AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hot-Fix Driver Information

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
AMD sent us a press release on the upcoming Catalyst Hot-Fix 11.1a Drivers. We spoke to the folks at AMD directly and they said these drivers will be publicly available on January 26th:


The latest Catalyst Hot-Fix; (11.1a) offers increased performance brings a slew of new features and should be the driver used for any performance testing. Below are a few of the highlights from this driver:


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:


· 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.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Looks like the HD5xxx cards are lost and forgotten... guess I will never have a truly 100% working crossfire setup :(

Tax return time = new Nvidia card on my wish list.
 
Sooo glad I picked up a 6950... I mean 6970. And that was before I knew it could be softmodded.
 
Howabout fixing the damn Quake 3 OpenGL crap?

I am so glad the Unigine benchmark got some attention.
 
I like many of the features especially the tessellation setting. Even though it isn't working yet it's definitely the right idea. This driver can't come out soon enough. The timing is awesome too as today in a few hours I should receive my 2 6950s (Hopefully 6970s) :D
 
Met-AL said:
Howabout fixing the damn Quake 3 OpenGL crap?

I am so glad the Unigine benchmark got some attention.
Click to expand...

Seriously. I mean, they could have specific people working on certain things but given the collective nature of drivers, you'd think they would focus on the more pressing issues. Then again, it is possible that the improves are residual.

But when they pretty much list it as the first thing...
 
they should have fix 2D flickering and WC3 flickering issue. It wasn't there until 10.12... or at least 5870 or 5650 until 6970.

The super meat boy simply become unplayable..
 
The Quake 3 thing has been broke since the 10.5 drivers. The work around is to use the OpenGL DLL from the 10.4 and stick them in the game's root folder. But with the 6000 series cards, you can only go back to the 10.10 drivers which don't work.

Arggg.
 
So how about removing EDID limitations so we can enjoy eyefinity w/ bezel compensation that you pushed so hard properly?
 
•·Unigine Heaven OpenGL performance improves ~10% at moderate, 30% at normal and 100% at extreme tessellation levels


Holy crap!!! A 100% improvement?!?!?!

The percent increase in performance goes up as the amount of tessellation increases. My conclusion is that tessellation performance would see an increase.

Does anyone think that this improvement in Heaven's tessellation could also apply to other tessellation-based games?
 
XacTactX said:
Does anyone think that this improvement in Heaven's tessellation could also apply to other tessellation-based games?
Click to expand...

I want to know why you think that would be the case?

What does Heaven's tessellation have anything to do with any other games?

It is per game, if they don't fix it for that game, it will not be changed.
 
Met-AL said:
Howabout fixing the damn Quake 3 OpenGL crap?

I am so glad the Unigine benchmark got some attention.
Click to expand...

I've only had my 6950 for a short while and only play Q3 on rare occasions, so I fired it up to see if I had problems. My Q3 ran flawlessly. What problems are you having?
 
If this is a "hot fix" can we assume there is a "regular" driver to be released prior to this?
 
Nickbaldwin86 said:
Looks like the HD5xxx cards are lost and forgotten... guess I will never have a truly 100% working crossfire setup :(

Tax return time = new Nvidia card on my wish list.
Click to expand...

Sli isn't much better though you should make a post in the appropriate forum about your crossfire setup so people can help you troubleshoot the issue you are having.
 
FranDaMan said:
If this is a "hot fix" can we assume there is a "regular" driver to be released prior to this?
Click to expand...

I was wondering that myself. Why would they need to put out a hot fix for something they haven't released yet?

And have they really forsaken the 5xxx line? Or will the previous families get some hand-me-down improvements?
 
maxius said:
Sli isn't much better though you should make a post in the appropriate forum about your crossfire setup so people can help you troubleshoot the issue you are having.
Click to expand...

I can back this up. My GTX 480 SLI setup has been an up and down process (mostly up) , its the nature of running 2+ cards in any solution. I'm also running a 6950 flashed to 6970 stock clocks.

Although I will say Nvidia tends to continue optimizations for older SLI setups well beyond newer card releases.

But considering the 6900 series just came out not so long ago they should release a few driver sets that focus on improving its performance in the beginning.
 
Catalyst 10.12 fixed a bug with your mouse cursor randomly corrupting (only fixable with a reboot) in Heroes of Newerth and SC2, but it brought back an old bug that caused stutter/FPS-drop when moving your mouse cursor to certain parts of the screen.

I hope this driver fixes both problems once and for all :/
 
really looking forward to the new drivers. I haven't had a new driver with any 6800 focus since October.
 
flickering / artifact still exists for most games with the catalyst 10.12 drivers for HD6970. I'm surprised that isn't being addressed first instead of some random benchmark performance numbers.
 
scout007 said:
flickering / artifact still exists for most games with the catalyst 10.12 drivers for HD6970. I'm surprised that isn't being addressed first instead of some random benchmark performance numbers.
Click to expand...

