AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Available (Monthly Releases are Over), Two New OpenGL Extensions

Where are the 12.5 drivers? Here is the answer:

With the release of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta driver (“Catalyst”), AMD would also like to announce that we are moving away from our Monthly Catalyst release plan. Our goal is to ensure that every Catalyst release delivers a substantial benefit to our end users; as we have today with the release of the Catalyst 12.6a Beta. We will still continue with the Catalyst naming convention; Catalyst: Year.Month. You just won’t see a new driver every single month. We are confident that this will only benefit the end user; you’ll only need to upgrade to a new Catalyst driver, when it makes sense.

You can download the beta of the June 2012 edition of Catalyst drivers from this page: AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Driver. Cat 12.6 are available for Win7, WinXP and Linux.

For Windows 8 Release Preview, you can download the graphics drivers from this page: AMD Catalyst Driver Windows® 8 Release Preview.

CCC information

GPU Caps Viewer

Catalyst 12.6 beta brings two new OpenGL extensions compared to Catalyst 12.4:

• GL_AMD_query_buffer_object
• GL_AMD_sparse_texture

Catalyst 12.6 is an OpenGL 4.2 driver (exact version: 4.2.11733) and exposes 239 OpenGL extensions (GL=218 and WGL=21) for a Radeon HD 7970 under Win7 64-bit.

And for OpenCL developers, here is the report from GPU Caps Viewer:

- Num OpenCL platforms: 1
- CL_PLATFORM_NAME: AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
- CL_PLATFORM_VENDOR: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
- CL_PLATFORM_VERSION: OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (938.1)
- CL_PLATFORM_PROFILE: FULL_PROFILE
- Num devices: 2

	- CL_DEVICE_NAME: Tahiti
	- CL_DEVICE_VENDOR: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
	- CL_DRIVER_VERSION: CAL 1.4.1741 (VM)
	- CL_DEVICE_PROFILE: FULL_PROFILE
	- CL_DEVICE_VERSION: OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (938.1)
	- CL_DEVICE_TYPE: GPU
	- CL_DEVICE_VENDOR_ID: 0x1002
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS: 32
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_CLOCK_FREQUENCY: 925MHz
	- CL_DEVICE_ADDRESS_BITS: 32
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_MEM_ALLOC_SIZE: 524288KB
	- CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_SIZE: 2048MB
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_PARAMETER_SIZE: 1024
	- CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_CACHELINE_SIZE: 64 Bytes
	- CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_CACHE_SIZE: 16KB
	- CL_DEVICE_ERROR_CORRECTION_SUPPORT: NO
	- CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_TYPE: Local (scratchpad)
	- CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_SIZE: 32KB
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_CONSTANT_BUFFER_SIZE: 64KB
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_ITEM_DIMENSIONS: 3
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_ITEM_SIZES: [256 ; 256 ; 256]
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE: 256
	- CL_EXEC_NATIVE_KERNEL: 21362228
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE_SUPPORT: YES
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_READ_IMAGE_ARGS: 128
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WRITE_IMAGE_ARGS: 8
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE2D_MAX_WIDTH: 8192
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE2D_MAX_HEIGHT: 8192
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE3D_MAX_WIDTH: 2048
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE3D_MAX_HEIGHT: 2048
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE3D_MAX_DEPTH: 2048
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_SAMPLERS: 16
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_CHAR: 16
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_SHORT: 8
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_INT: 4
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_LONG: 2
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_FLOAT: 4
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_DOUBLE: 2
	- CL_DEVICE_EXTENSIONS: 16
	- Extensions:
		- cl_khr_fp64
		- cl_amd_fp64
		- cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics
		- cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics
		- cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics
		- cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics
		- cl_khr_3d_image_writes
		- cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
		- cl_khr_gl_sharing
		- cl_ext_atomic_counters_32
		- cl_amd_device_attribute_query
		- cl_amd_vec3
		- cl_amd_printf
		- cl_amd_media_ops
		- cl_amd_popcnt
		- cl_khr_d3d10_sharing

	- CL_DEVICE_NAME:         Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz
	- CL_DEVICE_VENDOR: GenuineIntel
	- CL_DRIVER_VERSION: 2.0 (sse2)
	- CL_DEVICE_PROFILE: FULL_PROFILE
	- CL_DEVICE_VERSION: OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (938.1)
	- CL_DEVICE_TYPE: CPU
	- CL_DEVICE_VENDOR_ID: 0x1002
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS: 4
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_CLOCK_FREQUENCY: 3116MHz
	- CL_DEVICE_ADDRESS_BITS: 32
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_MEM_ALLOC_SIZE: 1048576KB
	- CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_SIZE: 2048MB
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_PARAMETER_SIZE: 4096
	- CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_CACHELINE_SIZE: 64 Bytes
	- CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_CACHE_SIZE: 32KB
	- CL_DEVICE_ERROR_CORRECTION_SUPPORT: NO
	- CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_TYPE: Global
	- CL_DEVICE_LOCAL_MEM_SIZE: 32KB
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_CONSTANT_BUFFER_SIZE: 64KB
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_ITEM_DIMENSIONS: 3
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_ITEM_SIZES: [1024 ; 1024 ; 1024]
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE: 1024
	- CL_EXEC_NATIVE_KERNEL: 21362232
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE_SUPPORT: YES
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_READ_IMAGE_ARGS: 128
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_WRITE_IMAGE_ARGS: 8
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE2D_MAX_WIDTH: 8192
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE2D_MAX_HEIGHT: 8192
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE3D_MAX_WIDTH: 2048
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE3D_MAX_HEIGHT: 2048
	- CL_DEVICE_IMAGE3D_MAX_DEPTH: 2048
	- CL_DEVICE_MAX_SAMPLERS: 16
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_CHAR: 16
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_SHORT: 8
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_INT: 4
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_LONG: 2
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_FLOAT: 4
	- CL_DEVICE_PREFERRED_VECTOR_WIDTH_DOUBLE: 0
	- CL_DEVICE_EXTENSIONS: 15
	- Extensions:
		- cl_khr_fp64
		- cl_amd_fp64
		- cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics
		- cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics
		- cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics
		- cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics
		- cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
		- cl_khr_gl_sharing
		- cl_ext_device_fission
		- cl_amd_device_attribute_query
		- cl_amd_vec3
		- cl_amd_printf
		- cl_amd_media_ops
		- cl_amd_popcnt
		- cl_khr_d3d10_sharing

Source: Geeks3D forum