AMD Catalyst 14.4 RC Available For Download

AMD has now released a new Catalyst driver build, more specifically, an RC (Release Candidate) of the Catalyst 14.4 which is expected to arrive in its final, WHQL-certified form in the next couple of weeks. The 14.4 brings full support for OpenGL 4.4 as well as some CrossFire and Mantle tweaks. The driver has support for the recently-introduced Radeon R9 295X dual-GPU card as well as for the rest of the Radeon R9 200 Series, the R7 200s, R5 200s, HD 8000s, HD 7000s, HD 6000s and HD 5000s.

The Catalyst 14.4 RC can be downloaded from this page.

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 14.4 Release Candidate Driver for Windows

Support for the AMD Radeon R9 295X

CrossFire fixes enhancements:

• Crysis 3 - frame pacing improvements
• Far Cry 3 - 3 and 4 GPU performance improvements at high quality settings, high resolution settings
• Anno 2070 - Improved CrossFire scaling up to 34%
• Titanfall - Resolved in game flickering with CrossFire enabled
• Metro Last Light - Improved Crossfire scaling up to 10%
• Eyefinity 3x1 (with three 4K panels) no longer cuts off portions of the application
• Stuttering has been improved in certain applications when selecting mid-Eyefinity resolutions with V-sync Enabled

Full support for OpenGL 4.4
OpenGL 4.4 supports the following extensions:

• ARB_buffer_storage
• ARB_enhanced_layouts
• ARB_query_buffer_object
• ARB_clear_texture
• ARB_texture_mirror_clamp_to_edge
• ARB_texture_stencil8
• ARB_vertex_type_10f_11f_11f_rev
• ARB_multi_bind
• ARB_bindless_texture
• ARB_spare_texture
• ARB_seamless_cubemap_per_texture
• ARB_indirect_parameters
• ARB_compute_variable_group_size
• ARB_shader_draw_parameters
• ARB_shader_group_vote

Mantle beta driver improvements:

• BattleField 4: Performance slowdown is no longer seen when performing a task switch/Alt-tab
• BattleField 4: Fuzzy images when playing in rotated SLS resolution with an A10 Kaveri system