AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 Release Notes Back
Last Updated
2/15/2011
Article Number
GPU-99
This article provides information on the latest posting of AMD’s software suite, AMD Catalyst™ 11.2. This particular software suite updates both the AMD display driver, and the AMD Catalyst™ Control Center. This unified driver has been updated to provide enhanced level of power, performance, and reliability.
Package Content
The AMD Catalyst™ software suite 11.2 contains the following:
AMD display driver version 8.821
HydraVision™ for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7
Southbridge/IXP Driver
AMD Catalyst™ Control Center version 8.821
Important ! Caution !
The AMD display driver and the AMD Catalyst™ Control Center can be downloaded independently of each other. However, for better stability and performance AMD recommends that both components be updated from the same AMD Catalyst™ release.
The AMD Catalyst™ Control Center requires that the Microsoft® .NET Framework SP1 be installed for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Without .NET SP1 installed, the AMD Catalyst™ Control Center will not launch properly and the user will see an error message.
Notes.
When installing the AMD Catalyst™ driver for Windows operating system, the user must be logged on as Administrator or have Administrator rights to complete the installation of the AMD Catalyst™ driver.
These release notes provide information on the AMD display driver only. For information on the ATI Multimedia Center™, HydraVision, HydraVision Basic Edition, Remote Wonder™, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, please refer to their respective release notes found at:
http://support.amd.com/.
ATI Eyefinity™ technology gives gamers access to high display resolutions. As pixel count grows, the graphics horsepower required to drive the displays at a reasonable frame rate can increase dramatically. Depending on the game and system configuration, users may notice texture corruption and reduced frame rates when running games in multi-monitor Eyefinity modes.
Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers are no longer bundled in the AMD Catalyst™ software suite. The WDM drivers install bundle can be downloaded independently through the AMD website
The Drag and Drop Transcoding feature is a beta level feature provided only for evaluation purposes. The Drag and Drop Transcoding feature is only supported on single and dual core CPUs, and supported on devices that support Media Transfer Protocol (MTP).
When upgrading from a non-Stream™ Edition driver suite to a Stream Edition driver suite with the ATI Stream™ SDK v2 installed, it is recommended that you uninstall the ATI Stream SDK v2 Developer component from the system prior to installing Stream Edition driver suite
When installing the ATI Stream SDK v2 after a Stream Edition driver suite has been installed on a system, you may encounter a maintenance dialog for the developer component of the SDK. This is normal and can be ignored by canceling the dialog box.
AMD Product Compatibility
The AMD Catalyst™ driver is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility
AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4700 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 6300 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4670 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 6200 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4650 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 5900 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4600 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4550 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4350 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 5600 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 3800 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 5500 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 3600 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 5400 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 2900 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 X2 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 X2 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series
AMD FireStream Product Families
AMD FireStream™ 9350
AMD FireStream™ 9250
AMD FireStream™ 9270
AMD FireStream™ 9170
AMD Chipset Product Families
ATI Radeon™ HD 4290
ATI Radeon™ 3200 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4250
ATI Radeon™ 3100 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 Series
ATI Radeon™ 3000 Series
ATI Radeon™ HD 3300 Series
AMD Mobility Product Family Compatibility
Catalyst™ Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features. When used with Windows Vista or Windows 7, users may have unwanted experiences.
The Installation Verification Software will prevent driver download on certain notebook products. This is to protect against the installing of drivers that may disable features or functionality provided by the system manufacturer. If unwanted experiences occur using Catalyst™ Mobility, it is recommended to revert back to the driver provided by your system vendor for your specific platform. Please contact your system vendor for the most recent drivers for your notebook.
AMD Mobility Product Families
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6900M Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4200 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6800M Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4100 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6300M Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3800 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6300 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3600 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6200 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3400 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5800 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3200 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5700 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3100 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5600 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2700 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5400 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2600 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5100 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2400 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4800 Series
ATI PowerXpress™ enabled notebooks
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4600 Series
using AMD chipsets
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4500 Series
The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:
Any notebook launched after this driver release
Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks using Intel® chipsets.
