AMD Catalyst™ Omega Windows® Release Notes (14.12)

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/mobile?os=Windows%208.1%20-%2064


AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite Version Omega

This article provides information on the latest posting of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ Omega.

This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.

Package Contents

The AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ Omega contains the following:

    AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver version 14.501
    AMD Catalyst™ Control Center version 2014.1112.1033.18936

Installing The AMD Catalyst Software Driver
For detailed instructions on how to correctly uninstall or install the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, please refer to the following support resources:

    How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst™ Drivers from a Windows® Based System
    How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers for a Windows® Based System

NOTES

    This driver is not intended for use on AMD products running in Apple Boot Camp platforms. Users of these platforms should contact their manufacturer for driver support.
    When installing the AMD Catalyst™ Driver for Windows® operating system, the user must be logged on as Administrator, or have Administrator rights to complete the installation of the AMD Catalyst Driver.
    The AMD Catalyst Omega Software Suite requires Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to be installed.
    These release notes provide information on the AMD Catalyst Display Driver only. For information on the AMD Multimedia Center™, HydraVision, HydraVision Basic Edition, Remote Wonder™, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, please refer to their respective release notes found at: http://support.amd.com/.
    The AMD Catalyst Omega Software Suite requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 to be installed. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 is included in all Catalyst packages.
    AMD Eyefinity technology is designed to give gamers access to high display resolutions. As pixel count grows, the graphics "horsepower" required to drive the displays at a reasonable frame rate can increase dramatically. Depending on the game and system configuration, users may notice texture corruption and reduced frame rates when running games in multi-monitor Eyefinity modes.
    Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers are no longer bundled in the AMD Catalyst software suite. The WDM drivers install bundle can be downloaded independently through the AMD website.

AMD Product Compatibility

The AMD Catalyst™ Omega is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Series    AMD Radeon™ R5 230 Series
AMD Radeon™ R9 280 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 8000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R9 270 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 260 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 250 Series    ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 240 Series   


AMD All-In-One Desktop Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ HD 7600A Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6600A Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 7450A Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6350A Series



AMD APU Product Family Compatibility

AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver is not supported on Windows 7/8.1 32-bit platforms for APU products.
AMD APU Product Family Compatibility      ​
Desktop    Mobile
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R7 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 8000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R6 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R5 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R3 Graphics   
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000D Series   
AMD Radeon™ HD 7000D Series   
AMD Radeon™ HD 6000D Series   


AMD Mobility Radeon™ Family Compatibility

AMD Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features.
AMD Mobility Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 M200 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000M Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 M200 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000M Series
AMD Radeon™ R5 M200 Series    ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000M Series   



Compatible Operating Systems

The latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ Omega is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

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

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ Omega Windows Driver

Introducing the AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver for Windows, a "Special Edition" driver delivered to enhance the AMD GPU and APU experience.  The AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver contains over 20 new features, performance improvements, and significant number of bug fixes and improvements.  All improvements will be carried forward in subsequent driver releases.


Virtual Super Resolution (VSR):

Render games at higher resolution and display them at lower resolution.  Up to 4k quality gaming on 1080p HD displays

    Smoother textures and edges
    Game and Engine agnostic solution
    Simulates Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) for games that don't support it
    Enabled through AMD Catalyst™ Control Center
    Select higher resolution in-game settings
    Available on AMD Radeon™ R9 290 series, and AMD Radeon R9 285 GPUs

5K Monitor Support:

Unparalleled display performance for professionals and gamers who require the highest resolution available and silky-smooth, fatigue-free graphics

    5120x2880 at 60Hz
    14.7 million pixels, 218 pixels-per-inch
    Dual DisplayPort 1.2 input
    Available on AMD FirePro™ and AMD Radeon™ R series GPUs

Alienware Graphics Amplifier:

Support for AMD Radeon™ Graphics in Alienware Graphics Amplifier

    Expand the capability of the Alienware 13 notebook with a high-performance AMD Radeon graphics card
    Drive resolutions up to 4K
    Performance that far exceeds the built-in graphics.
    Supported on select AMD Radeon™ HD 5000 series GPUs and newer

Perfect Picture Enhancements:

    AMD Fluid Motion Video – Smooth Blu-ray playback with lower power APUs
        High quality frame rate conversion
        Interpolates frames using GPU compute
        Removes video judder
        Available on AMD 7000 Series APUs and AMD Radeon™ R7 & R9 series GPUs
    Contour Removal – Improved algorithm for compressed videos
        Removes compression artifacts without disturbing video details
        Available on AMD Athlon™ APUs, AMD 7000 series APUs, and AMD Radeon™ R series GPUs

Perfect Picture Additions:

    1080p Detail Enhancement now for APUs
        Provides look-and-feel of 1080p video to lower-resolution content
        Improves frequency response and controllability of overshoot and noise immunity
        Available on AMD 7000 series APUs and AMD Radeon™ R series GPUs
    Ultra HD-Like Experience - Makes 1080P videos 4K-like
        Combination of:
            Fluid Motion Video
            Detail Enhancement
            Adaptive upscaling
    Available on AMD Radeon™ R7 260 and higher

