AMD Telah Merilis Driver Catalyst 2013, 13.1 WHQL

Akhirnya setelah 3 bulan berlalu sejak Catalyst 12.10 WHQL, AMD akhirnya merilis driver Catalyst terbaru sekaligus perdana  tahun 2013 dengan versi 13.1. Sebelum merilis Catalyst 13.1 WHQL sebenarnya AMD sempat mengisi kekosongan dengan merilis driver “Never Settle” mereka yaitu Catalyst 12.11 Beta. Driver dengan versi terakhir 12.11 Beta 11 tersebut memang memberikan peningkatan performa yang tergolong signifikan pada game maupun aplikasi benchmark sintesis terutama untuk graphics card seri HD 7000. Catalyst 13.1 WHQL ini boleh dibilang merupakan penyempurnaan dari Catalyst 12.11 Beta.
Catalyst 13.1 WHQL diperuntukkan untuk graphics card DirectX 11 milik AMD yaitu seri HD 5000, HD 6000, dan juga HD 7000. AMD sebelumnya juga sempat dikabarkan akan memperbaiki latency pada graphics card GCN (Graphics Core Next) mereka untuk memperbaiki performa keseluruhan akan tetapi kami tidak memiliki kepastian apakah perbaikan tersebut telah diimplementasikan pada Catalyst terbaru ini. Untuk lebih jelas mengenai berbagai perubahan yang dilakukan AMD pada Catalyst 13.1 WHQL, simak daftar lengkapnya berikut ini.

Catatan : Peningkatan performa di bawah ini didasarkan pada driver Catalyst 13.1 WHQL VS 12.10 WHQL

Performance gains seen on the entire AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series, with all game being tested at high / extreme / ultra levels:

•     Enhanced performance in Far Cry 3 (up to 25% with 8xMSAA, SSAO enabled @ 1600p, and up to 15% with 8xMSAA, HDAO enabled @1600p) (AMD Catalyst 12.11 CAP2 must also be installed)
•     Enhanced AMD CrossFire scaling performance in Call of Duty Black Ops 2
•     Up to 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
•     Up to 5% more performance in Max Payne 3

AMD Catalyst Mobility 7970M performance for AMD Enduro technology supported platforms has been improved for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications:

•     3DMark 06 – Up to 6%
•     3DMark Vantage – Up to 15%
•     3DMark 11 – Up to 12%
•     AvP – Up to 11%
•     Battlefield 3 – Up to 25%
•     Call of Duty: Black Ops – Up to 13%
•     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%
•     Mafia 2 – Up to 40%
•     The Chronicles of Riddick – Up to 4%
•     Shogun 2 – Up to 56%
•     StarCraft 2 – Up to 25%
•     Skyrim – Up to 45%
•     Sniper Elite V2 – Up to 60%
•     Tom Clancy’s HAWX – Up to 56%
•     Unigine Heaven – Up to 33%
•     Wolfenstein – Up to 9%

Resolved Issues for the Windows 8 / Windows 7 Operating Systems:

This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 13.1 software suite.

•     A sporadic system hang encountered with a single AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series GPU seen on X58 and X79 chipsets.
•     An intermittent hang encountered with AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs in an AMD CrossFire + Eyefinity setup.
•     Missing fonts in XBMC
•     No video found in Media Player Classic Home Cinema when using full or half floating point processing
•     Skyrim lighting (missing a lighting pass) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
•     Skyrim cloud corruption experience in various in game locations
•     A hang playing Dishonored on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
•     Engine and memory clocks running too high when the GPU is idle.
•     GPU activity runs at lower values than expected seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870.
•     Corruption seen in Darkness 2 and Carrier Command when using AMD CrossFire configurations
•     Adobe Premier Pro CS6 may fail to launch
•     Hang experienced with AMD Crossfire and Eyefinity enabled on X58 and X78 chipsets
•     Corel PaintShop Pro X3 – Hangs at the “Initializing Command Manager” window
•     Company of Heroes 2 – display corruption experienced when AA is enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center
•     Cyberlink Powerdirector 10 crashes intermittently.
•     Company of Heroes : Tales of Valor – Flickering experienced when AA is disabled
•     Max Payne 3 – Flickering experienced in DirectX 9 mode with forced AA enabled
•     Cyberlink PoweDVD 10 – crashes intermittently
•     VLC – Green texture corruption seen in 720p MPEG2 video clips
•     Black screen encountered when “Alternate DVI mode” is enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center
•     Green display corruption seen in Skype webcam video

Selain perubahan di atas, AMD juga melakukan perubahan tampilan pada menu 3D Setting di aplikasi Catalyst Control Center mereka. Berikut link Downloadnya :

• Catalyst 13.1 WHQL WIN VISTA/7 32-bit
• Catalyst 13.1 WHQL WIN 8 32-bit
• Catalyst 13.1 WHQL WIN VISTA/7/8 64-bit
• Catalyst 13.1 WHQL WIN XP 32-bit
• Catalyst 13.1 WHQL WIN XP 64-bit