Toshiba® notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
Sony® VAIO® notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
Panasonic® notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
Compatible Operating Systems
The latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ software suite is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:
Windows 7 32-bit version
Windows 7 64-bit version
Windows Vista 32-bit version
Windows Vista 64-bit version
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 Windows release includes:
New Features:
The new Catalyst Control Center features
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 been updated to address 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.
Tessellation Controls
Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
New settings give users full control over the Tessellation levels used in applications.
The default selection “AMD Optimized” setting is intended to set the best level of Tessellation on a per application basis. The “AMD Optimized” setting is designed to help users get the maximum visual benefit of Tessellation, while minimizing the performance impact associated with enabling Tessellation. Currently no applications have been profiled.
The “Use Application Settings” option gives applications full control over the Tessellation level.
Users can also manually set the maximum tessellation level used by applications with the slider control
Morphological Anti-Aliasing support for the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series
AMD Catalyst now includes official support for Morphological Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series
Support Video Quality settings during Blu-ray 3D playback
Supported on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
Requires Blu-ray 3D player software, 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses
Users can now enable the Video Quality settings within the Catalyst Control Center when playing Blu-ray 3D content
Performance Improvements:
Call of Duty: Black Ops:
Performance increases up to 11% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing enabled
Batman Arkham Asylum:
Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series single configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.
Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 software suite for Windows 7. These include:
Corruption is no longer randomly observed running the Unigine Heaven benchmark.
Texture corruption is no longer observed when running the Unigine Heaven benchmark with Super AA enabled in the Catalyst Control Center.
HAWX no longer intermittently displays corruption when running in DirectX 9 mode.
Visual corruption is no longer seen when running Lost Planet in DirectX 10 mode.
Playing a 720p WMV format file no longer randomly causes laggy system performance.
Video corruption no longer intermittently affects the display when playing a SD format DVD using Windows Media Player.
Choppy video playback is no longer observed when playing a DVD with interlaced content using WinDVD 10.
8x Anti Aliasing is now correctly listed as available with certain 3D applications.
The AMD Ladybug demo no longer freezes when viewed in camera mode.
DirectX 9.0 games no longer show intermittent corruption at the bottom of one of the cloned displays.
Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System
Flickering is no longer randomly observed when applying Video Gamma settings.
The system no longer hangs intermittently when playing Medal of Honor.
Civilization V no longer generates a VPU Recovery faulty when Crossfire mode is enabled.
Warhammer – Dawn of War 2 no longer randomly displays a wireframe when running at High game settings.
Known issues under the Windows 7 operating system
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows 7 operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst™. These include:
Texture corruption may be randomly observed when task switching from OpenGL applications with Super AA enabled.
Texture corruption may be randomly observed when swapping displays with Open GL applications running and Super AA enabled.
3D Mark Vantage benchmark may randomly hang at the end of the benchmark.
Playing Bioshock may display random corruption with Vsync and MLAA enabled.
Water textures may display flickering in World of Warcraft with the AA filter set to “Edge Detect” and Crossfire enabled.
Visual corruption may be randomly displayed playing Dirt2 in DirectX 11 mode and driving through water.
Known Issues under the Windows Vista Operating System
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows Vista operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst™. These include:
World of Warcraft may fail when alt-tabbing out and into the game.
Known Issues Under the Windows XP Operating System
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows XP operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst™. These include:
Civilization V may stop responding during launch.
Texture corruption may be observed running Quake 4.
AVIVO settings my stop working intermittently.
Known Issues under all Windows Operating Systems
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under all supported Windows operating systems in the latest version of AMD Catalyst™. These include:
LCD Overdrive settings may be lost when enabling/disabling Crossfire.
OpenCL™ 1.1 conformance tests have not been run with this version of the AMD Catalyst™ Driver Suite and the ATI Stream SDK v2.3. If you require an OpenCL™ 1.1 conformant driver, we recommend that you install the AMD Catalyst™ 10.12 Driver Suite.