Frame Pacing Enhancements for AMD Dual Graphics:

    Includes enhancements for
        Metro 2033
        World of Warcraft
        3DMark 11
        Sniper Elite V2
        Tomb Raider
        Hitman: Absolution
        GRID 2
        Alien: Isolation
        Batman: Arkham Origins
        BioShock: Infinite
        Unigine Valley Benchmark
        Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare
        Dragon Age: Inquisition
        Metro 2033 Redux
        Sniper Elite 3
        Assassin's Creed Unity
        Metro: Last Light

AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing improvements:

    Designed to reduce stuttering from graphics memory intensive applications: Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution, Watch Dogs, Far Cry 3

OpenCL™ 2.0 Support:

New features give GPUs more freedom to do the work they are designed to do

    Shared virtual memory
        Enables host and device kernels to directly share complex pointer based data structures, eliminating explicit transfers between the host and devices while increasing programming flexibility.
    Device-side Enqueue
        Updated for improved programmability and increased application efficiency
    Generic address space
        Enables functions to be written without named address spaces which increases flexibility and saves time by eliminating the need for multiple functions to be written.

Performance Optimizations versus AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 WHQL

    Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™ performance optimizations
        Mantle API activated for ultimate performance in Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™
    Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare performance optimizations
        Up to 30% performance increases with FXAA and lower game resolutions
        Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
    Assassin's Creed® Unity performance optimizations
        Single GPU performance improvements
        Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
    Dragon Age: Inquisition performance optimizations
        Up to 15% performance increase in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.
        Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
    Far Cry 4 performance optimizations
        Up to 50% performance increase in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.

Year over Year Performance Optimizations versus AMD Catalyst™ 13.12 WHQL*

    Up to 19% more performance since launch in some games on AMD Radeon R Series GPUs
    Up to 29% more performance since launch in some games on various AMD APUs

*Measured across various AMD Radeon R Series GPU and AMD APU configurations in over 30 game titles

Driver Efficiency Improvement:

    Driver optimization for multi core CPUs allows up to 15% more performance for some AMD platforms

Resolved Issues:

    14.9 Install issues for intermittent crash or black screen after install
    14.9 Catalyst™ Control Center issues have occasional AMDMantle64.dll error popups during install
    [406244] Online video can sometimes crash when watching YouTube videos with hardware acceleration enabled
    [406590] Watching online flash videos in Google Chrome sometimes causes the browser to hang when hardware acceleration is enabled
    [406493] Displays that go in to sleep mode intermittently causes the display to not wake up
    [404081] AHCI Chipset Drivers can sometimes cause the system to crash on boot-up
    [405807] 144Hz displays in AMD CrossFire™ configurations can cause intermittent crashing when launching D3D Applications
    [403996] Game stuttering or screen tearing in Quad CrossFire™
    [402133] State of Decay textures can intermittently extrude beyond their boundaries or be corrupted
    [405738] HDMI audio stays disabled when a connected TV is disabled and then re-enabled

Known Issues:

    [410367]  System black hangs/BSOD upon resuming from S3/S4 sleep on AMD Radeon™ R9 285 configured in AMD CrossFire™ mode
    [410293]  With AMD CrossFire™ enabled, Timeout Detection Recovery (TDR) occurs during actual gameplay when YouTube Mix moves to the next song in Firefox®
    [408368] Some artifacting will be seen in certain scenarios with AMD Fluid Motion Enabled
    [407622] Screen tearing on enabling VSync with Alien: Isolation game
    [407934] Frame drops may occasionally be observed playing back progressive Blu Ray content on some AMD Kaveri APU configurations
    [407095]  3D movies cannot be viewed using Power DVD on some AMD Kaveri APU configurations with only 2GB of single channel memory
    [407175] Catalyst Control Center Video Quality settings may not be available or retained if the "Enforce Smooth Video Playback" option is not selected on some AMD HD series GPU's.
    [406495]  Pull down detection fails to lock in Metro Video playback applications
    [410255] A system restart or hang may be observed on sleep/resume while transcoding video with Media Espresso
    [410398] A black screen may be experienced when attempting to enable Eyefinity after changing the display mode (Portrait, Landscape)
    [410391] Primary display may not be retained after disabling Crossfire while in Eyefinity mode
    [409705] Enabling or disabling Crossfire may lead to one side of the 4K MST display being shown as black
    [410393] Minor stuttering may be seen in Dragon Age Inquisition on Single and Multi GPU configurations​

AMD Radeon R9 390X Performance Numbers Surface

It is rumored that AMD is working hard on releasing the next high-end graphics cards, tagged as Radeon R9 390X (or 380X). Asian website Chiphell now has posted a couple of benchmarks in their forums 'showing' these graphics cards in terms of performance.

We think the result tagged as "Captain Jack" could be the Radeon R9 390X (we think) and not 380X, though that remains to be a VERY wild guess. Performance wise it is looking pretty good TBH, however the results should be taken with a HUGE massive grain of salt as there is no validity whatsoever of these results being the true thing let alone indicating what card it precisely is.

