The August release of AMD's Catalyst driver has hit the airwaves, and it integrates the company's CPU overclocking utility - dubbed Overdrive - right into the Vision Control Center.
The release, version 11.8, supports CPU overclocking on AMD Black Edition processors and allows users to tweak both the CPU and GPU from a single application. A sort of fusion, you might say.
In addition to the integration of CPU Overdrive, Catalyst 11.8 touts performance gains of up to 20 per cent in Call of Duty: Black Ops, and gains of up to 30 per cent when using morphological anti-aliasing on Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series graphics cards.
Perhaps more importantly, the release also solves a couple of BSOD issues on the Windows 7 and Windows Vista operating systems. A complete list of the performance improvements and resolves issues can be found below, but if you've developed a tendency to skip past the fine print, point your browser to game.amd.com to download the new release.
Performance Highlights
- Improves performance up to 10 per cent in Crysis 2 DirectX 11 version for both non-Anti-Aliasing, and application enabled Anti-Aliasing cases on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
- Improves performance up to 8 per cent in Fear 3 DirectX 11 version with application enabled Anti-Aliasing on the
AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series - Improves performance up to 30 per cent when AMD’s Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) is enabled through the
Catalyst Control Center on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series - Improves performance up to 20 per cent in Call of Duty Black Operations for single GPU and Multi-GPU configurations on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
- The option to “Apply current video quality settings to internet video" is no longer randomly missing from the AMD Catalyst Control Center / AMD Vision Engine Control Center.
- 3DMark 11 no longer intermittently generates a BSOD error when run using a standard user account.
- Playing HD video content overnight using Windows Media Center no longer causes the system to hang or generates a BSOD error.
- Random graphical corruption is no longer experienced when playing Crysis 2 in a Crossfire environment.
- Image stabilization is now correctly applied to DivX clips when using Windows Media Player.
- Enabling AntiAliasing when playing Starcraft 2 no longer causes random screen blackouts.
- Video corruption is no longer seen when scrolling through DivX 5 video files using Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player.
- Menu corruption is no longer seen when running F.E.A.R 3 in DirectX 11 mode.
- Video playback now functions correctly after enabling hardware acceleration in VLC version 1.1.10.
Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System
- PowerDVD no longer randomly displays a blank screen when playing back BluRay content with Crossfire enabled.
- BSOD errors are no longer intermittently experienced after installing the driver with Crossfire enabled.
Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System
- PowerDVD no longer randomly displays a blank screen during video playback when switching from extended display mode to cloned display mode.
