AMD Catalyst 11.12 WHQL with Official OpenGL 4.2 Support

2011/12/13 JeGX

AMD Catalyst logo

AMD has released the December 2011 edition of its WHQL-certified graphics drivers for Radeon based graphics cards. Good news for OpenGL developers: Catalyst 11.12 comes with an official support of OpenGL 4.2.

Catalyst 11.12 Desktop Downloads:

Catalyst 11.12 Mobility Downloads:

Catalyst 11.12 Linux Downloads:

Cat 11.12 Linux 32/64-bit

The main new features of Catalyst 11.12 are:

AMD OpenGL 4.2 production support: AMD Catalyst 11.12 delivers official support for the OpenGL 4.2 specification.
AMD Eyefinity technology enhancements: Enables support for AMD HD3D technology when using a 3×1 Landscape Eyefinity display group, on supported DisplayPort 3D monitors.
AMD Vision Engine Control Center enhancements for Dual Graphics: Improvements have been implemented to better facilitate the enabling and control of the Dual Graphics within the Vision Engine Control Center

AMD Catalyst 11.12 CCC information

AMD Catalyst 11.12 GPU Caps Viewer
GPU Caps Viewer 1.14.5

Catalyst 11.12 exposes 232 OpenGL extensions (GL=211 and WGL=21) and the OpenGL version is: 4.2.11318. Compared to Cat 11.11 WHQL, Cat 11.12 introduces these new OpenGL extensions:

GL_ARB_base_instance
GL_ARB_conservative_depth
GL_ARB_internalformat_query
GL_ARB_map_buffer_alignment
GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counters
GL_ARB_shader_image_load_store
GL_ARB_shading_language_420pack
GL_ARB_shading_language_packing
GL_ARB_texture_storage
GL_ARB_transform_feedback_instanced
GL_EXT_texture_storage
WGL_EXT_swap_control_tear

But compared to Cat 11.10 Preview 3, Cat 11.12 does not expose new extension, Cat 11.10 Preview 3 being already an OpenGL 4.2 driver but in a beta version.