The Never Settle Driver: Catalyst 12.11 

In aggiunta alla promozione del nuovo bundle,  AMD introduce anche un nuovo set di driver sia WHQL sia Beta. I nuovi driver Never Settle, in particolar modo la versione Beta, introducono davvero tante novità; oltre ai consueti bugfix che AMD ci ha abituati a rilasciare con la consueta cadenza mensile, la nota azienda americana si è impegnata davvero a fondo e ha cercato di offrire nuove prestazioni di riferimento per le proprie schede grafiche.

I nuovi Catalyst 12.11, stando a quello che ha fornito il produttore nelle release note, assicurano un notevole incremento di prestazioni nei frames al secondo per tutta la famiglia GCN (Graphic Core Next), ossia per  le schede Radeon HD 7000. Questi miglioramenti confluiranno nella prossima versione certificata, ossia nei Catalyst 12.11 WHQL. In questa recensione analizzeremo a fondo tali miglioramenti, effettuando nuovi test su tutta la gamma HD 7000!

Nel corso di queste settimane sono state rilasciate varie versioni di questi Driver Beta, l'ultima adesso disponibile è la versione 12.11 Beta 8 che porta alcune novità rispetto alle precedenti versioni. Ecco le release note fornite a corredo:

Le Famiglie di schede interessate:

• AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
• AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
• AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
• AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
• AMD Mobility Radeon HD 7000M Series
• AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6000M Series
• AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series

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

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).
• Resolves performance issues (where GPU activity runs at lower values than expected) seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870.
• AMD Catalyst Mobility 7970M performance for AMD Enduro™ Technology supported platforms has been substantially improved for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications. An updated driver for 7970M users featuring AMD Enduro™ Technology with additional DirectX 9 performance improvements will be released soon.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.
  • 3DMark Vantage – Up to 15%
  • 3DMark 11 – Up to 12%
  • AvP – Up to 11%
  • Battlefield 3 – Up to 25%
  • Crysis 2: Up to 45%
  • DiRT Showdown – Up to 62%
  • ETQW – Up to 8%
  • Hard Reset – Up to 8%
  • Just Cause 2 – Up to 90%
  • The Chronicles of Riddick – Up to 4%
  • Shogun 2 – Up to 56%
  • Sniper Elite V2 – Up to 60%
  • Tom Clancy’s HAWX – Up to 56%
  • Unigine Heaven – Up to 33%
  • Wolfenstein – Up to 9%
• 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

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

I Driver Catalyst 12.10 WHQL sono scaricabili al seguente link:

 http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/Pages/desktop-graphics.aspx

Mentre i Driver Catalyst 12.11 Beta 8 sono scaricabili al seguente link:

 http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst1211betadriver.aspx

Piccola nota a margine: dalla versione Beta 6 rispetto alle precedenti è stato risolto un piccolo bug che si verificava quando le VGA erano in stato di idle. Nelle versioni precedenti, infatti, il clock della GPU e della memoria non andava correttamente al minimo, comportando consumi in idle decisamente superiori rispetto a quanto era stato rilevato con le prime versioni dei driver. Finalmente dalla Beta 6 in poi questo problema è stato fixato. I Beta 7 oltre a tutti i miglioramenti visti nelle precedenti versioni introducono dei miglioramenti delle performance con il gioco Call of Duty Black Ops 2. La versione Beta 8 introduce delle ottimizzazioni per alcuni titoli come Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, Planetside 2 e degli altri bugfix.

Tutti i miglioramenti e i bugfix visti con le varie versioni di Beta sono stati introdotti nei driver Catalyst 12.11 WHQL.

XtremeHardware ha deciso di provare per voi questi nuovi driver aggiornando tutti i test della propria suite di benchmark e giochi, in modo tale da restituire al lettore un quadro più completo e veritiero dell'attuale situazione gaming performance.