NVIDIA today released a hotfix version of its GeForce driver suite. Numbered the 378.77, these fix some issues with the previous driver release, numbered 378.66. Solved issues include driver installation errors for laptops with GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti GPUs, crashes in Minecraft and some other Java-based titles, and resolving 'Debug Mode' as default option on Pascal based GPUs.

This driver release contains all previous improvements, including an optimized experience for Sniper Elite 4, For Honor and Halo Wars 2, whilst also introducing support for NVIDIA's Video SDK 8.0, which provides support for high-bit-depth (10/12-bit) hardware accelerated video decoding of VP9 and HEVC. You can, as always, grab these hot-from-the-coding-gods drivers from the link below, right here on TPU.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 378.77 Hotfix Drivers

AMD today released the Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.5 Hotfix, highlighting improved support for Watch Dogs 2, as well as the addition of a new AMD CrossFire profile for Dishonored 2 under DirectX 11.

As for other important tidbits, this release fixes instances of flickering on The Division and Battlefield 1, both occurring when using AMD Crossfire technology. As always, you can grab the drivers right here at TechPowerUp - just follow the links below.Download: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.5 Hotfix for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

NVIDIA has today released the latest Hotfix GeForce drivers that address the low memory clocks on certain factory-overclocked "Pascal" cards. The driver includes all of the previous updates from the 375.86 WHQL driver with the "Pascal" memory clock fix listed as the only difference. You can Grab the drivers from the links below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 375.95 Beta for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit

AMD today released the Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.2 hotfix, highlighting an improved Shader Cache storage limit, which will allow the Shader Cache feature to store more shaders for extremely demanding games that may have previously hit the old storage cap.

Apart from that, not much is new, since it includes all of the previous 16.11 branch driver fixes and optimizations. The software release also includes an updated "Known Issues" list, which you can read after the break. As always, you can grab the drivers right here at TechPowerUp - just follow the links bellow.Download: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.2 Hotfix for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

NVIDIA released today its latest "Hotfix" GeForce drivers that add optimization for an unannounced game and a minor GeForce Experience-related bug. To begin with, GeForce 364.96 Hotfix driver comes with optimization (read: "support") for DOOM: Open Beta. Don't expect SLI support on this game's OpenGL-based engine, though. The drivers also address a bug with GeForce Experience that caused it to not open correctly without an active Internet connection.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 364.96 Hotfix for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit

AMD released a quick follow up to Tuesday's (02/02) Radeon Software Crimson Edition (RSCE) 16.1.1 Beta release; with a Hotfix release. Version 16.1.1 Hotfix includes AMD CrossFire profiles for "Fallout 4," in addition to "Rise of the Tomb Raider," and in particular a flickering issue which was noticed on CrossFire machines running "Fallout 4." The rest of its feature-set is identical to that of the 16.1.1 Beta. Grab the driver for your OS from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.1.1 Hotfix

NVIDIA rolled out a Hotfix driver update for its recently released GeForce 361.75 Game Ready drivers. The new GeForce 361.82 Hotfix driver corrects a bug which makes your installed GPUs appear as removable devices in your system tray (much like removable storage devices). It may have been a bug in the implementation of support for external graphics solutions over Thunderbolt 3, introduced with 361.75 WHQL. The hotfix driver addresses the issue.

If you find a 300-megabyte download worth fixing the bug (i.e. you often accidentally "eject" your graphics cards (unload display driver) while trying to unmount your external storage devices), then grab the driver for your OS from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 361.82 Hotfix

NVIDIA released a hotfix GeForce 359.12 driver for Notebooks, in an attempt to mitigate general game crashes noticed by users of notebooks running the GeForce GTX 860M mobile GPU, with recent R359 series drivers. Besides fixing this issue, the driver's feature-set is consistent with the recent R359.06 WHQL release. As a hotfix driver, it lacks WHQL certification. If you're particular about that, you could revert to WHQL drivers pre-dating version 359.00.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 359.12 Hotfix Notebook Driver

NVIDIA released the GeForce 355.80 Hotfix driver to address a critical issue affecting users of SLI configurations on Windows 10. Users of SLI configurations (and dual-GPU graphics cards such as the GTX 690) report excessive virtual memory consumption on Windows 10. This driver addresses the issue, and future WHQL-signed releases will incorporate the fix. This is one of the many graphics memory management issues Windows 10 users are experiencing across GPU brands, which both NVIDIA and AMD are hopefully working to address.DOWNLOAD: GeForce 355.80 Hotfix for Windows 10 64-bit (Desktop GPUs) | Windows 10 64-bit (Notebook GPUs) | Windows 10 32-bit (Desktop GPUs) | Windows 10 32-bit (Notebook GPUs)

NVIDIA released a GeForce driver update, version 353.38 Hotfix (not WHQL signed), that addresses a software bug that affects users of the popular Google Chrome web-browser. Users of the GPU-accelerated web-browser have been reporting crashes (both of the browser and display driver), and app freezing. The driver also addresses the issue of slow startup and window-switching of apps with G-SYNC enabled. The rest of its feature-set is carried over from the 353.30 drivers.

