Tuesday, March 29th 2011
AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL Software Suite Released
AMD released a timely update to its Catalyst software suite, the package that provides display drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD chipset video, APUs, HDMI audio, and related software. The AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL release itself packs very little changes. At least the communication sent to us by AMD only mentioned one significant change: that the Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) OpenCL runtime is enabled by default within Catalyst.
Other than that, AMD advertised its next Catalyst release, which is now just a "Preview" driver (not WHQL-signed, use isn't covered under warranties). The Catalyst 11.4 Preview comes with a much larger changelog, which is listed below.
DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit
Changelog of Catalyst 11.4 Preview
Other than that, AMD advertised its next Catalyst release, which is now just a "Preview" driver (not WHQL-signed, use isn't covered under warranties). The Catalyst 11.4 Preview comes with a much larger changelog, which is listed below.
DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit
Changelog of Catalyst 11.4 Preview
- A number of performance optimizations, as highlighted here.
- Performance enhancement for Shogun 2 (DX11 version) when running Anti-Aliasing
- Includes enhancements to the AMD Catalyst Control Center
o New task based Display Management controls
- Simplifies the configuration of displays and display settings
o New Eyefinity setup group
- Setting up an Eyefinity group has never been easier
o New branding (based on system configuration)
- AMD based platform - AMD VISION Engine Control Center
- Discrete AMD GPU with Intel CPU - AMD Catalyst Control Center
o AMD Catalyst update notification (found within the Information Center)
- Please note this functionality is not yet enabled, but will be in a future AMD Catalyst release
- This feature will be used to notify users that new AMD Catalyst software packages are available - Includes fixes where Dragon Age 2 would hang in DirectX11 on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products.
- Includes fixes where MediaEspresso 6.5 and 6.0 may crash while initializing
- Includes a fix for game corruption issues in BulletStorm
- Includes a fix for the AMD Catalyst Control Center install; resolves the issue of not being able to launch CCC after Catalyst has finished installing
- Includes a fix for the Tessellation slider sometimes setting the incorrect value
42 Comments on AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL Software Suite Released
can someone also confirm if 11.3 has the instant alt tab for SCII, like 11.4p does?
Strange. I completed the game with a 5870 and it never ever got stuck or anything.
As for bullet storm, the only bug I found (and happened more then once) was a stuck-in-texture glitch.
it crashed on me twice before i updated to 11.4p
I don't even think I've been able to try out MLAA yet, as I haven't seen an option to on my MR HD 5650 with cat. 11.2 mobility.
Also it would be nice if they could fix AA in EVE Online.
My main difficulty was that I couldn't get the Sims 3 to run for my daughter on my pc using any of the drivers released in 2010. So I kept using the 9.12 version.... doing monthly upgrading of driver and downgrading again. I gave up when nothing of the 11.x version worked.
But today I installed the 11.4 and this effing problematic game worked at last without jeopardizing the rest of my game repertoire! So I say yay for AMD.... finally.... better late than never!
(oh and better DAII on top)
OH yeah alt tab does work right on 11.4
Too bad it'll be a month before they're final. :(
I have no such problem in any other game.
Totally stable , and it looks to work nicely with Battlefield BC2
The 11.2 did had some issues , after playing the game for more than an hour.
The 11.3 so far it looks as an welcome improvement .