x 264 mm) form-factor, this board gets you the best MSI has to offer, and is ideal for both CPU and VGA overclocking benches. The CPU is powered by a gargantuan 32-phase digital-PWM power supply, which draws power from two 8-pin EPS connectors, in addition to the 24-pin ATX, and an optional 6-pin PCI-Express connector.

The CPU socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-3000+ memory, and a PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express gen 3.0 bridge chip, which gives out four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, two of which are x16 capable, all four of which are x8-capable. One of the five x16 slots, the second one from top, is directly wired to the CPU, and plugging a graphics card on that slot will bypass the bridge-chip. This slot is ideal for when you have just one card. Two PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slots take seat between the x16 slots, wired to the PCH. In addition to 4-way NVIDIA SLI and 4-way AMD CrossFireX, the board includes Lucid Virtu MVP 2.0 software.

AMD today announced exclusive collaboration with Square Enix to optimize "THIEF" for the Graphics Core Next architecture in select AMD Radeon graphics processors, as well as the x86 and graphics architectures featured in AMD A-Series APUs. Developed in conjunction with the AMD Gaming Evolved program, "THIEF" will extensively leverage the advanced capabilities of AMD Radeon graphics processors, including AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology for panoramic gaming, AMD CrossFire multi-GPU technology for supreme performance, and state-of-the-art DirectX 11 rendering for pristine image quality.

"The 'THIEF' franchise has a storied history that we are proud to join in this latest installment," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit, AMD. "We are even more pleased to work so closely with their development team to realize the vision for these games with the incredible gaming performance of a PC powered by AMD Radeon graphics. And as the exclusive hardware partner for 'THIEF,' we continue to demonstrate that the best experience for gamers and developers lives at AMD with the Gaming Evolved program."

ASUS announced a fleet of socket LGA1150 motherboards, covering its mainline (classic), Republic of Gamers (ROG), and The Ultimate Force (TUF) lines. With this series, ASUS is adopting a new color scheme for its mainline motherboards, breaking away from the black PCB with blue heatsinks scheme it maintained since the first LGA1156 motherboards, almost four years ago. The new mainline motherboards from ASUS feature black PCBs with golden-colored heatsinks covering the VRM and PCH, and simpler naming. ASUS' first wave of Z87-based mainline (classic) motherboards include the entry-level Z87-C and Z87-A, mid-range Z87-PLUS and Z87-PRO, and premium Z87-DELUXE.

At a media event held in its Taipei headquarters, GIGABYTE demonstrated its AMP-UP integrated audio solution that will feature on some of its upcoming motherboards. On that pretense, it even got to show of two of its top socket LGA1150 motherboards, built for Core "Haswell" processors, the G1.Sniper 5, and the G1.Sniper M5. Positioned in gamer-overclocker targeted G1.Killer series, the two boards are based on Intel Z87 Express chipset. The G1.Sniper 5 is the larger standard ATX motherboard; while the M5 is a compact micro-ATX offering. The pictures also confirm that socket LGA1150 retention module and bolt-spacing is identical to sockets LGA1155 and LGA1156.

The G1.Sniper 5 appears to feature a 16-phase VRM, which uses ferrite-core chokes, and the same International Rectifier PowIRstage components as Ultra Durable 5 motherboards from the previous generation. This time around, the CPU plays a greater role in voltage regulation. The driver-MOSFETs on the board are cooled by an active fan-heatsink, which also has a liquid channel running through it, so you could make it part of your CPU loop. Thankfully GIGABYTE didn't let its imagination run away with designs of the other heatsinks on the board, one of which cools the Z87 Express chipset, and the other we imagine, a PLX PEX8747 48-lane PCI-Express 3.0 bridge chip. This chip gets you 4-way SLI/CrossFireX support.

AMD launched its first WHQL-signed Catalyst Software Suite in three months, with the Catalyst 13.4 WHQL, coinciding with the launch of Radeon HD 7990, earlier today. The Catalyst Software Suite installs device drivers and system software for AMD Radeon GPUs, IGPs, and integrated HDMI audio devices, in additional to AMD APP runtime environment, and certain media acceleration software.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.4 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

The change-log for Catalyst 13.4 WHQL follows.

An anonymous tipster left an interesting picture on our doorsteps. It shows a pair of Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" reference-design graphics cards chugging along inside an enthusiast PC. AMD surprised us late last month, when it showed off a reference-design Radeon HD 7990 dual-GPU graphics card, at the Game Developers' Conference (GDC) event. The cards in this new picture appear to be identical to the one AMD showed. The "Radeon" embossing appears pretty clear on both cards, so one can't mistake them for FirePro S10000.

Bearing a new internal codename "Malta," compared to last year's various dual-HD 7970 contraptions that were codenamed "New Zealand," the new Radeon HD 7990 is being designed to be far more energy efficient, and quiet. While the various "New Zealand" cards often featured three 8-pin PCIe power connectors and triple-slot cooling solutions, "Malta" makes do with just two 8-pin power connectors, and a dual-slot cooler. We've been talking to a lot of reliable sources in the industry, and nobody has any clue about a tentative launch date.

AMD rushed out a new beta version of its Catalyst driver suite, which addresses the issue of improper performance scaling on the new 3DMark, on CrossFire multi-GPU setups. The new Catalyst 13.2 Beta 5 adds a CrossFire profile for 3DMark v1.00 launched on Monday (04/02). Along the way, it also introduced a couple of performance improvements in some highly specific scenarios. For systems running Far Cry 3 at 2560 x 1600 pixels, with 8x AA, performance could go up by 10 percent. With a refined profile, the driver could dole out up to 40 percent higher performance in Crysis 3, on CrossFire setups.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 5

Hot on the heels of NVIDIA's GeForce 313.95 Beta drivers, AMD launched Catalyst 13.2 Beta, targeting EA's release of Crysis 3 multiplayer open-beta. The driver improves performance by up to 15 percent, but in highly specific scenarios, vaguely put by AMD as "in high MSAA cases." There is no general performance improvement announced, but that future Catalyst releases could address performance. Catalyst 13.2 Beta also addresses frame latency issues related to three titles, TES5: Skyrim, Boderlands 2, and Guild Wars 2. Single GPU performance for Devil May Cry is improved by up to 50 percent. CrossFire systems running Crysis 2 could see a 10 percent performance improvement. Lastly, a texture-flickering issue seen with DirectX 9.0c applications is resolved.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta

TechPowerUp released version 0.6.7 of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility. The new release brings some feature-additions, support for more graphics processors, and stability improvements. To begin with, we made room in the GPU-Z window to display TMU (texture memory unit) count. Support for a large number of recently-launched GPUs, including Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE," mobile GeForce 600 series MX, and from Quadro family, were added.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.7 also brings a few UI enhancements. To begin with, GPU-Z remembers window position from its previous session, cutting you time for positioning it right for screenshots. Next up, when minimized, its tray icon does more than just show you the app is running. Its tooltip (visible when hovered), displays some important sensor data. A new "-tab" command line parameter allows proverclockers to script-launch GPU-Z showing a specific tab. Among the bugs fixed are one related to a crash occurring on CrossFire setups (a Catalyst-related bug), another crash occurring on NVIDIA setups when updating sensor data (GeForce driver-related bug), temperature reading on AMD "Llano" APUs is improved.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.7, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.7 ASUS ROG Themed

The change-log follows.