So look above, at Chiphell a user posted two charts, the first (upper) chart shows average performance from several gaming titles such as Assassins Creed: Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Alien Isolation and Metro Last Light Redux. it is a horribel way of normalizing a chart, but hey at the very least it is indicative of something. As you can see, the games were tested across a wide range of graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD at 2560×1440 resolution with IQ settings set to maximum. The test setup includes a Intel Core i7-4790 clocked at 3.60 GHz and the drivers used were 344.75 WHQL for NVIDIA cards and Catalyst 14.11.1 BETA for AMD cards.

The second chart as shown above shows relative load (stress) power consumption, at just undfer 200 Watts. Anyway, we post it as we see them, make of this whatever you want.

AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows®

Article Number: RN-WIN-CAT14.11.2B

​AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows® - Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4!

This release enables peak driver performance optimization for AMD Radeon™ graphics users in Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4.

The AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.1 Beta Driver can be downloaded from the following links:

        AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows® 7 and Windows 8.1 64-bit
        AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows® 7 and Windows 8.1 32-bit

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

Package Contents
The AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver contains the following:

    AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver version 14.301-141117a-177808E

Installing The AMD Catalyst Software Driver
For detailed instructions on how to correctly uninstall or install the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, please refer to the following support resources:

    How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst™ Drivers From A Windows® Based System
    How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers For A Windows® Based System

AMD Product Compatibility
The AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Series    AMD Radeon™ R5 230 Series
AMD Radeon™ R9 280 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 8000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R9 270 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 260 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 250 Series    ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 240 Series   


AMD All-In-One Desktop Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ HD 7600A Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6600A Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 7450A Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6350A Series


AMD Embedded Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ E8860    AMD Radeon™ E6460
AMD Radeon™ E6760   


AMD APU Product Family Compatibility      ​
Desktop    Mobile
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R7 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 8000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R6 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R5 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R3 Graphics   
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000D Series   
AMD Radeon™ HD 7000D Series   
AMD Radeon™ HD 6000D Series   



AMD Mobility Radeon™ Family Compatibility
AMD Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features.
AMD Mobility Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 M200 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000M Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 M200 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000M Series
AMD Radeon™ R5 M200 Series    ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000M Series   



Compatible Operating Systems

The latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

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

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Windows® Beta Driver Performance Improvements

    Dragon Age: Inquisition performance optimizations
    - Up to 5% performance increase over Catalyst™ 14.11.1 beta in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.
    - Optimized AMD CrossFire™ profile
    Far Cry 4 performance optimizations
    - Up to 50% performance increase over Catalyst™ 14.11.1 beta in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.

Important Notes

    The AMD CrossFire™ profile for Far Cry 4 is currently disabled in this driver while AMD works with Ubisoft to investigate an issue where AMD CrossFire™ configurations are not performing as intended. An update is expected on this issue in the near future through an updated game patch or an AMD driver posting.

Resolved Issues

    [409235]: Small chance of intermittent screen tearing or corruption in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare on high settings 4K resolution in AMD CrossFire™ mode.
    [408892]: World of Warcraft can sometimes exhibit corruption when using CMAA in AMD CrossFire™ configurations.
    [407431]: Minecraft sometimes produces corruption when changing video settings in windowed mode.
    [407338]: XDMA Quad CrossFire™ configurations in portrait Eyefinity modes sometimes display tearing or stuttering.

Known Issues

    [408723]: System can sometimes hang when upgrading to Catalyst™ 14.11.2 from Catalyst™14.7 in AMD CrossFire™ configurations. As a workaround please completely uninstall previous Catalyst™ software versions before installing Catalyst™14.11.2 beta.
    [409518]: Slight performance drops in FIFA 2015 on AMD CrossFire™ configurations.
    [409502]: Occasional flickering sometimes observed while playing FIFA 2015 in AMD Dual Graphics configurations.
    [409638]: Slight Battlefield 4 performance drop on AMD Radeon™ R9 290X in AMD CrossFire™ configuration.
    [409628]: AMD Radeon™ R9 285 intermittently hangs in Hitman Absolution on new game start.
    [408484]: AMD Radeon™ R9 285 can sometimes exhibit flickering in Assassins Creed Unity.
    [409613]: Assassins Creed Unity can sometimes experience frame stutter on some AMD CrossFire™ configurations.
    [408706]: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare intermittent black screen when loading game in Quad AMD Crossfire™ configurations.
    [409600]: Civilization: Beyond Earth mantle users in AMD CrossFire™ configurations may sometimes experience an issue where they cannot change their game resolution. As a work around please use "Enable MGPU=1" in the games configuration .ini file.

AMD is currently working with BioWare to resolve the following issues:

    Flickering is sometimes observed in Dragon Age: Inquisition on a limited number of surfaces in AMD CrossFire™ configurations.

AMD is currently working with Ubisoft to resolve the following issues:

    Uneven hair corruption sometimes observed in Assassins Creed Unity when applying "ultra" game settings.
    Flickering occasionally observed between windows on walls in Assassins Creed Unity.
    Windows/Doors intermittently flash with black textures in Assassins Creed Unity.
    Assassins Creed Unity occasionally exits to desktop when "ultra" game settings are applied.

