AMD rolls out Catalyst 11.3 and Catalyst 11.4 test driver

AMD has rolled out two new graphics card drivers for its Radeon family. First we have the official Catalyst 11.3 that doesn’t really offer anything new, but AMD also offers the Catalyst 11.4 test driver that supports Radeon HD 6790 and a variety of performance boosts.

AMD Catalyst 11.3 is the latest driver from AMD and by the looks of it it hasn’t emphasized this version in the development process. The only big news about these WHQL certified drivers is that AMD APP (Accelerated Parallel Processing) is now actived from scratch, which will bring optimized performance at OpenCL-based GPU applications. The new driver can be found at AMD’s website.

AMD Catalyst 11.4 Preview Driver is a lot more fun. In the second test version Catalyst 11.4 comes with support for Radeon HD 6790, a graphics card we revealed a while back, and big performance boosts for heavy games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Metro 2033 and Civilization V.

A complete walkthrough of Catalyst 11.4 preview driver can be found below.The test driver can be found here.

AMD Catalyst™ Driver 11.4 early Preview Features:

• Support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 6790 series of products
• A number of performance optimizations, as highlighted here:
  • http://blogs.amd.com/play/2011/03/14/the-amd-catalyst%E2%84%A2-preview-driver-that-you-have-been-waiting-for/
• Performance enhancement for Shogun 2 (DX11 version) when running Anti-Aliasing
• Enhancements to the AMD Catalyst Control Center™
  • New task based Display Management controls
    • Simplifies the configuration of displays and display settings
  • New Eyefinity setup group
    • Setting up an Eyefinity group has never been easier
  • New branding (based on system configuration)
    • AMD based platform  – AMD VISION Engine Control Center
    • Discrete AMD GPU with Intel CPU – AMD Catalyst Control Center™
  • AMD Catalyst update notification (found within the Information Center)
    • Please note this functionality is not yet enabled, but will be in a future AMD Catalyst release
    • This feature will be used to notify users that new AMD Catalyst software packages are available
• Includes fixes where Dragon Age 2 would hang in DirectX11 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series products.
• Includes fixes where MediaEspresso 6.5 and 6.0 may crash while initializing
• Includes a fix for game corruption issues in BulletStorm
• Includes a fix for the AMD Catalyst Control Center install; resolves the issue of not being able to launch CCC after Catalyst has finished installing
• Includes a fix for the Tessellation slider sometimes setting the incorrect value