I have 10.12a, and I get flickering in Dirt 2 but not in any other game on dual 6950->6970
 
Yay, e-peen numbers for benchmarks months after the games released. What would we do without you AMD!
 
Nickbaldwin86 said:
Looks like the HD5xxx cards are lost and forgotten... guess I will never have a truly 100% working crossfire setup :(

Tax return time = new Nvidia card on my wish list.
Click to expand...

This was my sense as well. I gave up on AMD/ATI after the driver fiasco's over the last few months when they neutered the 5870's...

My 580's are working very nicely thank you Nvidia!!! AMD/ATI driver team has their head in the sand at this point in time....Hence why I gave up on my 5870's in Crossfire.

Hardware wise, the cards were amazing!!!! Software wise...They are not worth shit anymore....
 
Nickbaldwin86 said:
Looks like the HD5xxx cards are lost and forgotten... guess I will never have a truly 100% working crossfire setup :(

Tax return time = new Nvidia card on my wish list.
Click to expand...

Same here...:mad: I was excited to pick up a 5870 back on black friday, but I'm very frustrated with some things with it. Gaming, its fine... perhaps outstanding as I upgraded from a 9800GT. But watching video (hd streaming via media center) I see lots of tearing that I never seen with the 9800. Very noticeable in action sequences and sports. Really notice it watching football. I also don't like how slow it is to alt-tab out of a game or full screen media-center video to do the desktop. My old 9800GT was damn near instantaneous. I only went with the ATI for the Eyefinity and I'm really not impressed with that too. The "wow factor" expired after one week; now the third screen is ignored and rarely used... going to be giving it to my sister.
 
DRIVERS: that which makes me a sometimes reluctant, sometimes less than enthusiastic, but nonetheless perpetual nVidia fanboy.

Would that it were otherwise...:(
 
maxius said:
Sli isn't much better though you should make a post in the appropriate forum about your crossfire setup so people can help you troubleshoot the issue you are having.
Click to expand...

It is not a issue I am having, it is a issue everyone is having.

dook43 said:
Ahh.. Now I understand all of the hate
Click to expand...

I don't? what hate?

The Cobra said:
This was my sense as well. I gave up on AMD/ATI after the driver fiasco's over the last few months when they neutered the 5870's...

My 580's are working very nicely thank you Nvidia!!! AMD/ATI driver team has their head in the sand at this point in time....Hence why I gave up on my 5870's in Crossfire.

Hardware wise, the cards were amazing!!!! Software wise...They are not worth shit anymore....
Click to expand...


Pringals said:
Same here...:mad: I was excited to pick up a 5870 back on black friday, but I'm very frustrated with some things with it. Gaming, its fine... perhaps outstanding as I upgraded from a 9800GT. But watching video (hd streaming via media center) I see lots of tearing that I never seen with the 9800. Very noticeable in action sequences and sports. Really notice it watching football. I also don't like how slow it is to alt-tab out of a game or full screen media-center video to do the desktop. My old 9800GT was damn near instantaneous. I only went with the ATI for the Eyefinity and I'm really not impressed with that too. The "wow factor" expired after one week; now the third screen is ignored and rarely used... going to be giving it to my sister.
Click to expand...

I am glad I am not the only one, but the rest of these people are just ATI/AMD fanboys


So anyways, I am no "fanboy" for either team.. I could careless what the brand is, my record shows this, I have bought just as many NV cards as I have had ATI cards.

I bought into ATI for DX11 and Eyefinity way back when... now I want NV. has nothing to do with being a fanboy.

You punks that just throw the term around when ever you need to defend your card or title of being a fanboy yourself.
 
Nickbaldwin86 said:
It is not a issue I am having, it is a issue everyone is having.
I don't? what hate?

I am glad I am not the only one, but the rest of these people are just ATI/AMD fanboys

So anyways, I am no "fanboy" for either team.. I could careless what the brand is, my record shows this, I have bought just as many NV cards as I have had ATI cards.

I bought into ATI for DX11 and Eyefinity way back when... now I want NV. has nothing to do with being a fanboy.

You punks that just throw the term around when ever you need to defend your card or title of being a fanboy yourself.
Click to expand...

I def agree with you here. It has nothing to do with being a fan boi or whatever they are called. It has to do with shitty driver support from AMD/ATI!!!!

When I got my 5870's, I kept hearing that the driver is maturing, wait for new features, blah blah blah...

