AMD posted its first major release of the Catalyst software suite for this year, Catalyst 13.1 WHQL. Much along the lines of its 12.11 "Never Settle" driver, the new 13.1 WHQL brings performance enhancements for a boatload of games, targeting Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture. We know that AMD is yet to unlock the full potential of GCN, and 13.1 WHQL appears to be a step in that direction. In addition to performance enhancements and fixes, AMD introduced a new 3D settings and profile management user interface within Catalyst Control Center (CCC).

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.1 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

A slice of the change-log follows.

Performance Highlights of AMD Catalyst 13.1 (vs. AMD Catalyst 12.10): Includes all of the performance improvements found in AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta 11
Performance gains seen on the entire AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series, with all game being tested at high / extreme / ultra levels:

• Enhanced performance in Far Cry 3 (up to 25% with 8xMSAA, SSAO enabled @ 1600p, and up to 15% with 8xMSAA, HDAO enabled @1600p) (AMD Catalyst 12.11 CAP2 must also be installed)
• Enhanced AMD CrossFire scaling performance in Call of Duty Black Ops 2
• Up to 10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
• More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
• Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
• Up to 10% more performance in DiRT Showdown
• Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
• Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
• Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
• Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2
• Up to 5% more performance in Max Payne 3

AMD Catalyst Mobility 7970M performance for AMD Enduro technology supported platforms has been improved for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications:

• 3DMark 06 - Up to 6%
• 3DMark Vantage - Up to 15%
• 3DMark 11 - Up to 12%
• AvP - Up to 11%
• Battlefield 3 - Up to 25%
• Call of Duty: Black Ops - Up to 13%
• Crysis 2: Up to 45%
• DiRT Showdown - Up to 62%
• ETQW - Up to 8%
• Hard Reset - Up to 8%
• Just Cause 2 - Up to 90%
• Mafia 2 - Up to 40%
• The Chronicles of Riddick - Up to 4%
• Shogun 2 - Up to 56%
• StarCraft 2 - Up to 25%
• Skyrim - Up to 45%
• Sniper Elite V2 - Up to 60%
• Tom Clancy's HAWX - Up to 56%
• Unigine Heaven - Up to 33%
• Wolfenstein - Up to 9%

Resolved Issues for the Windows 8 / Windows 7 Operating Systems:
This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 13.1 software suite.

• A sporadic system hang encountered with a single AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series GPU seen on X58 and X79 chipsets.
• An intermittent hang encountered with AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs in an AMD CrossFire + Eyefinity setup.
• Missing fonts in XBMC
• No video found in Media Player Classic Home Cinema when using full or half floating point processing
• Skyrim lighting (missing a lighting pass) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
• Skyrim cloud corruption experience in various in game locations
• A hang playing Dishonored on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
• Engine and memory clocks running too high when the GPU is idle.
• GPU activity runs at lower values than expected seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870.
• Corruption seen in Darkness 2 and Carrier Command when using AMD CrossFire configurations
• Adobe Premier Pro CS6 may fail to launch
• Hang experienced with AMD Crossfire and Eyefinity enabled on X58 and X78 chipsets
• Corel PaintShop Pro X3 - Hangs at the "Initializing Command Manager" window
• Company of Heroes 2 - display corruption experienced when AA is enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center
• Cyberlink Powerdirector 10 crashes intermittently.
• Company of Heroes : Tales of Valor - Flickering experienced when AA is disabled
• Max Payne 3 - Flickering experienced in DirectX 9 mode with forced AA enabled
• Cyberlink PoweDVD 10 - crashes intermittently
• VLC - Green texture corruption seen in 720p MPEG2 video clips
• Black screen encountered when "Alternate DVI mode" is enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center
• Green display corruption seen in Skype webcam video