AMD Carrizo APU Massive Leak – 40W TDP, Excavator Cores, 512 SP and Assorted Benchmarks

Note: Notice very carefully, the tiny but incredibly self-satisfied tag in the corner labeled ‘Rumor’. The sources behind this leak are given and are probably authentic, not to mention very difficult to fake; however this news has not been confirmed either by official or unofficial channels.

The motherload of leaks concerning Carrizo APU has just occurred. The test results of an Engineering Sample of the chip have leaked online and we now know everything from hardware details to assorted benchmarks, including GFX Bench and Sisoft Sandra. Do keep in mind however, that this is an engineering sample so, alot of things can change between here and the consumer version of Carrizo.

Massive leak reveals AMD ‘Gardenia’ Carrizo specs: 2MB L2 Cache, 4 Cores clocked at 2.6Ghz with 512 Stream Processors

I received the original leak (SiSoft Benchmark Database) courtesy of CHW.net, and from there on I did some rather successful (if I say so myself) Googling to net me the entirety of this leak. The first thing that you will notice is the interesting nomenclature employed by AMD before Carrizo, namely Gardenia. These suffixes usually denote the target market of a specific product in AMD’s lineup so Gardenia most likely denotes either an embedded or a workstation application. The second thing I noticed, and thanked the gods for, were two identifying IDs that I could use to track the APU in other sites as well. This was the device ID ‘2M1801C1Y4381_26/18/08/04_9874′ and the codename ‘Carrizo 9874′.

While the former yielded no results and led me back to the starting place the latter hit the jackpot and led me straight to GFXBench results of the chip in question. Lets start with the GPU side first. The new iteration of Carrizo is supposed to feature next generation GCN cores, although it is not known which specific architecture AMD chooses alongside this. A viable option would be the Pirates Island Architecture. The benchmarks show Gardenia Carrizo acing the T-Rex tests (OpenGL ES 2.0) but having some serious difficulty in Manhattan tests (OpenGL ES 3.0).

GFXBench Results of Carrizo 9874

The graphics portion of the Carrizo APU dubbed “Carrizo 9874″ will feature 512 stream processors which appears to be the sweet spot between CPU and GPU ratio on an APU. This is the same number that was featured in Kaveir. The SPs will be split into 8 CUs and clocked at 626Mhz. They will be coupled with DDR3 Memory Clocked at 1.6GHz effective and a bus width of 128 bits. The APU has a fill rate of 8.5GTexel/s. As far as benchmarks go, the APU’s performance in GFXBench’s Manhattan benchmark is not very good at around 9.8/13.5 frames per second. However, in T-Rex, both onscreen and offscreen, it scores pretty impressive numbers (46.6/71.7 frames per second). Once again, I would remind you guys that specifications such as memory configurations can change.Interestingly, the numbers over at the compute side are pretty skewed. The clock speed that was used is not the maximum listed 2.6Ghz boost, but 600Mhz less. TDP mentioned is approximately 40W but this should increase to ~50W once you enter full load on CPU and GPU ( 2.6Ghz and all SPs firing). The general arithmetic of the core is 24.2 GFlops, which is pretty decent for an APU, I remember my old Core 2 Duo used to score around 10 GFlops. The only thing that really bugs me is the memory support of DDR3, which was also revealed in a leak published by us just a few weeks ago.

Slow memory bottlenecks the crap out of an efficient architecture such as an APU, and I sincerely hope that AMD decides to ditch the slow memory and proceed to a higher end configuration such as HBM or DDR4 at the very least. Oh and incase anyone is wondering, the fact that the benchmark shows ‘Normal Desktop’ means nothing. Mobile Chips are usually tested at desktops early in their cycle. In all probability and in accordance with all the leaks so far, the first APU we are going to be seeing is Carrizo-L; the mobile version of the chip. At any rate, we will know more about the Carrizo APU as we get ever closer to its leaked launch date (December).

AMD Radeon 390 and 390X Specs and Benchmarks ?

Interesting news, over at the ranking system of SiSoft Sandra new entries have been spotted of what seem to be GPUs that we don't know of. And the specs are pretty appealing. Let's call the two entries the Radeon R9 390 and 390X for now (complete speculation of course). But the 390X entry would be a GPU with 4096 Shader Processors running / 64  Compute Units at 1GHz with 4GB of graphics memory running at 1.25GHz (= 5Gbps).

The 1 GHz would be a boost speed meaning the dynamic clock could hover in-between say 900 MHZ and that 1 GHz. The second entry shows a GPU which we will call the Radeon R9 390 at 3520 Shader Processors. These obviously and very likely are engineering samples of some kind and whether or not these are TBA consumer desktop SKUs is unknown.

But fact is, these entries are there, meaning there is a Hawaii architecture based SKU in the works with 4096 and one with 3520 Shader processors running in the 1 GHz marker. The memory might seem to be clocked a little low, but we don't know the memory bus interface, heck if that is 512-bit it would be a chuck-load of band-with. But that again would be speculation.