Well, from 10.1 thru the 10.5 drivers, we def got some nice new features from the card (Eyefinity, stable drivers, better AA modes, ect ect...) When the 10.6 through the 10.12 drivers, all I saw was a massive regression in the driver team. Crossfire did not work as advertised, BF:BC2: 'Nuff Said..., Grey SOD, ect ect....

Those MAJOR problems pushed me away from ATI back to Nvidia. I am a fan of both companies. But when I spend $800 on 2 new cards (5870's in crossfire) I expect the things to work from day 1 and have no regression in performance.

Dr. McCoy from Star Trek once said: "I know engineers, they love to change things..."
 
Un4given said:
I've only had my 6950 for a short while and only play Q3 on rare occasions, so I fired it up to see if I had problems. My Q3 ran flawlessly. What problems are you having?
Click to expand...

Google it. It's a known issue.

In a nutshell, games based on the Q3A engine won't run. SOF2 is my problem.

The theory is that there are too many extensions to OpenGL for the game to cope and it crashes.
 
The Cobra said:
This was my sense as well. I gave up on AMD/ATI after the driver fiasco's over the last few months when they neutered the 5870's...

My 580's are working very nicely thank you Nvidia!!! AMD/ATI driver team has their head in the sand at this point in time....Hence why I gave up on my 5870's in Crossfire.

Hardware wise, the cards were amazing!!!! Software wise...They are not worth shit anymore....
Click to expand...


I wonder if any of you played DAoC back in the day, I can't remember my Nvidia card i had at the time but there was an issue with the drivers that would cause your PC to randomly restart when playing DAoC, I ended up ditching Nvidia for an ATI 8500 after data corruption happened from a random restart. This was of course 10 years ago but still everyone has their issues with drivers,

I did try an 8800 GTS though for old times sake, was an alright card, really lacked any lasting power like the current gen of cards, still have 5850 running strong for me which is really nice to not need an upgrade after a year.
 
Darn I was hoping they would release their new drivers this week since I get my new 6950 tomorrow and was going to do a whole format, looks like I will have to wait till next weekend
 
Nickbaldwin86 said:
Looks like the HD5xxx cards are lost and forgotten... guess I will never have a truly 100% working crossfire setup :(

Tax return time = new Nvidia card on my wish list.
Click to expand...

Nvidia did the same thing to GTX 4xx owners - we havent had drivers in 3 months!! Grass might be greener on the other side... trust me its not.

:rolleyes:
 
dnottis said:
Nvidia did the same thing to GTX 4xx owners - we havent had drivers in 3 months!! Grass might be greener on the other side... trust me its not.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1578246

Increases performance for GeForce 400 Series and 500 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. the latest Release 260 drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
GeForce GTX 580:
Up to 7% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 12% in Battleforge (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Very High)
Up to 11% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 7% in Dirt 2 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 7% in Far Cry 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Dark Tower)
Up to 5% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 9% in Stone Giant (SLI 1920x1200, DOF on)
Up to 8% in Unigine Heaven v2.1 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Improves performance in Final Fantasy XI on GeForce 400 Series and 500 Series GPUs.
Visual Quality
Click to expand...

Unless I'm missing something?
 
Met-AL said:
Google it. It's a known issue.

In a nutshell, games based on the Q3A engine won't run. SOF2 is my problem.

The theory is that there are too many extensions to OpenGL for the game to cope and it crashes.
Click to expand...

Rename to quake3.exe and it works
 
dook43 said:
Rename to quake3.exe and it works
Click to expand...

You know, I never thought about that. And in all the hours of reading about it, no one has ever suggested that.

I did get it to run with GL Direct, but Punkbuster freaks out and kicks for Unkown Windows API.
 
Cat 10.12 fixes the mouse corruption but makes my card unstable under any overclock past 6% (ended up rolling back to get my 17% oc) even so on the 12 drivers i still get flicker issues woot but benchmark optimizations upon further default optimizations in games tells me amd really cares about making their benchmarks look good on sites.
 
The Cobra said:
This was my sense as well. I gave up on AMD/ATI after the driver fiasco's over the last few months when they neutered the 5870's...

My 580's are working very nicely thank you Nvidia!!! AMD/ATI driver team has their head in the sand at this point in time....Hence why I gave up on my 5870's in Crossfire.

Hardware wise, the cards were amazing!!!! Software wise...They are not worth shit anymore....
Click to expand...


My sentiments exactly
 
dook43 said:
Rename to quake3.exe and it works
Click to expand...

I haven't played SOF2 in quite some time, and I don't even have it installed any more. The only things I still have installed are Q3 and Q3A, but I haven't had problems with either.

Maybe I'll install SOF2 again and see what happens.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top