Wednesday, January 26th 2011
AMD Catalyst 11.1 WHQL and 11.1a Hotfix Formally Announced
AMD today formally introduced Catalyst 11.1 WHQL software suite and Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix update. AMD Catalyst installs drivers and system software for ATI/AMD Radeon graphics processors (HD 2000 series and above), AMD chipset integrated graphics, and other ATI multimedia products. The Catalyst 11.1 WHQL finalizes the new Catalyst Control Center (referred to so far as CCC2), as the default control center, which simplifies control for mainstream and advanced users. It also formally introduces support for OpenGL 4.1. Catalyst 11.1 WHQL adds performance updates to F1 2010 and Left 4 Dead 2, the performance increments are more for the HD 6000 series GPUs. Next up is the 11.1a Hotfix update, which packs all the features of 11.1, plus performance improvements for Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs. It also adds new tessellation level controls. A number of Catalyst AI texture filtering updates are also added.
DOWNLOAD:
AMD Catalyst 11.1 WHQL
Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix Update
A list of changes follows.
Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.1 Windows release include:
New Features:
DOWNLOAD:
AMD Catalyst 11.1 WHQL
Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix Update
A list of changes follows.
Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.1 Windows release include:
New Features:
- The new Catalyst Control Center
o The new Catalyst Control Center enables a simplified user experience to help users get the most out of their AMD product
o Easily enable 3D settings to enhance game image quality
o Setup multiple displays to increase productivity
o Adjust power settings to increase battery life
o Supports two unique views - designed for mainstream and advanced users
o User Interface dynamically updates based on available AMD hardware - Support for OpenGL 4.1
o New features introduced in OpenGL 4.1
o Full compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 APIs for easier porting between mobile and desktop platforms
o The ability to query and load a binary for shader program objects to save re-compilation time
o The capability to bind programs individually to programmable stages for programming flexibility
o 64-bit floating-point component vertex shader inputs for higher geometric precision
o Multiple viewports for a rendering surface for increased rendering flexibility
- F1 2010:
o Performance increases up to 12% on AMD Radeon HD 6900 and AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.
o Performance increases up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled. - Left 4 Dead 2:
o Performance increases up to 17% on AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series single and Crossfire configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.
o Performance increases up to 8% on AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series single configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.
- Performance improvements for the AMD Radeon HD 6800 & HD 6900 series in a number of applications
- Catalyst Control Center - New Tessellation controls
- Gives users full control over the tessellation levels used in applications
- Catalyst AI Texture Filtering updates
- The Quality setting has now been improved to match the High Quality setting in all respects but one; it enables an optimization that limits tri-linear anisotropic filtering to areas surrounding texture mipmap level transitions, while doing bilinear anisotropic filtering elsewhere. This optimization offers a way to improve filtering performance without visibly affecting image quality
- The Performance setting has also been updated to address comments about the sharpness of the default Quality setting causing shimmering in certain cases. It now provides a smoother filtering option that eliminates most shimmering while preserving the improved detail provided by anisotropic filtering.
92 Comments on AMD Catalyst 11.1 WHQL and 11.1a Hotfix Formally Announced
Changed it to an empty string hoping it would force an update upon driver installation. But now it just stays blank.
As I recall, the number after atiumdag does get updated and is what is really important. I think.
I noticed you're browsing this thread. I'm having the version # issue as well. mine says 10.12.
Any thoughts on whats going on?
Edit
I realize it's not your department, but as someone who works at AMD, perhaps you are in contact with the graphics division in some form or with QA, R&D, etc and could pick somebody's brain, somebody who IS involved with this stuff.
If you were so inclined, of course
I'm neither a NV or ATI fanboy... I have been spreading the wealth for 13-14 years. In that time ive owned about ~4 ATI cards and about ~3 NV. Maybe I don't remember, but I just cant recall ever having a driver problem with an NV card. Maybe I just lucked out and had an NV card every time their drivers were excellent.
I even remember promising myself to never buy ATI again in 1998. Obviously that didn't happen. :laugh: I kinda just go with the best "bang for the buck" card at the time I want to upgrade. Just so happens the 6950 with the ability to run the 6970 BIOS won this battle a few weeks ago when my GTX 260 started to seem iffy.
These latest drivers are working fine for me now (11.1a). It took a BSOD to get them installed, but the promised performance increase is there for sure. Tho something as simple as incorrect version numbers is embarrassing to say the least.
I hope the next hotfix or driver version from ATI/AMD is a homerun, they sure need it right about now.
I am good now, but really disappointed.
Driver Sweeper
The only thing I needed to do was install 11.1 (not the hotfix) and then did a repair-install of the Stream SDK (v2.3).
I have all options available on my HD5850 (MLAA/Tessellation/etc.) via CCC and have noticed an average performance increase of about 10% across the board in ALL apps & games.
Furthermore.. all fonts look great again, which were screwy in the last couple of releases (for me at least).
The version number IS incorrect though, so it'll be interesting to see how soon AMD will get their collective fingers out ;)
I did say the version number is still wrong :)
img255.imageshack.us/f/ati111driver.jpg/
MLAA/Tessellation/etc.:
img600.imageshack.us/f/ati111driver2.jpg/
HD5850 screenie:
img593.imageshack.us/img593/9047/hd5850screenie.gif
OK..images not showing, so the links instead :/
Adobe said they wanted to include Ati's Stream acceleration but it's not ready at all , proof it's not ready at all even now is the lack of any usefull application , even their own encoding application Avivo doesn't use the GPU , i tried it and the gpu isnt used at all and the end result is always very bad.
Cyberlink Esspresso is the only program that ive seen to use ATi Stream for video encoding. but when i used it with 2 4870s it really didnt make much difference at all asside from a flashing ATi logo telling i was using ATi stream. but it did use a little processesing power from my cards - just not 90-100% of it.
I think the market will continue on its current path and will be very slow to adopt STREAM over CUDA. at this stage in time its probably a lot easier and quicker to code stuff for CUDA as CUDA has been widey available for quite a few years now.
I agree that ATI do need to get some hardware accelerated apps out there, but hey - they support the open standards of OpenCL and DirectCompute... but no devs want an open standard. they'd rather get a nice sponsorship from nvidia to do things in a proprietary way.
DirectCompute is stupid because it's not multi-platform, which is just as restrictive as the proprietary way.
Basically what CUDA does is add functions (which are also Stream-compatible, but slower on AMD cards) to the existing OpenCL specification. It's just like NVIDIA's OpenGL extensions. This alone makes it easier for developers to make applications that work on Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA hardware.