AMD Catalyst 12.10 WHQL & 12.11 Beta Released

[Al Capwn]

Hey everyone, just wanted to spread the word that Catalyst 12.10 WHQL and Catalyst 12.11 beta have just been released and if you have a Radeon 7000 series card there are some massive improvements for you in the 12.11 betas, here's a little tidbit of the release notes below.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
Up to 10% more performance in DIRT Showdown
Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2

Resolved issue highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 12.11 Beta

Resolves performance issues (where GPU activity runs at lower values than expected) seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870
AMD Catalyst Mobility 7970M performance for AMD Enduro™ Technology supported platforms has been substantially improved for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications. An updated driver for 7970M users featuring AMD Enduro™ Technology with additional DirectX 9 performance improvements will be released soon.

3DMark Vantage – Up to 15%
3DMark 11 – Up to 12%
AvP – Up to 11%
Battlefield 3 – Up to 25%
Crysis 2: Up to 45%
DiRT Showdown – Up to 62%
ETQW – Up to 8%
Hard Reset – Up to 8%
Just Cause 2 – Up to 90%
The Chronicles of Riddick – Up to 4%
Shogun 2 – Up to 56%
Sniper Elite V2 – Up to 60%
Tom Clancy’s HAWX – Up to 56%
Unigine Heaven – Up to 33%
Wolfenstein – Up to 9%

There have been a few creditable review sites that have looked at the 12.11 betas and the performance improvements do indeed seem to only apply to the latest CGN 7000 series cards but I wouldn't let that stop you from trying them out.

Catalyst 12.11 Beta Windows 7 & 8 download link

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...etadriver.aspx

Catalyst Application Profile (CAP) 12.10 download link

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...-profiles.aspx

and for those who don't like beta drivers or have XP (please upgrade already!) find your proper version of Catalyst 12.10 WHQL here

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...downloads.aspx

Edit: For those who downloaded 12.11 beta already, AMD has just released Beta version 8. The same download link applies. There is also a new 12.11 CAP1 released, however it's not on the official AMD website yet so I don't want to post a link.

[AirHog71]

Sweet.

[Flanker35M]

S!

Using 12.11 betas + 12.10 CAP1. Smooth in Cliffs of Dover, testing other games ASAP.

[Al Capwn]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

Using 12.11 betas + 12.10 CAP1. Smooth in Cliffs of Dover, testing other games ASAP.

Oh that's a great idea, I didn't even think of the new CAP, I'll post a link in my OP. Thanks Flanker!

S!

[tk471138]

Originally Posted by Al Capwn

Oh that's a great idea, I didn't even think of the new CAP, I'll post a link in my OP. Thanks Flanker!

S!

what do you mean? with CAP?, i just downloaded and installed the beta...im a new user for AMD graphics just got a 7850 (from nvidia 450)and the game runs beautifully(at least on the 12.9 drivers, havent tested new beta yet

[Al Capwn]

Originally Posted by tk471138

what do you mean? with CAP?, i just downloaded and installed the beta...im a new user for AMD graphics just got a 7850 (from nvidia 450)and the game runs beautifully(at least on the 12.9 drivers, havent tested new beta yet

Hi tk471138, I'm glad to hear you made the switch to AMD.

Catalyst Application Proflies (CAPs) are generally only needed for CrossFire (multi gpu) users and you don't generally need them with a single GPU. However, sometimes there are fixes/tweaks for even single GPUs in AMD CAPs; you can read the notes for these, but all CAP fixes/tweaks are integrated into the next driver release so if you don't see anything for single GPUs in a CAP then don't bother and don't worry about older CAPs.

If you do end up installing one of the CAPs I would recommend removing the old CAP first (named Application Profiles in add/remove). If you don't you'll have multiple Application Profiles in your add/remove and it may even cause issues, so I would say it's safe practice to remove the old copy before proceeding.

With your 7850 you'll see some very respectable gains with the 12.11 beta drivers, although I do not know if they will help in ClOD (it would be good to get feedback if they do). I would suggest you give them a shot although keep in mind they are beta, and may have some issues, but I haven't run into any yet; they seem to be one of the best drivers from AMD to date.

I hope this helps