AMD Catalyst 11.1 WHQL and 11.1a Hotfix Formally Announced

[btarunr]

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:

• 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

Performance highlights:

• 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.

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix include:

• 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.

[meran]

why why why still no MLAA no tesselation contorls for the poor 5xxx owners

[erocker]

Originally Posted by meran

why why why still no MLAA no tesselation contorls for the poor 5xxx owners

10.10e.

[scope54]

hotfix has the options available for me (HD 5850)

[DannibusX]

The hotfix has the MLAA options

[semantics]

i'm fine with no mlaa imo it just makes the screen all blury it's not nice and crisp, i rather have the jadedness and crawling mlaa on my screen makes me feel like it's out of focus in some guys i play.

[Delta6326]

Well i haven't updated my drivers sense 10.9 so i think im going to up date now. time to download

[leonard_222003]

improvements bla bla bla
I reached a point when gaming is not so important and some support for adobe cs5 suite or vegas pro or edius or anything could be helpfull , no matter what graphic card you get from Ati they don't have the extra things Nvidia has like export a damn project/movie in half the time it would take if only cpu was used.
When i gamed a lot i felt physx is not so important and those few extra fixes and stability Nvidia always had in front of Ati wasn't such a big deal but now i'm just sick of waiting maybe in the new driver Ati would implement some support for GPU encoding in pro edititing software , or some gamers would think maybe some physics platform would come from the new driver , promises that keep going for years.
My graphic card is a bit old and i will go to green camp not even looking back.

[DannibusX]

Shouldn't you be using a workstation card for that kind of support? I'm sure these drivers are aimed directly at the gaming market and not the professional graphics market.

[Wrigleyvillain]

^ Seriously.

[Delta6326]

I just installed and got this says its still my 10.9?

[Delta6326]

after uninstalling and reinstalling im getting this message any ideas how to fix this?

[T3RM1N4L D0GM4]

Originally Posted by Delta6326

I just installed and got this says its still my 10.9?
http://img.techpowerup.org/110126/Capture0070.jpg

My installation says 10.8 lol


old driver i used was 10.10, sounds fun

[kajson]

anyone installed the hotfix on a 4xxx card?

Are MLAA options maybe by some fluke oww enabled on 48xx series?

*hopes*

[hardcoreimpulse]

i get a lot of ati2dvag BSOD's daily

[SvB4EvA]

6950 owner. I first installed 11.1 and ran some benches, same performance. Then tried 11.1a, got a BSOD during install, had to manually remove every little piece of crap from ATI from my computer. Finally got 11.1a installed, ran some benches, decent performance increase. For an example in 3DMark11 went from P5232 marks to P5402 marks.

As for people seeing weird Catalyst versions, mine says 10.12. Try completely uninstalling all ATI drivers/files before installing either of these new ones.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by leonard_222003

improvements bla bla bla
I reached a point when gaming is not so important and some support for adobe cs5 suite or vegas pro or edius or anything could be helpfull , no matter what graphic card you get from Ati they don't have the extra things Nvidia has like export a damn project/movie in half the time it would take if only cpu was used.
When i gamed a lot i felt physx is not so important and those few extra fixes and stability Nvidia always had in front of Ati wasn't such a big deal but now i'm just sick of waiting maybe in the new driver Ati would implement some support for GPU encoding in pro edititing software , or some gamers would think maybe some physics platform would come from the new driver , promises that keep going for years.
My graphic card is a bit old and i will go to green camp not even looking back.

GPU support is up to the program, not ATI.


ATI supports direct compute and openCL, so if these pro editing programs wanted to get ATI hardware acceleration, its entirely possible... but they want their Nvidia sponsorship.

[twistedneck]

FYI - even if you install the fire gl drivers ati cards dont support any of adobe stuff.. and open cl is still very weak.

11.1 worked great, tried 11.1a and it crashed my system to blue screen.. few reboots and reinstalls later it gives me an error when running ccc. so i totally use every driver cleaner and uninstall known to mankind only finding that 11.1a (like 10.12a) and several other drivers simply dont work. back to 11.1, hope the enhancements were not that great for 69xx cards since i have one and can't use em.

fyi i did totally reinstall windows and the same exact thing happened so the ccc installer just does not like my setup - mini-itx, i5 760, 6950.

[twistedneck]

Originally Posted by SvB4EvA

6950 owner. I first installed 11.1 and ran some benches, same performance. Then tried 11.1a, got a BSOD during install, had to manually remove every little piece of crap from ATI from my computer. Finally got 11.1a installed, ran some benches, decent performance increase. For an example in 3DMark11 went from P5232 marks to P5402 marks.

As for people seeing weird Catalyst versions, mine says 10.12. Try completely uninstalling all ATI drivers/files before installing either of these new ones.

SAme thing happened to me but i never got 11.1a installed even after trying it on a fresh system no less!! and of course muiltple tries on a cleaned up system and yes i even used the new version of sh1tcleaner and that works wonders but still wont help this system. maybe those nice performance gains will be available in 11.2 hey isn't that what i said about 10.12?

[Divide Overflow]

It is reporting that it is Catalyst 10.10 on my system.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by Divide Overflow

It is reporting that it is Catalyst 10.10 on my system.

i've said this half a dozen times in the last half hour... AMD hotfixes RARELY include a version number. it always shows as the last official driver you had installed.

[SvB4EvA]

Originally Posted by twistedneck

SAme thing happened to me but i never got 11.1a installed even after trying it on a fresh system no less!! and of course muiltple tries on a cleaned up system and yes i even used the new version of sh1tcleaner and that works wonders but still wont help this system. maybe those nice performance gains will be available in 11.2 hey isn't that what i said about 10.12?

That sucks man... It didnt take too much effort for me to get 11.1a working, but ATI really needs to get their drivers together... My last ATI card was a Rage128, yea that long ago, cause I said I would never buy their crap again since their drivers were always a problem for me.

Hope you can get them working, cause the performance increase is pretty good.

[jlewis02]

I will stick with 10.11

[Divide Overflow]

Originally Posted by Mussels

i've said this half a dozen times in the last half hour... AMD hotfixes RARELY include a version number. it always shows as the last official driver you had installed.

I understand for hotfixes, but the driver downloaded directly from AMD does not identify itself as a "hotfix". These are the latest official full Catalyst drivers.

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...n_win7-64.aspx

Perhaps it's just nit-picking, but when a company can't get something as basic as the version number correct, it doesn't fill you with confidence in the quality of the rest of their code...

[SvB4EvA]

Originally Posted by Divide Overflow

I understand for hotfixes, but the driver downloaded directly from AMD does not identify itself as a "hotfix". These are the latest official full Catalyst drivers.

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...n_win7-64.aspx

Hes talking about 11.1a, which is still beta.