AMD/ATI News: Kasım 2013

23 Kasım 2013 Cumartesi

AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.4 Driver for Windows

The AMD Catalyst™ 13.11 Beta9.4 Driver can be downloaded from the following links:

NOTE! This Catalyst Driver is provided "AS IS", and under the terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement provided therewith.

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.4 Driver for Windows

Includes all Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.2 Driver
May resolve intermittent black screens or display loss observed on some AMD Radeon™ R9 290X and AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics cards
Improves AMD CrossFire™ scaling in the multi-player portion of Call of Duty®: Ghosts
AMD Enduro Technology Profile updates:
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Need for Speed Rivals

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.2 Driver for Windows

Includes all Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta8 Driver
Call of Duty®: Ghosts - Improves anti-aliasing performance, and updates the AMD CrossFire™ profile
AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Series - PowerTune update to reduce variance of fan speed / RPM
Resolves intermittent crashes seen in legacy DirectX® 9 applications
DirectX 11.2 - Tier 1 Tiled Resources now supported on the following products:

AMD Radeon R9 280X
AMD Radeon R9 270X
AMD Radeon R7 250
AMD Radeon R7 240
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows

Includes all Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta7 Driver
Resolves intermittent crashes experienced with Battlefield 4 on Windows 8 based systems

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta7 Driver for Windows

Includes all Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta6 Driver
Increases AMD CrossFire™ scaling up to an additional 20% for Battlefield 4

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta6 Driver for Windows

Includes all Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta Driver
Includes support for the new products:

AMD Radeon™ R9 290X
AMD Radeon R9 290

Performance improvements

Batman: Arkham Origins - improves performance up to 35% with MSAA 8x enabled
Total War™: Rome 2 - improves performance up to 10%
Battlefield 3 - improves performance up to 10%
GRID 2 - improves performance up to 8.5%
DiRT Showdown - improves performance up to 10%
Formula 1™ 2013 - improves performance up to 8%
DiRT 3 - improves performance up to 7%
Sleeping Dogs - improves performance up to 5%

Performance improvements for the AMD APU Series (comparing AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta6 to AMD Catalyst 13.9)

Luxmark (openCL) - improves performance up to 10%
Winzip 17.5 (openCL) - improves performance up to 20%
GRID 2 - improves performance up to 4%
Battlefield 4 - improves performance up to 5%
Lef4Dead - improves performance up to 10%

Automatic AMD Eyefinity Configuration

Automatic "plug and play" configuration of supported Ultra HD/4K tiled displays

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta Driver for Windows

Includes support for the new products:

AMD Radeon™ R9 280X
AMD Radeon R9 270X
AMD Radeon R7 260X
AMD Radeon R7 250
AMD Radeon R7 240

Performance improvements for the AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series in the following games:

Total War™: Rome 2 - improves performance up to 10%
Splinter Cell® Blacklist™ - improves performance up to 7% on single GPU and AMD CrossFire™ configurations
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim® - improves performance up to 9%

AMD Radeon™ Product Family Compatibility
The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta Driver for Windows is compatible with the following AMD products:

AMD Accelerated Processor (APU) Desktop Product Family
AMD A10 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon™ HD 8000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series	AMD A8 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 8000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 6000D Series
AMD A6 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 8000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 6000D Series	AMD A4 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 8000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 6000D Series
AMD E2-3000 APU (AMD Radeon HD 8280)	AMD E1-2500 APU (AMD Radeon HD 8240)
AMD E2-2000 APU (AMD Radeon HD 7340)	AMD E1-1200 APU (AMD Radeon HD 7310)
AMD E2-1800 APU (AMD Radeon HD 7340)	AMD E1-300 APU (AMD Radeon HD 6310)

AMD Radeon™ Discrete Desktop Product Family
AMD Radeon™ R9 200 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6500 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6300 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6200 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7300 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series

AMD Mobility Radeon™ Family Compatibility

AMD Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features. When used with Windows Vista or Windows 7, the user experience may be limited or compromised. The Installation Verification Software is designed to prevent driver download on certain notebook products. This is to help protect against the installing of drivers that may disable features or functionality provided by the system manufacturer. When used with Windows Vista or Windows 7, the user experience may be limited or compromised. In such a situation, it is recommended to revert back to the driver provided by your system vendor for your specific platform. Please contact your system vendor for the most recent drivers for your notebook.