DOWNLOAD NVIDIA GeForce 353.38 Hotfix

NVIDIA re-enabled overclocking on its GeForce GTX 900M series mobile GPUs, by releasing a new hotfix driver (GeForce 353.00 Hotfix). Launch drivers originally allowed overclocking on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 900M series mobile GPUs. NVIDIA disabled overclocking with its R347 drivers, stating that overclocking was originally allowed due to a bug, drawing outrage from the PC enthusiast community. NVIDIA then re-enabled overclocking with its 347.88 drivers, with a quasi-apology. Then, without making much noise, the company disabled overclocking (or the "clock-block," as the enthusiasts are calling it), with its R350 drivers, which stayed on even as the drivers graduated to R352 series.

Following our May 21st report uncovering this, the company slipped out a driver hotfix, late last night. Version 353.00 Hotfix comes with a single item on its release notes, which reads "Fixes a regression that prevented overclocking the GPU on some GeForce Notebooks" (read: Whoops!). So gaming notebook owners have the freedom of overclocking their GPUs to tweak up eye-candy on the latest games, such as GTA V and The Witcher 3, which would have been buggy and unplayable, if users reverted to older R347 drivers, just to be able to overclock.

DOWNLOAD: GeForce 353.00 Hotfix for mobile GPUs

Despite WHQL-signed driver releases almost every other week, NVIDIA still seems to find time or reason for stopgap releases such as the new GeForce 350.05 Hotfix drivers, which quickly address a pressing issue with the latest WHQL-signed drivers (349.88 in this case). The driver fixes a crash with DirectX error message on Battlefield: Hardline. It also fixes a crash with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Expreview reports that NVIDIA also quietly slipped in OpenCL 1.2 support with the new driver, which could be one of the highlights of NVIDIA's upcoming R350 drivers.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 350.05 Hotfix

German tech website TweakPC did a before-after comparison of applying Microsoft's recently-released KB2645594 + KB2646060 Windows updates, which intend to improve performance of systems running AMD FX processors, by improving the way in which the OS deals with Bulldozer cores, using a top-of-the-line FX-8150 processor. The reviewer put FX-8150 through synthetic tests such as AIDA64 (CPU benchmarks, FPU benchmarks), Cinebench 11.5, MaxxPi (multi-threaded PI calculations), WPrime, Twofish AES, 3DMark (Vantage and 11), ComputeMark; and some real-world tests such as WinRAR, Resident Evil 5, and Battleforge. Barring Resident Evil 5, where the patched FX-8150 produced 4% higher performance and WinRAR, where it produced 3% higher performance, there were no significant performance gains noticed. The review can be accessed at the source.

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

To the surprise of many, last week, Microsoft rolled out a patch (KB2592546) for Windows that it claimed would improve performance of systems running AMD processors based on the "Bulldozer" architecture. The patch works by making the OS aware of the way Bulldozer cores are structured, so it could effectively make use of the parallelism at its disposal. Sadly, a couple of days later, it pulled that patch. Meanwhile, SweClockers got enough time to do a "before and after" performance test of the AMD FX-8150 processor, using this patch.

The results of SweClockers' tests are tabled below. "tidigare" is before, "nytt" is after, and "skillnad" is change. The reviewer put the chip through a wide range of tests, including synthetic CPU-intensive tests (both single and multi-threaded), and real-world gaming performance tests. The results are less than impressive. Perhaps, that's why the patch was redacted.

Since we reported on the AMD Bulldozer hotfix, The Tech Report reports in an updated post, that the Bulldozer threading hotfix said to improve performance of the processor, has been pulled:

We've spoken with an industry source familiar with this situation, and it appears the release of this hotfix was either inadvertent, premature, or both. There is indeed a Bulldozer threading patch for Windows in the works, but it should come in two parts, not just one. The patch that was briefly released is only one portion of the total solution, and it may very well reduce performance if used on its own. We're hearing the full Windows update for Bulldozer performance optimization is scheduled for release in Q1 of 2012. For now, Bulldozer owners, the best thing to do is to sit tight and wait.

It will be very interesting indeed to see how this much maligned processor benchmarks after the fully developed patch is released. It's true, actually attempting to download the hotfix and agreeing to the licence terms, at the moment, one is lead to a page that shows it as unavailable.

Today Windows updater may have brought "Bulldozer" users a little surprise. A hotfix that increases the AMD flagship processors performance. As this "hotfix" is bleeding edge news any benchmarks have yet to be seen but this confirms Windows 7 was in fact hampering "Bulldozer" from performing at 100% in all prior benches. What percentage it was previously performing at has yet to be determined. Here is a small snippet from the Hotfix release notes.

This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.

You can download the Hotfix here.

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 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

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

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 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.

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