Here are the two Sandra Sisoft links showing the info:

• Result ID AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (4096SP 64C 1GHz, 4GB 1.25GHz 4096-bit) (OpenCL)
• Result ID Hawaii (3520SP 44C 1ГГц, 3Гб) (OpenCL)

How valid these results are, we don't know. We do know that they are in the SiSoft database somehow. Thanks go out to Rich_Guy in our forums for spotting this one.

AMD Catalyst 14.11.1 BETA (14.301.0.0 November 5)

> Download <

have at it boys

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.1 Windows® Beta Driver

Performance Improvements

• Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare performance optimizations
• Assassin's Creed® Unity performance optimizations

Known Issues

• [408930]: Occasional stuttering in Assassin's Creed® Unity in CrossFire mode under specific game settings
• [409235]: Small chance of intermittent screen tearing or corruption in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare on high settings 4K resolution in AMD CrossFire™ mode
• [408706]: Quad CrossFire AMD Radeon™ R9 295X2 may sometimes black screen when loading a game in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare
• [409199]: AMD Radeon™ R9 280X/280 may experience a crash when playing Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare and a video at the same time. If you experience this issue a work around is turning off the video while playing the game.
• [409177]: CrossFire users may experience intermittent flickering in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare menus. As a work around if this issue is seen restarting the game may cause the issue to disappear.

Build Info:
DriverVer=11/05/2014, 14.301.0.0000
Catalyst: 14.11.1
CCC: 2014.1105.2160.39482
D3D: 9.14.10.01061
OGL: 6.14.10.13092
OCL 1.2: 10.0.1573.4
Mantle: 9.1.10.0045
Mantle API: 98304

AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Download

Download AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta driver
The AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta driver is notable release for us for a couple reasons:

• Mantle is now enabled for notebooks based on AMD Enduro technology
• Mixed-resolution AMD Eyefinity configurations are now supported for SLS
• Performance improvements for Watch Dogs
• Performance improvements for Murdered: Soul Suspect

Please read: Windows 8.1 is supported with this Beta driver whilst Windows 8 is not. 

• Starting with AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta, AMD will no longer support Windows 8.0 (and the WDDM 1.2 driver)
• Users should upgrade (for Free) to Windows 8.1 to take advantage of the new features found in the AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta
• AMD Catalyst 14.4 will remain available for users who wish to remain on Windows 8
• A future AMD Catalyst release will allow for the WDDM 1.1 (Windows 7 driver) to be installed under Windows 8.0 for those users unable to upgrade to Windows 8.1

Watch Dogs:

• AMD Radeon R9 290X - 1920x1080 4xMSAA – improves up to 25%
• AMD Radeon R9 290X - 2560x1600 4xMSAA – improves up to 28%
• AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) - 92% scaling

Murdered: Soul Suspect:

• AMD Radeon R9 290X – 2560x1600 4xMSAA – improves up to 16%
• AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) - 93% scaling
• AMD Eyefinity Verbesserungen:

Mixed Resolution Support

• A new architecture providing brand new capabilities
• Display groups can be created with monitors of different resolution (including difference sizes and shapes)
• Users have a choice of how surface is created over the display group
• Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
• Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays.
• Expand – create a virtual Eyefinity surface using desktops as viewports onto the surface.
• Eyefinity Display Alignment
• Enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors
• One-Click Setup
• Driver detects layout of extended desktops
• Can create Eyefinity display group using this layout in one click!
• New user controls for video color and display settings

Greater control over Video Color Management:

• Controls have been expanded from a single slider for controlling Boost and Hue to per color axis
• Color depth control for Digital Flat Panels (available on supported HDMI and DP displays)
• Allows users to select different color depths per resolution and display

AMD Mantle enhancements

• Mantle now supports AMD Mobile products with Enduro technologyEnables support for Multi-GPU configurations with Thief (requires the latest Thief update).
• Battlefield 4: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1366x768; high settings) – 21% gain
• Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; high settings) – 14% gain
• Star Swarm: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; medium settings) – 274% gain

AMD AM1 JPEG decoding acceleration

• JPEG decoding acceleration was first enabled on the A10 APU Series in AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta, and has now been extended to the AMD AM1 Platform
• Provides fast JPEG decompression
• Provides Power Efficiency for JPEG decompression

Download Locations

Download Desktop Driver Windows Vista/7/8.1 32 and 64 bit [ 17918 downloads | Report broken link ]

Download APU and Mobile Driver Windows Vista/7/8.1 32 and 64 bit [ 1958 downloads | Report broken link ]

AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Drivers Released, Adds New Eyefinity Functionality & More

For our second video card driver update of the week we have AMD, who is releasing their Catalyst 14.6 beta drivers today.
Like NVIDIA’s driver release, this is first and foremost AMD’s launch driver for Ubisoft’s heavily promoted open world techno thriller, Watch Dogs. For Watch Dogs AMD has put together a number of performance optimizations, including single-card optimizations that can offer 25%+ performance improvements in AMD’s internal testing, and also the necessary profiles to enable Crossfire support. Meanwhile this driver also contains a number of optimizations and will be the launch driver for AMD’s own upcoming showcase title, Murdered: Soul Suspect, which is being released next week.

