Many of you may have heard about and downloaded the AMD Catalyst™ 11.4 Preview Driver that we secretly unveiled when we launched the world’s fastest graphics card¹, the AMD Radeon™ HD 6990.  Some of you may have also heard some chatter in the forums about a driver we codenamed “Mjolnir”. But there’s something you probably haven’t heard: the AMD Catalyst™ 11.4 driver that we quietly previewed with our stellar GPU is Mjölnir I.

For those of you not as familiar with ancient mythology here is a short background on the history of Mjolnir. In ancient Norse mythology, Mjölnir was the hammer used by Thor, the god of storms.  This fearsome weapon was said to be capable of leveling mountains and pulverizing any obstacle just like we expect you to do to your gaming competition after you download this driver.

When we saw the incredible performance improvements of this driver we knew that this was not just any driver and that it was indeed special.  This driver had a secret ingredient that would make it the perfect complement to the world’s fastest graphics card, one that could take our AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 graphics series to the next level.

Now, if you take a look at the performance data below, you can see why we’re pretty excited about this driver release.  In just one short month we have been able to raise the performance of some of the top games such as Crysis Warhead by up to 37% when compared to our AMD Catalyst™ 11.3 driver.

• Up to 21% performance improvement in Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Up to 13% performance improvement in BattleForge
• Up to 13% performance improvement in Call of Duty: Black Ops
• Up to 37% performance improvement in Crysis Warhead
• Up to 20% performance improvement in Lost Planet 2
• Up to 10% performance improvement in Medal of Honor
• Up to 26% performance improvement in Civilization V

Mjölnir I not only improves performance but also enhances the user interface with the following features.

• New task based Display Management controls
  • Simplifies the configuration of displays and display settings
• New setup group for AMD Eyefinity technology
  • Setting up a group for AMD Eyefinity has never been easier
• AMD Catalyst ™ update notification (found within the Information Center)
  • This feature notifies users that new AMD Catalyst™ software packages are available

Mjölnir I demonstrates how a great driver can adapt and evolve over time.  We expect a few other versions of Mjolnir to be released throughout the year with more performance improvements so stay tuned!

So now the time has come for you to get in the action and download Mjolnir I right here!

Chris Bell is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

1 As of February 20, 2011, the AMD Radeon™ HD 6990 scores X3303 in 3DMark® 11, the highest single graphics card score achieved to date.