Thursday, December 4th 2008
ATI Catalyst 8.12 Beta Released, ATI Stream Now Available
It's already December, time for a new ATI Catalyst 8.12 driver. It's still a little bit early for the final driver release though, but a Beta version is already available, and now we know some inside information of what this driver will bring very soon. Here's a little sneak preview, with Catalyst 8.12 ATI will land its Stream support for Radeon video cards. The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now included in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream. Catalyst 8.12 is also said to bring Stream technology to ATI Avivo Video Converter, for enhanced video transcoding. For good or for bad, only ATI Radeon HD 4800 and Radeon HD 4600 series support this tool. At last, Catalyst 8.12 comes with many game performance improvements (read more below). Here's the link to the Catalyst 8.12 Beta version, the final release is coming soon. We'll inform you when it is available.
ATI Stream support:
With the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for millions of ATI Radeon graphics processors worldwide
ATI Stream harnesses the tremendous processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for high-performance, data-intensive computations over a wide range of scientific, business and consumer applications.
ATI Stream enables the hundreds of parallel cores inside AMD graphics processors to accelerate general purpose applications. These capabilities will allow ATI Stream-enabled programs, for a variety of different tasks and from a growing number of software vendors, to operate with optimized performance or with new functionality.
The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now include in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream
ATI Stream application: ATI Avivo Video Converter:
Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in Catalyst Control Center Basic View) to achieve incredible performance levels in video transcoding.
ATI Catalyst Control Center - Noise reduction for progressive video content:
This release of Catalyst introduces a new advanced video quality control: Noise Reduction for progressive video content, which removes ghosting artifacts while preserving details of the original video. The slider control can be found in the All Settings page of the Avivo Video tab found in the Catalyst Control Center.
Performance improvements:
Catalyst 8.12 Preliminary Performance Notes
Sources:
Guru3D, ATI-Forum.de
ATI Stream support:
With the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for millions of ATI Radeon graphics processors worldwide
ATI Stream harnesses the tremendous processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for high-performance, data-intensive computations over a wide range of scientific, business and consumer applications.
ATI Stream enables the hundreds of parallel cores inside AMD graphics processors to accelerate general purpose applications. These capabilities will allow ATI Stream-enabled programs, for a variety of different tasks and from a growing number of software vendors, to operate with optimized performance or with new functionality.
The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now include in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream
ATI Stream application: ATI Avivo Video Converter:
Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in Catalyst Control Center Basic View) to achieve incredible performance levels in video transcoding.
ATI Catalyst Control Center - Noise reduction for progressive video content:
This release of Catalyst introduces a new advanced video quality control: Noise Reduction for progressive video content, which removes ghosting artifacts while preserving details of the original video. The slider control can be found in the All Settings page of the Avivo Video tab found in the Catalyst Control Center.
Performance improvements:
Catalyst 8.12 Preliminary Performance Notes
- Crysis + 2-7%
- Crysis Warhead + 2-3%
- Devil May Cry 4 + 1-6%
- Far Cry 2
+ noAA scores are fixed for Crossfire configs; this is worth +20% on slower cards, and as much as 70% on faster ones
+ 5-10% gains when AA is enabled - FEAR + 2-6%
- Left 4 Dead + 2-4%
- Lost Planet Colonies + 3-10%, mostly in Area 2
- Prey + 2-5%
- STALKER Clear Sky + 5-10%, primarily on Crossfire configurations
81 Comments on ATI Catalyst 8.12 Beta Released, ATI Stream Now Available
i have records from day one dating back to my 6400 amd cpu and single ati 3870...
Still, I like the program
I ran some tests in a lazy haphazard manor.. anyway you can see my results. I used various filtering and in game settings. H and VH textures are for High and Very High.
If anyone want a specific test done just ask. I have most of the recent popular games installed already.
Crossfire 4850 FTW!!
edit: just ran it and it was corruption city. Ran at stock clocks also... good thing I dont actually use Vantage.
At least game performance is good.
They did not mention it but WIC got a pretty good boost.
Here are my scores taken from the in game benchmark.
8.11
Highest Settings, DX10, 16xAF, 1360x768
Built in Benchmark
0xAA
Ave- 45
Max- 103
Min- 24
2xAA
Ave- 44
Max- 101
Min- 23
4xAA
Ave- 44
Max- 101
Min- 23
8.12 RC3
Highest Settings, DX10, 16xAF, 1360x768
Built in Benchmark
0xAA
Ave- 47
Max- 109
Min- 24
2xAA
Ave- 45
Max- 104
Min- 19
4xAA
Ave- 48
Max- 111
Min- 24
All except the Min FPS in the 2xAA score are the same or higher so that is a win for me. :rockout:
It is interesting to see the 4xAA score slightly higher than the 0xAA score. Could have something to do with my fairly low resolution on my 37" 720p tv
Cat 8.11
Ultra high, DX10, 16xAF, 1360x768
Ranch Small Overall average
0xAA
Ave- 60.41
Max- 92.32
Min- 40.92
2xAA
Ave- 62.20
Max- 95.39
Min- 41.01
4xAA
Ave- 63.93
Max- 99.23
Min- 41.04
8xAA
Ave- 61.17
Max- 93.14
Min- 40.35
Cat 8.12 RC3
Ultra high, DX10, 16xAF, 1360x768
Ranch Small Overall average
0xAA
Ave- 65.75
Max- 103.48
Min- 43.68
2xAA
Ave- 65.28
Max- 100.07
Min- 43.02
4xAA
Ave- 65.25
Max- 103.29
Min- 43.12
8xAA
Ave- 65.05
Max- 100.95
Min- 42.92
Pretty decent gains if you ask me. :cool:
For me it is most likely my resolution bottlenecking my results.
You have a huge overclock on your CPU and I remember reading somewhere that this game really benefits from fast CPUs.
FC2
DX10 Ultra High 4xAA 1360x769
Overall Averages.
* Average Framerate: 63.02
* Max. Framerate: 93.84
* Min. Framerate: 45.78
What do you have your 4850s clocked at? I remember the ones that I had briefly were not too far behind what I am using now,
I know what you mean about the 3870. I had a single 3870 and I was completely disgusted with it's filtering ability.
I think I'm going to test them seperatlly again and then flash both there bios's, right now I have my older one back at it's stock bios and the newer one is also. I'm putting off pencil modding because I want to savor my setup now and don't wanna work on them for the moment :)
+ noAA scores are fixed for Crossfire configs; this is worth +20% on slower cards, and as much as 70% on faster ones
+ 5-10% gains when AA is enabled :confused:
seems this driver come to fix far cry2
www.ngohq.com/news/15062-ati-catalyst-8-12-rc3.html
slight improvement:shadedshu
When are the 8.12 drivers expected to be out of beta? I'm going to try my hardest to use the new drivers if I can get them to work with my crossfire once they get out of the beta stage.