Coupled with AMD’s performance updates however are a number of UI/feature updates that are being rolled out in this new driver branch (14.200). Among these changes are Mantle updates, major Eyefinity improvements, and expanded color control capabilities.
Starting off with the Mantle changes, AMD laptop users will be pleased to hear that Mantle has finally been enabled on Enduro configurations. Since this driver was delivered over a holiday we haven’t had the chance to look at Mantle support on Enduro in-depth, but with AMD slowly but surely improving both Enduro and Mantle we have high hopes for this. Meanwhile Mantle multi-GPU support has also been enabled for Thief, as Thief itself now supports Crossfire with Mantle.

Bigger are AMD’s Eyefinity updates, which marks one of the biggest updates for the technology since it was first introduced almost 5 years ago. While Eyefinity has always been fairly lenient about what monitors it will work across – easily working across mismatched monitors (unlike NVIDIA Surround) – it has always required that the monitors all be set to the same resolution. In a mixed resolution setup this limited Eyefinity’s functionality somewhat, particularly when it comes to image clarity since a mixed resolution setup would require that one or more monitors run at their non-native resolution.
Starting in Catalyst 14.6 AMD has enabled mixed resolution support, allowing for a single Eyefinity display group to be created while each monitor runs at a different resolution. This feature is made possible through the addition of two new Eyefinity display modes, Fit and Expand, which join the traditional Fill mode. In both Fit an Expand mode AMD is compensating for the mismatched resolutions by creating a virtual desktop that is of a different resolution than the monitors, and then either padding it out or cropping it as is necessary.

In Fit mode the virtual desktop used is based on the largest common resolution that all displays support, with the larger displays using a padded image to make the virtual desktop fit accordingly. Meanwhile in Expand mode the tables are turned and the virtual desktop resolution is based on the largest monitor, with the image being cropped to fit on the smaller monitors. Expand mode delivers the largest resolution at the cost of having some image data cropped off, while Fit mode offers the best compromise resolution. Or if neither works, then traditional Fill mode can be used and every monitor is driven at the same resolution.

These functionality changes are exposed through a revised Eyefinity UI that is designed to simplify the creation of Eyefinity groups. With their latest UI AMD is gunning for “one-click” Eyefinity creation, and while mixed resolution setups still require a longer setup process to arrange the mismatched monitors, identical resolution monitors are indeed much easier to setup since they can immediately default to Fill mode. As for mixed resolution setups, AMD’s new UI offers a new alignment mode to help arrange the monitors, allowing customized alignments and preset top/center/bottom alignments.

Based on our limited testing of Eyefinity in 14.6 AMD looks to have everything in working order. Both mixed resolution and identical resolution setups are working well, though it takes some time to get used to mixed resolution setups once you throw in bezel compensation into the mix. However we would note that users hoping that mixed resolution Eyefinity will bring Portrait-Landscape-Portrait (PLP) support are going to be out of luck. AMD’s rotation abilities are still based on the virtual desktop instead of the monitor, so there doesn’t appear to be a way to make PLP work since not all monitors need rotation.
Up next, AMD has added some interesting new video color and color depth management controls for their drivers. We won’t get too deep into these (ed: deep color, I get it!), but on the video color management side AMD now allows for per-color controlling of boost and hue values. Meanwhile in Digital Flat-Panel properties AMD now allows for the panel’s per-channel color depth to be selected on monitors and display connections that support it. In the case of our Sharp PN-K321 for example, we can now choose between 10bit per color, 8bit per color, and 6bit per color settings. Most users should be fine with the default settings, but prosumer/professional users should find this functionality handy.

Elsewhere, Catalyst 14.6 also brings expanded support for AMD’s hardware JPEG decoder, which is available on some of AMD’s APUs. The hardware decoder is now available on AMD’s AM1 “Kabini” APUs, where the lower performance of these products should make the gains from the JPEG decoder more palatable.

Finally, AMD has also included a note that Windows 8.0 users will want to pay attention to. AMD is dropping support for Microsoft’s non-updated version of Windows 8 early; while Microsoft will be supporting Windows 8.0 until early 2016, AMD has ceased support for it as of Catalyst 14.6. Realistically speaking we expect that AMD’s drivers will still work if forced, but officially AMD no longer supports the OS and has removed the NT6.2 entries from their INF files.
Wrapping things up, as of press time AMD has yet to post the 14.6 drivers to their website (Monday being a holiday in the US), so users looking to get an early jump will have to wait just a bit longer. But once they are posted they should be able from AMD’s Catalyst Beta page.

