Archive for the ‘Drivers’ Category
The AMD Catalyst™ 11.6 Driver – What’s New
In this month’s release of the AMD Catalyst™ 11.6 driver we are launching an exciting feature called AMD Steady Video Technology. AMD Steady Video technology helps minimize the shake and movement that is so often a part of home video by applying advanced algorithms behind the scenes. What does this all mean to you? How many times have you taken home video of your family and when you get home to watch your video it’s nearly unwatchable due to camera shake, or worse, leaves you feeling a little bit seasick from the ups and downs that are part of the handheld experience? Hopefully you saved those previously unwatchable videos because AMD Steady Video has the potential to turn the shaky home movies of the past into smooth and steady family treasures! This is an AMD exclusive feature i.e. you must have an AMD CPU with AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 series graphics or an AMD APU.
Below is a summary of the AMD Catalyst™ 11.6 driver:
AMD Steady Video Technology1
AMD Steady Video technology is currently an AMD exclusive feature based on AMD App Technology2
By applying advanced algorithms behind the scenes, users do not have to deal with shaky or unstable video ever again!
Capabilities scale with hardware and are end-user controlled
Image Stabilization brought to your favorite social media video sites!
Enabled through the AMD Vision Engine Control Center: Video Settings tab:
AMD Steady Video technology is supported on the following products:
AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series when used in combination with an AMD CPU
AMD E-450 and E-350 APUs
AMD A8, A6, and A4 series APUs
Supported in the following 3rd party players: Adobe Flash player, Windows Media player, Cyberlink PowerDVD, Corel Win DVD, ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater.
Decode Acceleration of MPEG-4 Part 2 Content
AMD has enabled decode acceleration of MPEG-4 part 2 content in Microsoft video player applications (through MFT support) for all AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series graphics cards.
We are also bringing you some noticeable performance improvements on the latest and greatest games. Some of the performance highlights are:
The AMD Radeon™ HD 6990 GPU will see the following performance gains:
3DMark11 – gains of up to 25% with 4x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering at 1920×1080 on single GPU configurations
Alien vs. Predator – gains of up to 7% with 4x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering at 1920×1200 on single GPU configurations
Civilization V – gains of up to 7% with 8x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering at 1920×1200 on single GPU configurations
Crysis Warhead – gains of up to 8% with 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering at 2560×1600 on single GPU configurations
DiRT 2 – gains of up to 9% with 8x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering at 2560×1600 on single GPU configurations
F1 2010 – gains of up to 9% with 8x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering at 2560×1600 on single GPU configurations
Tom Clancy’s Hawx – gains of up to 7% with 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering at 1920×1200 on single GPU configurations
Catalyst 11.6 Performance
Last but not least I want to thank everyone for the feedback and comments we have been receiving from the community. Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.
*IF you are having technical issues with the AMD Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.
To download the AMD Catalyst™ 11.6 driver, click here.
Until Next Time,
Chris Bell
1. AMD Steady Video is a technology designed to eliminate shakes and jitters during the playback of home video. Users may turn on this technology via the AMD Catalyst Control Center™ or the VISION Engine Control Center application. AMD Steady Video will work with content that can run on Adobe® Flash® Player 10.2 (and later versions) or on any player which has been programed to use AMD’s decode acceleration (DXVA) engine. AMD Steady Video is not designed to (a) isolate overlays, logos
or captions, or (b) improve the playback of letter boxed, premium/commercial, or interlaced content. AMD Steady Video is only recommended for use with videos that contain unwanted shakes and jitters.
2. AMD App Acceleration is a set of technologies designed to improve video quality and enhance application performance. Full enablement of some features requires support for OpenCL™ or DirectCompute (including AMD’s Unified Video Decoder (UVD)). Not all products have all features and full enablement of some capabilities and may require complementary products.
Chris Bell is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
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AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 Driver – What’s New?
It’s that time again for the AMD Catalyst™ driver update! We have been getting great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site. Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.
*IF you are having technical issues with the AMD Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.
As a note: this will be the last AMD Catalyst™ blog that I will write. I will be handing the reigns over to Chris Bell here at AMD who will carry on and keep you up to date on our driver postings. It has been a pleasure to keep you posted on all things AMD Catalyst™. I thank you for your feedback and comments over the past year.
Here is what is new this month!
Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 Windows release include:
New Features:
- AMD Catalyst AI Texture Filtering updates
o 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
o 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
o Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series and the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series
o New settings give users full control over the Tessellation levels used in applications.
o 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 the Tessellation feature. Currently no applications have been profiled.
o The “Use Application Settings” option gives applications full control over the Tessellation level.
o 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 GPUs
o AMD Catalyst now includes official support for Morphological Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series GPUs
Support Video Quality settings during Blu-ray 3D playback
- Supported on the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series GPUs
- 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
For more information on AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 release notes.
To download the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 driver, click here.
Regards,
Jay Marsden
Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
Novo driver ATI Catalyst – 10.11
AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 Driver – What’s New?
It’s that time again for the AMD Catalyst™ driver update! We have been getting great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site. Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.
*IF you are having technical issues with the AMD Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.
Here is what is new this month!
Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 driver for Windows® release include:
Performance Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 release:
Here are examples of performance that we have noted in our labs. Your results may vary depending on the model, screen resolution, anti-aliasing, and whether you are using AMD CrossfireX™ technology.
Battleforge™
- Performance increases up to 3% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series using single GPU and CrossFireX configurations with anti-aliasing disabled.
STALKER – Call of Pripyat™ benchmark:
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series using single GPU and CrossFireX configurations.
Resolved issue highlights:
- Enabling AMD OverDriveTM through the AMD Catalyst™ Control Center for single display systems no longer results in GPU clocks running at high levels in non-GPU intensive scenarios
- Mouse cursor no longer flickers and disappears in World of Warcraft when hardware cursor is enabled when playing in Stereo 3D mode
- Primary display no longer blanks out when playing World in Conflict Soviet Assault DX10 with Dual Monitor enabled in AMD CrossFireX™ mode
- AMD CrossFireX™ no longer becomes disabled in Battlefield Bad Company 2 after performing a task switch
- The “Contrast” value for the display is no longer set to zero after AMD CrossFireX™ is disabled for the first time
- Alien blood is now rendered properly in Aliens vs Predator with Anti-Aliasing enabled
ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 Driver – What’s New?
It’s that time again for the ATI Catalyst™ driver update! We have been getting some great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site. Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.
*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.
Here is what is new this month!
New Windows Features
Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release for Microsoft Windows include:
ATI Eyefinity Technology – Enhancements for HydraVision™
- Maximizing a window across multiple displays will now take user defined bezel compensation into account
- Automatically adjusts window position when dragging and dropping windows to ensure title bar visibility
- Proper dialog box placement – dialogs do not cross displays, are not hidden behind bezels, and can be designated to be shown on the users “preferred” display
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