AMD Mobility Radeon™ Discrete Product Family
AMD Mobility Radeon™ HD 8000M Series	AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 7000M Series	AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5100 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6900M Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6800M Series	AMD PowerXpress™ enabled notebooks
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6300M Series	using AMD chipsets
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6300 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6200 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5700 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5600 Series

Consumer Notebooks with AMD Accelerated Processor (APU) Product Family
AMD A10 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon™ HD 8000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series	AMD A8 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 8000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 6000G Series
AMD A6 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 8000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 6000G Series	AMD A4 Series APU - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 8000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series - utilizing AMD Radeon HD 6000G Series
AMD A10-5745M	AMD E2-3000
AMD A10-4657M	AMD E2-2000
AMD A10-4655M	AMD E2-1800
AMD A8-4557M	AMD E1-2500
AMD A8-4555M	AMD E1-2100
AMD A8-5545M	AMD E1-1500
AMD A6-5345M	AMD E1-1500
AMD A6-4455M	AMD E1-1200
AMD A6-5200	AMD E-300
AMD A4-4455M	AMD C-70
AMD A4-5000	AMD C-60
AMD A4-4355M
	AMD PowerXpress™ enabled notebooks
	using AMD chipsets

Consumer Tablets with AMD Accelerated Processor (APU) Product Family
AMD A6-1450 - utilitzing AMD Mobility Radeon™ HD 8250	AMD Z-01
AMD A4-1250 - utilizing AMD Mobility Radeon HD 8210	AMD Z-60
AMD A4-1200 - utilizing AMD Mobility Radeon HD 8180

The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:

Any notebook launched after this driver release
Toshiba notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
Sony VAIO notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
Panasonic notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)

Compatible Operating Systems
The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta Driver for Windows is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

Windows 8.1 (32 & 64-bit version)
Windows 8 (32 & 64-bit version)
Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit version with SP1 or higher)

Installing The AMD Catalyst Software Driver
Article GPU-57: How-To Uninstall Pre-Existing AMD Catalyst™ Drivers From A Windows® Based System
Article GPU-507: How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers For A Windows® Based System
For additional information and general help on the software driver installation, game issues and more visit, AMD Support.

15 Kasım 2013 Cuma

AMD Mantle could get you 20% more performance

Says Johan Andersson from DICE. Andersson said creating a Mantle version of the Frostbite 3 engine took them about two months to complete. Mantle support will be added by an update in late December, nearly two months after the game's release. Jorjen Katsman of Nixxes, the firm porting Thief to the PC, added that AMD's API significantly reduces overhead. The Mantle API has just 8 percent overhead whereas DirectX 11 has an overhead of around 40 percent. Katsman says it's not unrealistic to receive 20 percent extra GPU performance in games with Mantle support.
As reported by tech report:
Andersson didn't bring up performance estimates, but other developers who discussed Mantle at APU13 did. Jorjen Katsman of Nixxes, the firm porting Thief to the PC, mentioned a reduction in API overhead from 40% with DirectX 11 to around 8% with Mantle. He added that it's "not unrealistic that you'd get 20% additional GPU performance" with Mantle.
But the "pink elephant in the room," as he called it, is multi-vendor support. Andersson made it clear that, while it only supports GCN-based GPUs right now, Mantle provides enough abstraction to support other hardware—i.e. future AMD GPUs and competing offerings. In fact, Andersson said that most Mantle functionality can work on most modern GPUs out today. I presume he meant Nvidia ones, though Nvidia's name wasn't explicitly mentioned. In any event, he repeated multiple times that he'd like to see Mantle become a cross-vendor API supported on "all modern GPUs."
I've gleaned more details about Mantle, and I'll share those with you guys when I'm not scurrying between keynotes and meeting rooms. The sense I get from the developers AMD invited to APU13, though, is that Mantle yields considerable benefits in terms of development flexibility and performance, and it's worth implementing even in its current, vendor-locked state. Andersson wasn't the only developer to express a desire for multi-vendor support.
There's no telling yet whether Mantle will ever become a cross-vendor, cross-platform standard, or whether the future holds something different, such as a competing Nvidia API or a future version of DirectX with some of the same perks. One thing is clear, though: Mantle looks set to shake up the industry in a very real way.