AMD Kaveri FX-7600P Mobile APU Vs. ULV Haswell Benchmark mini-review

A little while ago specs on AMD's new mobile platform found its way onto the web. Basically the Kaveri APU linelup entails seven parts. Six quad cores APUS and one dual core APU. The leader of the pack is the FX-7600P and some benchmarks have reared. The lineup includes four ULV SKUs and three 35W parts. For the ULV segment the FX-7500 is a 19W quad-core clocked at 2.1/3.3GHz with 384 Radeon cores. 

The R7 GPU is clocked at 496/553MHz and the APU supports DDR3 1600 memory. The A8-7100 is 19W part, quad-core clocked at 1.8GHz with an up to 3.0GHz Turbo. But next to the 17W/19W parts, AMD has also cooked up three mainstream 35W APUs. 

The A8-7200P is clocked at 2.4/3.4GHz. It has R5 graphics with 256 shaders clocked at 553/626MHz. It supports DDR3 1866. The 10-7400P is slightyly faster at 2.5/3.4GHz, but it packs R6 graphics with 384 shaders clocked at 576/654MHz. Like its sibling it supports DDR 1866 memory.

Model	CPU-cores	clokfreq./ turbo	L2-cache	GPU	CU's/GPU-cores	GPU-clok/turbo	Max. DDR3	TDP
FX-7600P	4	2,7 / 3,6 GHz	4 MB	R7	8 / 512	600 / 686 MHz	2.133 MHz	35 watt
A10-7400P	4	2,5 / 3,4 GHz	4 MB	R6	6 / 384	576 / 654 MHz	1.866 MHz	35 watt
A8-7200P	4	2,4 / 3,3 GHz	4 MB	R5	4 / 256	553 / 626 MHz	1.866 MHz	35 watt
FX-7500	4	2,1 / 3,3 GHz	4 MB	R7	6 / 384	496 / 553 MHz	1.600 MHz	19 watt
A10-7300	4	1,9 / 3,2 GHz	4 MB	R6	6 / 384	464 / 533 MHz	1.600 MHz	19 watt
A8-7100	4	1,8 / 3 GHz	4 MB	R5	4 / 256	450 / 514 MHz	1.600 MHz	19 watt
A6-7000	2	2,2 / 3 GHz	1 MB	R4	3 / 192	494 / 533 MHz	1.600 MHz	17 watt

The Flagship FX-7600P then, it runs at 2.7GHz base and 3.6GHz turbo and features R7 graphics with 512 shaders processors. The GPU runs at 600/686MHz. Although the GPU clocks are somewhat lower than on desktop Kaveri APUs with all 512 shaders, the new FX appears to have the most powerful integrated GPU of any mobile part to date. It is also the only mobile Kaveri to support DDR3 2133 memory.

WCCFtech (check source link)  has posted the first benchmark scores of this APU, and they are quite interesting, though both benchmarks are GPU assisted:

"Not only that but the very-much mainstream A10-7300 APU is comfortably ahead of the i7-4500U, i5-4200U and i3-4010U in terms of Gaming Performance. What it actually means is that APUs are finally exiting the territory of HTPC-only setups and entering the realm of true gaming power. While you would not be able to run any modern game at anywhere near the modern games, there should be quite a few games out there that run well at low-medium settings and considering the low power consumption. That is definitely a bargain."

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 14.4

AMD Catalyst graphics and HD video configuration software delivers unprecedented control of performance and visual quality with ATI Radeon graphics processors. Certified by Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL), AMD Catalyst Display Driver for Windows 8.1, 8, 7, Vista and Windows XP operating systems deliver stable performance and push the limits of innovation with advanced user-oriented features. This AMD Catalyst Software Suite updates both the AMD Display Driver, and the Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power, performance, and reliability. The AMD Catalystsoftware suite is the ultimate in performance and stability. Precision controls for power users. Tweaks for gamers and video enthusiasts.

Simple wizard-assisted setup, easy multi-monitor configuration, and ultra reliable operation for working professionals. New user or seasoned expert, AMD Catalyst puts you in charge of The Ultimate Visual Experience.

• Industry-leading performance. AMD Catalyst boosts graphics performance with every new monthly release, including enhancements for popular Direct3D and OpenGL game titles.
• Innovative and exciting features. AMD Catalyst Software Suite includes the AMD Catalyst Control Center, delivering innovative features and unprecedented control of performance and visual quality with ATI Radeon graphics.
• Robust stability. ATI Catalyst drivers for Windows are Microsoft WHQL-certified, and include rigorously tested Linux drivers to deliver the industry’s most stable and reliable graphics performance.

The AMD Catalyst Software Suite, AMD Catalyst 14.4 contains the following:: 
* AMD Catalyst Display Driver version 14.10.1006
* Southbridge/IXP Driver
* AMD Catalyst Control Center (version 14.10.1006)

Caution: The Catalyst software driver and the Catalyst Control Center can be downloaded independently of each other. However, for maximum stability and performance AMD recommends that both components be updated from the same Catalyst release

Caution: The Catalyst Control Center requires that the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 be installed. Without .NET version 2.0 installed, the Catalyst Control Center will not launch properly and the user will see an error message.

