The AMD Catalyst driver 12.1 is out.
Changes overview
This driver can be used by the HD 2400-serie and up. Older cards should use the 10.2 release for XP, Vista and 7. One of the things I noticed in the patch-notes is that they forgot to remove the “preview” part (from when the driver was still beta). A new feature added in this driver is the so called: HD3D. This adds the option for using 3d on a multi-card setup. There aren’t a lot of big fixes or changes in this release. The (small) fixes are mostly for these games:
- Alien vs Predator.
- Enemy Territory – Quake Ware
- Dirt 2
- Crysis 2
- Dragon Age 2
- Lost Planet 2
- Tom Clancy HAWX2
- World of Warcraft running in
- Rage
- Metro 2033
- Starcraft II
One potentially important notice is that Battlefield 3 on Windows 7 might crash when you run it in ultra settings. I haven’t got confirmation on this issue yet though, so I’m not sure how severe it is.
Changelog
Improvements
AMD HD3D technology support enhancement
- Enables support for AMD HD3D technology in conjunction with AMD CrossFireX configurations
- Delivers a new Stereo 3D mode over HDMI 1.4a connections – 1080p at 30Hz is now enabled on supported displays
AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center enhancements – Application Profiles
- AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver enables users to create per application profiles to individually control 3D and CrossFireX settings for Direct3D applications
- Please be sure to select the “Restore Factory Defaults” option under the Catalyst Control Center Preferences menu before using the new application profiles feature – this ensures there are no compatibility issues between previous drivers and the new AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver with regards to application profiles
AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center enhancements – Video UI improvements
- AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver includes user interface enhancements to simply adjustment of video color and video quality controls
Resolved issues
Windows 7 Operating System
- The in-game mouse cursor no longer randomly disappears while playing Alien vs Predator.
- Enemy Territory – Quake Ware will no longer experience intermittent crashes when in a 3 monitor Eyefinity configuration.
- Water texture is now rendered correctly in Enemy Territory – Quake Wars
- Dirt 2 does not exhibit stuttering when run in DirectX 9 mode.
- Playing Crysis 2 with in Crossfire mode no longer experiences random graphics corruption or game instability.
- Random corruption and screen flicker is no longer observed while playing Dragon Age 2 with Tri-Crossfire enabled.
- Lost Planet 2 no longer crashes after game launch when run in Crossfire mode.
- Lost Planet 2 and Tom Clancy HAWX2 no longer experience random game hangs/black screens when run at high in game settings.
- Water textures in World of Warcraft running in DirectX 9 mode no longer appear corrupted.
- The game “Rage” no longer experiences intermittent hangs when Crossfire is enabled.
Windows Vista Operating System
- Ejecting the disc during Blu-Ray/DVD playback using WinDVD no longer causes the system to crash.
- 3D content playback using PowerDVD now correctly used hardware acceleration.
- Poor performance is no longer randomly experience when playing World of Warcraft, Metro 2033 and Starcraft II at high in-game settings.
- Medal of Honor now correctly displays all in game settings.
Known issues
Windows 7 operating system
- Call of Duty 4 may experience corruption when run in DirectX 9 mode and the Edge Detect filter is enabled.
- Portal 2 may generate a black screen when launched in 3D stereo mode.
- The Morphological filter settings may be missing in the Vision Control Center.
- Civilization V may experience random game crashes.
- Forced Anti-Aliasing may not be available when playing Enemy Territory – Quake Wars.
- Call of Duty – Black Ops may experience a crash when run in Crossfire mode.
- Battlefield 3 may crash when run at ultra settings.
- Vsync may be disabled after task switching when playing Rage.
- Launching Rage with Crossfire enabled may cause the application to hang.
- Random flickering may be observed while playing Battlefield- Bad Company 2.
- Saints Row III may hang randomly during gameplay.
- Dragons Age 2 may experience random flickering when run in Tri Crossfire mode with Vsync enabled or when run in DirectX 9 mode.
- Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 3 may experience flickering when run in Tri Crossfire mode.
Windows Vista Operating System
- Windows Aero options may be missing after installing the latest driver.
Windows XP Operating System
- The mouse cursor may get corrupted if the “enable pointer shadow” option is unchecked.
The download links:
AMD Catalyst 12.1 for Windows XP (32bit)
AMD Catalyst 12.1 for Windows XP (64bit)
AMD Catalyst 12.1 for Windows Vista en 7 (32bit)
AMD Catalyst 12.1 for Windows Vista en 7 (64bit)
AMD Catalyst Mobility 12.1 for Windows Vista and 7 (32bit)
AMD Catalyst Mobility 12.1 for Windows Vista and 7 (64bit)
AMD CrossFireX Application Profiles