Thursday, January 17th 2013
AMD Catalyst 13.1 WHQL Drivers Released
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:
This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 13.1 software suite.
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
- 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%
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
82 Comments on AMD Catalyst 13.1 WHQL Drivers Released
Thank you, AMD.
Seriously. You have no idea how bad previous version were unless you've had some specific hardware/software combos. WHQL certification only really means that driver crash will not cause BSOD, and for once, this is true. I can no longer replicate the problem, 4 fucked up boards later. THANK GOD.:roll:
Should I upgrade too? Running a 6870.
This is the kind of thing that could make me switch to nvidia. :eek:
www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=178948
Then tried to install the 12.10 drivers and I kept getting an error message about the HDMI audio drivers. Used Driver Sweeper and same thing. I think (can't remember as it was getting real late and a few too many drinks) that I went into the Device Manager and disabled from there. Finally was able then to re-install the 12.10 drivers.
The reason I switched back is because my system would re-start frequently while running BOINC (all 3 GPU's). I did not have this issue with 12.10 at the same settings. Yes the GPU's were overclocked to 1100 on the core.
There was no BSOD, the computer just shut down and re-booted.
Since I re-installed 12.10 the computer has not shut down once and this is with the same overclock:cool:
Info as to why: twitter.com/CatalystCreator
I am running my 7970 without the CCC and it is so much better without... no crashes no bugs no misconfigured games... I really dont know why ppl with 1 GPU actually use CCC...
i guess its worth a try for troubleshooting. (not for me tho, crossfire)
"Driver Install: the driver package does not specify a hardware identifier".
I really couldn't tell you much more :(
But then I how do you control the 3D settings?
I guess then you are limited to whatever settings the game has?
This will not get the better of me.
Sometimes was stuttering a bit, but not with the 12.11's.
cyaburg
The 12.11 Beta 11 had a very slight stutter to it which appeared to be from rendering up coming objects and textures.
Seems to be none of that with these drivers so there may have been some other things they worked on rather than releasing the 12.11 Beta 11 as WHQL.