AMD Catalyst 11.11 WHQL Driver Suite Released

Fancy a new APP SDK to go with your Catalyst 11.11 drivers? Version 2.6 is out - AMDs developer page should be updated any minute. OpenCL 1.2 core function preview is being touted.

 

AMD Releases Catalyst 12.1 Preview – Custom Application Profiles, HD3D CrossFire, & More

 

I tried activating GPU scaling today, which would be great since my GPU is aging...
The only option I can enable however, while preserving my desktop resolution, is "scale image to full panel size"

Should I just ignore it, or is it bad?

The old "fix" with changing to lower res, choose "maintain aspect ratio", and then changing back to native res doesn't work, it just revert back to default settings

 

11.12 missing the fixes from 11.11c makes sense given the nature of the current branching and eventually re-merging system... Sad though.

Of course, due to the nature of inertia in life, even if they started right now to fix the problem, it'd be months before we saw anything from it. Takes time to re-figure out the schedule, and to implement the changes needed.

Still, I hope the recent embarrassments give AMD the kick in the butt they need to get on top 100% again. I miss the days where they were the best. Period.

 

11.12 is out, but AMD strongly recommends using the 12.1 preview driver as it's got all the 11.11c fixes.

(yes, they posted it all in red).

Thank goodness for some clear info from AMD, as I was just about to come here and post if anyone had a clue as to whether we should be using the 11.11c, 11.12, or 12.1 drivers, all of which are current (!)

 

They should just drop one of the two branches and switch to a bi-monthly schedule. Seriously, that really is enough, if they had a development relations program worth the name anyway, so that they could catch bugs exposed by new games during the game's development instead of post-release, like with Rage, Skyrim and so on...

 

Whatever they do it should fix this nonsense of version numbers that don't necessarily mean anything.

They weren't even unequivocally the best during the FX times because their OpenGL sucked back then too so their crazy technology advantage only worked for D3D.

 

Is 12.1 Preview compatible with Radeon Mobility HD 4200?

 

Apparently not:

 

I agree completely. I hope this notice (in red signals a change in direction. Like I.S.T. mentioned this isn't a change that can be implemented as fast as it ought to be, especially with the holidays, etc. but they really should be thinking of rolling only minor fixes in 12.2 ON TOP OF 12.1 and then start having a single branch from March onwards released on odd months and with out-of-band hotfixes when the need arises.

Part of the appeal of [strike]ATI's[/strike] AMD's monthly release, that they banged on quite a bit, was that every release was WHQL-certified, etc. but they've started releasing non-WHQL drivers (AGP version), then they split older (but not ancient) parts into legacy drivers released every year or so, now they have hotfixes every other month. Might as well drop the aggressive monthly schedule + WHQL cert for a bi-monthly + hotfix deployment.

End of the day, users shouldn't be confused about which driver they should be using. AMD needs to figure out the best way to achieve this goal.

 

ATI Tray Tools FTW. Personally I'd prefer if they focused their energy into educating ISVs how they can enable more settings in the game menus. This is better than anything but we now have motion controlled consoles and phones that appear more intelligent than your dog, shouldn't we be letting go of this registry-setting micro-management? It's the future damnit.

 

Old games. Can't rewrite ancient(Which by our standards would be stuff released in 2004) stuff. =\

 

So am I screwed with 11.12 until they release actually release 12.1?

 

Not necessarily. You can try editing .inf and adding your IGP as supported. I bet driver will work and install correctly.

 

I'm not quite the expert at editing .inf s. I also wouldn't know since once the program extracts it automatically runs the install.

Since I'm not interested in playing RAGE, should I just go ahead with 11.12 instead?

Edit: I noticed AMD also has a Catalyst Hotfix for 11.12. Should I download this instead?