Foi confirmado pela AMD a poucas horas que a empresa não irá mais adotar a política de uma versão do Catalyst por mês, como vinha praticando a anos, desde os tempos de ATI.

A empresa acaba de anunciar o Catalyst 12.6 BETA, pulando a versão 12.5 que não saiu e nem sairá, sendo a versão 12.4 a última de um longo ciclo.

De acordo com a AMD, a decisão foi tomada visando o usuário final, que poderá continuar baixando os drivers, desde que lhe as novidades lhe interessem. O sistema ano+mês vai continuar sendo mantido na nomenclatura, mas não teremos mais uma versão por mês por obrigação como vinha acontecendo.

Abaixo detalhes do Catalyst 12.6 Beta e do 12.6 Beta CAP1.

Resolved issue highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta

• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Tri-CrossFire configurations + Eyefinity no longer results in a BSOD when launching a DirectX application
• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations no longer results in a BSOD when using desktop applications
• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards no longer hang when system goes to sleep
• Please ensure that your System BIOS is up to date – some occurrences of this issue are related to outdated SBIOS

Resolves CrossFire scaling issues seen in AMD Catalyst 12.4 with:

• Elder Scrolls: Skyrim CrossFire
• AMD Catalyst Control Center – Overdrive page is no longer intermittently missing
• AMD Catalyst Control Center – GPU Activity gauge is no longer missing
• AMD Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Configuration – no longer results in system hang after cinematic in Call Of Duty: Black Ops
• Heroes and Generals: Blocky corruption in scenes with smoke effects when run in DirectX 11 mode are no longer experienced.
• Dirt Showdown: Improves scaling for CrossFire configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• HDMI audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV is powered Off/On.

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta:
Dual Graphics enhancements – new application profiles

Supported Dual Graphics configurations:
AMD Accelerated Processors for Desktop PCs

• AMD Radeon™ HD 7660D (A10-5700)
• AMD Radeon™ HD 7560D (A8-5500)

Notebooks with AMD Accelerated Processors

• AMD Radeon™ HD 7660G (A10-4600M)
• AMD Radeon™ HD 7640G (A8-4500M)
• AMD Radeon™ HD 7520G (A6-4400M)

New profiles have been added for the following titles:
o   Diablo 3
o   Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
o   StarCraft 2
o   Portal 2
o   Call of Duty Modern Warfare
o   Call of Duty Black Ops

· Future Catalyst releases will continue to add Dual Graphics support for additional titles

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta Linux driver:
This release of AMD Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems

• SLED 11 SP2 production support
• RHEL 5.8 production support

New AMD Catalyst Application Profile is now available: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

Catalyst 12.6 Beta CAP1

• Max Payne 3 (DirectX11 version):  Improves CrossFire scaling performance
• Krater:  Resolves full screen flickering issue

AMD has also just released a new AMD Catalyst™ feature preview driver for the Windows 8 Release Preview: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Windows8ConsumerPreviewDrivers.aspx

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ feature preview driver for the Windows 8 Release Preview

Featuring full support for the new WDDM 1.2 driver model, this new driver enables customers to take full advantage of the model’s features as applications are updated to leverage them. These features include:

• Support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
• Native Stereo 3D support:  Windows® 8 natively supports stereoscopic 3D gaming and videos via compatible applications. Middleware applications will not be required for such apps.1
• Unified Video API: Video playback has been integrated into the DirectX® 11 API, enabling simultaneous video and gaming content. Transcoding performance may also be improved for supporting applications.
• Optimized screen rotation for rotation-aware devices.
• Improved sleep/resume performance.
• Optimized GPU power consumption.

Support for AMD Features:
o    AMD Eyefinity
o    OpenCL™
o    OpenGL
o    UVD
o    AMD Dual Graphics / AMD CrossFire™ Technology
o    AMD Overdrive™
o    AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center

Known issues found in the AMD Catalyst feature preview for Windows 8 (these issues will be resolved in the AMD production release for Windows 8)

• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 performance in DirectX 9 applications may be slower under Windows 8 vs. Windows 7
• AMD CrossFireX configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700  in DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 applications may be slower under Windows 8 vs. Windows 7
• AMD CrossFireX configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700  in OpenCL accelerated applications may cause a BSOD or system hang
• Blacklight Retribution (DirectX11 mode) played with a CrossFire configuration can result in a system crash when launching the application (32-bit OS only)
• Video corruption can be seen when playing back movie trailers with the Windows 8 Metro video player