The AMD Catalyst software suite is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms: 
• Windows 8.1 32-bit version
• Windows 8.1 64-bit version
• Windows 8 32-bit version
• Windows 8 64-bit version
• Windows 7 32-bit version
• Windows 7 64-bit version
• Windows Vista 32-bit version
• Windows Vista 64-bit version
• Windows XP Professional
• Windows XP Home Edition
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 14.4 Release Notes

Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver for 32 bit Windows 8.1, 8, 7

Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver for 64 bit Windows 8.1, 8, 7

Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver for 32 bit Windows Vista

Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver for 64 bit Windows Vista

Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver for 32 bit Windows XP

Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver for 64 bit Windows XP

Download Selected AMD Graphics Drivers and Software

AMD Catalyst™ 14.4 Windows

AMD Catalyst Packages

NAME	FILE SIZE	REVISION NUMBER	RELEASE DATE	DOWNLOAD LINK
Catalyst Software Suite	281 MB	14.4	4/25/2014	Download
Description: Package contains the following graphics drivers and dependent/required software for the products specified in the current version's official release notes for the 64 bit version of Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1:                            Display Driver ver. 14.10.1006                           OpenCL(tm) Driver ver. 10.0.1348.5                           Catalyst Control Center                           HydraVision             Languages:           Czech, Danish, German, Greek, US English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified).

 AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite Version 14.4

This article provides information on the latest posting of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 14.4.

This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center / AMD Vision Engine Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.

Package Contents

The AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 14.4 contains the following:

• AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver version 14.10.1006
• Southbridge/IXP Driver
• AMD Catalyst™ Control Center (version 14.10.1006) 
  

Installing The AMD Catalyst Software Driver

For detailed instructions on how to correctly uninstall or install the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, please refer to the following support resources:

• How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst™ Drivers From A Windows® Based System
• How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers For A Windows® Based System

NOTES

• When installing the AMD Catalyst Driver for Windows® operating system, the user must be logged on as Administrator, or have Administrator rights to complete the installation of the AMD Catalyst Driver.
• The AMD Catalyst 13.12 Software Suite requires Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to be installed.
• These release notes provide information on the AMD Catalyst Display Driver only. For information on the AMD Multimedia Center™, HydraVision, HydraVision Basic Edition, Remote Wonder™, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, please refer to their respective release notes found at: http://support.amd.com/.
• The AMD Catalyst 14.4 Software Suite requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 to be installed. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 is included in all Catalyst packages.
• AMD Eyefinity technology is designed to give gamers access to high display resolutions. As pixel count grows, the graphics "horsepower" required to drive the displays at a reasonable frame rate can increase dramatically. Depending on the game and system configuration, users may notice texture corruption and reduced frame rates when running games in multi-monitor Eyefinity modes.
• Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers are no longer bundled in the AMD Catalyst software suite. The WDM drivers install bundle can be downloaded independently through the AMD website.

AMD Product Compatibility

The AMD Catalyst™ 14.4 is compatible with the following AMD products.

AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6550D Series
AMD Radeon R9 280 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6530D Series
AMD Radeon R9 270 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6500 Series
AMD Radeon R7 260 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6410D Series
AMD Radeon R7 250 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6370D Series
AMD Radeon R7 240 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6310D 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 7660D Series	ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7560D Series	ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7300 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series	ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series	​
AMD Radeon HD 6600 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 Product Families ​
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 Radeon HD 6620G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6800M Series	AMD Radeon HD 6520G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6300M Series	AMD Radeon HD 6480G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6300 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6380G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6200 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6310G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series	AMD Radeon HD 6250G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5700 Series	​
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5600 Series	​
AMD PowerXpress™ enabled notebooks using AMD chipsets ​

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 latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 13.12 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)

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 14.4 Windows Driver

• Support for the AMD Radeon R9 295X
• CrossFire fixes enhancements:
• Crysis 3 – frame pacing improvements
• Far Cry 3 – 3 and 4 GPU performance improvements at high quality settings, high resolution settings
• Anno 2070 – Improved CrossFire scaling up to 34%
• Titanfall – Resolved in game flickering with CrossFire enabled
• Metro Last Light – Improved Crossfire scaling up to 10%
• Eyefinity 3x1 (with three 4K panels) no longer cuts off portions of the application
• Stuttering has been improved in certain applications when selecting mid-Eyefinity resolutions with V-sync Enabled
• Full support for OpenGL 4.4
• OpenGL 4.4 supports the following extensions:
• ARB_buffer_storage
• ARB_enhanced_layouts
• ARB_query_buffer_object
• ARB_clear_texture
• ARB_texture_mirror_clamp_to_edge
• ARB_texture_stencil8
• ARB_vertex_type_10f_11f_11f_rev
• ARB_multi_bind
• ARB_bindless_texture
• ARB_spare_texture
• ARB_seamless_cubemap_per_texture
• ARB_indirect_parameters
• ARB_shader_group_vote
• Mantle beta driver improvements: 
• BattleField 4: Performance slowdown is no longer seen when performing a task switch/Alt-tab
• BattleField 4: Fuzzy images when playing in rotated SLS resolution with an A10 Kaveri system