AMD Catalyst™ 12.11 Beta 8 (November, 16th 2012)

[Stefan]

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA DRIVER:

This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD7800 and HD7900.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

    10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
        More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
    Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
    Up to 10% more performance in DIRT Showdown
    Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
    Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
    Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
    Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2 

If you already have an earlier beta, this one has some issues resolved according to misc. sources.
This driver exposes 4 new OpenGL extensions, that i'm too lazy to look up.
Also it locks out many notebooks by using SUBSYS_IDs in installer file 

[ljbade]

Does you laptop have Intel/AMD switching graphics?

Drivers installed fine on my AMD APU + GPU laptop, perhaps they are worried that Intel is too flakey?

[Stefan]

Does you laptop have Intel/AMD switching graphics?

Drivers installed fine on my AMD APU + GPU laptop, perhaps they are worried that Intel is too flakey?

That's right, actually they didn't support ATI+Intel for a while.
The AMD homepage only shows their notebook check tool, so you had to guess the deep links for Mobility drivers.

Now there are some alternatives:

- don't update at all
- manually extract and copy files
- disable driver signing
- split Intel and AMD driver, which confuses misc. programs, e.g. VLC media player uses the GPU that is not active 
- send the notebook to hell and use an Android tablet on the road 

EDIT: 12.10 WHQL works

[Stefan]

beta updated...

Resolved issue highlights of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta Driver

    Medal of Honor:  Warfighter; AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta4 resolves an application crash found when running in AMD CrossFire mode with Anti-Aliasing enabled (This issue was observed in the AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta3;  The AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta4 has replaced the AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta3 driver that was posted Oct 22 2012).

[Stefan]

    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta6 resolves the issue with engine and memory clocks running too high when the GPU is idle.  Clocks will now run at the proper level when the GPU is idle.   This issue was only observed with specific displays and was observed in the AMD Catalyst 12.11Beta 4 and AMD Catalyst 12.10 drivers;  The AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta6 has replaced the AMD Catalyst 12.11Beta 4 driver that was posted Oct 23, 2012.

This driver can be downloaded from the following links:

    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta6 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista®
    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta6 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista® - with .NET 4 Support

[Stefan]

    Additional update found in AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta7
        Call of Duty Black Ops 2:  AMD CrossFire performance has been improved in the AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta7 release (especially at higher resolutions – such as 2560x1600)
        Please note that AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta 7 includes all of the fixes found in previous versions of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta

The AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta7 driver can be downloaded from the following links:

    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta7 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista®
    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta7 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista® - with .NET 4 Support

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[Stefan]

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA8 DRIVER

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 is now available, and includes the following updates:
(Please note that AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 includes all of the fixes found in previous versions of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta)

    Improves performance up to 5%  in Max Payne 3
    Includes single GPU performance updates for Far Cry 3
    Improves CrossFire scaling for Planetside 2 (Crossfire scaling is still limited to ~30% at 2560x1600)
    Resolves the Skyrim lighting issue (missing a lighting pass) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
    Resolves the hang encountered playing Dishonored on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta 8 for Linux includes significant performance improvements for Left for Dead 2

The AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 driver can be downloaded from the following links:

    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista®
    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista® - with .NET 4 Support
    AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Linux

[ljbade]

Figured the 4 new extensions:
NV_dx_interop
NV_dx_interop2

Allows sharing buffers with DX so you can say render a object to a GL buffer than run a DX computer shader on it...

ARB_texture_storage_multisample
ARB_texture_buffer_range

First 2 OpenGL 4.3 extensions.