14 Kasım 2013 Perşembe

AMD 2014 Mobile APUs to Deliver Leaps in Performance and Battery Life

AMD, building on its leadership in graphics and gaming, announced its 2014 mobile Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) product roadmap at the APU13 Developer Conference today. Raising the performance bar across fanless tablets, 2-in-1s and ultrathin notebooks, the APUs codenamed "Mullins" and "Beema" are projected to deliver more than 2x the performance-per-watt of the previous generation.
The latest AMD APUs also support Microsoft InstantGo for faster wake times and to ensure data such as email actively refresh in standby. Both new processor families are also the first to integrate an AMD-developed platform security processor based on the ARM Cortex-A5 featuring ARM TrustZone technology for enhanced data security. The new low-power APUs join the previously disclosed high-performance notebook APU, codenamed "Kaveri," in AMD's 2014 mobile lineup.

"AMD is establishing excellent momentum this year in the low-power, mobile computing market and with 'Mullins' and 'Beema' coming in 2014 we are not standing still," said Mark Papermaster, AMD's chief technology officer and senior vice president, during his closing keynote at APU13. "AMD aims to deliver a set of platforms in the first half of next year that will outperform the competition in graphics and total compute performance in fanless tablets, 2-in-1s and ultrathin notebooks."

Both new processor families offer two or four "Puma" CPU cores and AMD Radeon graphics on a 28 nm system-on-chip (SoC). The new processors are planned to launch in the first half of next year and will be demonstrated at CES 2014 as part of a full suite of AMD products.

12 Kasım 2013 Salı

AMD Kaveri launches January 14th as A10-7850K

AMD is starting with a bang announcement at the developer conference APU13. There will be several APU/CPU related announcements in the uypcoming week but today is the announcement and release date of AMD’s Kaveri APU. The desktop APU is going to be a big deal for AMD alright. After the break some explanation and presentation screenshots. The topmodel Kaveri chip does 856 GFlops and is named AMD A10-7850K, the core frequency will be 3,7 GHz with a GPU that gets 512 shader units at 720 MHz. A massive increase alright.
As techradar reports: Following FM2+ motherboard shipments to customers later this year, a process Senior Vice President Lisa Su assured is still on track, Kaveri will arrive in customer desktops starting January 14, 2014. What's more, AMD said more Kaveri details are due at CES 2014. The Vegas show will serve as "the big coming out party for Kaveri," the company said during a phone briefing on November 7. While AMD has yet to confirm, we expect the company will hold a pre-CES tech day to lift the lid further on Kaveri.

What is Kaveri?
Kaveri is AMD's third-gen performance APU and the first with heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) features. It also supports AMD's TrueAudio technology and its Mantle API.
The promise is Kaveri boosts devices to the "next level of graphics, compute and efficiency." To that end, Kaveri is built on up to four "Steamroller" x86, multi-thread cores. On the graphics end, Kaveri has up to eight Graphics Core Next GPU cores. According to AMD, Kaveri's HSA features help unlock al 856 GFlops found in both the CPU and GPU. The GPU carries more of the workload, and a feature called hUMA turns it into a "first-class citizen" when accessing memory. In fact, the GPU is so first class it jams takes up almost 50% of the die and is a 512-core part.

Kaveri's heterogeneous queuing also brings parity to the processors, and the GPU and CPU are equally equipped to create and dispatch work. Instead of having to communicate through the operating system, the two units communicate workload through queues. And Kaveri has another first up its sleeves - AMD claimed it marks the first time a GPU and CPU have uniform visibility into a machine's entire memory space. While pricing is still unknown, John Taylor, corporate vice president of corporate communication, said the price of a single Kaveri APU is cheaper than a CPU and GPU sold separately from competitors. To show Kaveri's dominance, AMD pitted a machine running the APU against a combo Intel Core i7 4470K CPU and Nvidia GeForce GT630 GPU in a 1080 x 1920 Battlefield 4 demo. Kaveri was clearly more capable, running nearly double the frames for second, though it ran its souped up A10 variant.

7 Kasım 2013 Perşembe

AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.2 Driver for Windows®

The AMD Catalyst™ 13.11 Beta9.2 Driver can be downloaded from the following links:

Call of Duty®: Ghost - Improves anti-aliasing performance, and updates the AMD CrossFire™ profile
AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Series - PowerTune update to reduce variance of fan speed / RPM
Resolves intermittent crashes seen in legacy DirectX® 9 applications