AMD rolls out Catalyst 12.8 WHQL

AMD Catalyst™ 12.8 is Now Available

Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 12.8: Windows 8 support

• AMD’s first logo certified and unified driver for Windows 8 production

• Featuring support for the DirectX 11.1 and the new WDDM 1.2 driver model:

• AMD’s first official unified and logo certified driver for Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista

• Target-Independent Rasterization (TIR): TIR is a new rendering path that enables superior anti-aliasing in Direct3D driver applications

• Native Stereo 3D Support: Windows 8 natively supports stereoscopic 3D gaming and videos via compatible applications

• Unified Video API: Video playback has been integrated into the DirectX® 11 API, enabling simultaneous video and gaming content. Transcoding performance may also be improved for supporting applications.

• Optimized screen rotation for rotation aware devices

• Improved sleep/resume performance

• Optimized GPU power consumption

• Major technologies / features also supported under Windows 8:

• • AMD Eyefinity technology

  • OpenCL™

  • OpenGL

  • Unified Video Decoder (UVD)

  • AMD Dual Graphics

  • AMD CrossFire technology

  • AMD Overdrive

  • AMD Catalyst Control Center

  • Vision Engine Control Center

Performance highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 12.8 (versus AMD Catalyst 12.6)

• Up to 25% in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

• Up to 3% in Battlefield 3

• Up to 6% in Batman: Arkham City

• Up to 3% in Dues Ex: Human Revolution

• Up to 6% in Crysis 2

• Up to 15% in Total War: Shogun

• Up to 8% in Crysis Warhead

• Up to 5% in Just Cause 2

• Up to 10% in Dirt 3

AMD’s latest Catalyst™ Application Profile: AMD Catalyst 12.7 CAP3 (to be used with AMD Catalyst 12.8)

• The Secret World (DX11): Resolves corruption seen in HUD/options when running in CrossFire mode on the AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series

• TorchLight 2 – Improves single GPU performance, and disables CrossFire due to incompatible support when running in a Multi-GPU configuration

• Spec Ops: The Line: Improves CrossFire performance

• Hawken: Improves CrossFire performance

Resolved issue highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.8 driver

• Over/underscan settings are correctly restored on system reboot

• Audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV Is switched off/on

• Shogun 2 : Flickering text is no longer experienced

• Star Wars – The Old Republic : In game cinematic no longer experience flicker when using the arrow keys

• Dirt Showdown: 8-Ball track No longer hangs with Crossfire enabled

• Max Payne 3 : A black screen is no longer observed when launching game in DirectX 11 mode with Crossfire enabled

Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 12.8 Linux Driver: New OS Support
This release of AMD Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems