GPU-Tech.org - Radeon drivers make their official 2011 debut with Catalyst 11.1 for all DX10/11 Radeon cards

AMDs Catalyst software and driver suite has just been released in it's first 2011 incarnation called Catalyst 11.1. While there has been a hotfix driver available for some days (and still is), which brings new controls for tessellation levels and also revamps the texture filtering slider, which I have talked about already, these things are planned for official introduction in Catalyst 11.2 due sometime in february. The official WHQL'ed Catalyst 11.1 however does not incorporate these two things, but packs the new Catalyst Control Center for the first time officially. It's style seems more modern and it's usability is quite good. The version numbering for the different parts of the official Catalyst 11.1 driver package looks like this.

Catalyst Version 11.1
Open GL ICD 6.14.10.10428
Direct3D Driver 7.14.10.0806 (sic)
Direct2D Driver 8.01.01.1114
Catalyst Control Center 2011.0104.2155.39304
Packaging 8.812-110104a-111988C-ATI

There's not an amazing amount of performance improvements, the majority of work seems to be devoted to the integration of the new CCC and the inclusion of the Cayman-based HD 6900 cards into the WHQL cycle drivers. The whole list of improvements is posted over at AMDs Release Notes website and here's a small excerpt:

F1 2010:
• Performance increases up to 12% on AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 and AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.
• Performance increases up to 10% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.

Left 4 Dead 2:
• Performance increases up to 17% on AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 Series single and Crossfire configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.
• Performance increases up to 8% on AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 Series single configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.

This time around, three out of four improvements are focused on single card configurations which in my opinion is the way to go, considering the percent-wise distribution of users with one and two or more GPUs powering their gaming experience.

Catalyst 11.1 WHQL 3D options on HD 5870

The new and improved Catalyst Control Center is only available for Windows Vista (updates required: .NET Framework 3.51) and Windows 7, as was the case with last months' preview. If you happen to like morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) also on your HD 5800, then you have to stick to the 11.1a hotfix update. As always you can go over to AMDs official download-site or use the links below - they might work or not though:

Background and useful links regarding AMD Catalyst driver
If you are into open standards as AMD is, you should try installing the Ati Stream SDK 2.3. Beta support for OpenCL 1.0 is available for Radeon HD 4890, 4870 X2, 4870, 4850 X2, 4850, 4830, 4770, 4670, 4650, 4550, 4350. The general support in the Stream SDK 2.3 is true as well for the corresponding FirePro and Radeon Mobility variants. With version 2.3, AMD is supporting their upcoming Fusion-APUs C- and E-series in OpenCL as well as the Radeon HD 6900 based on the new Cayman chip, double precision calculations are still limited to the CPU as I only get a „not supported” message when trying to run them on my HD 5870.

Ati Stream SDK 2.3 Windows XP x86
Ati Stream SDK 2.3 Windows XP x64
Ati Stream SDK 2.3 Windows 7/Vista x86
Ati Stream SDK 2.3 Windows 7/Vista x64
Ati Stream SDK 2.3 Linux x86 (openSUSE 11.3, Ubuntu 10.04/9.10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5/5.4)
Ati Stream SDK 2.3 Linux x64 (openSUSE 11.3, Ubuntu 10.04/9.10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5/5.4)

For all you part-time historians and archivars, AMD keeps their old drivers for quite a while at their site.

Radeon with AGP interface - Hotfix awaits
Also, there's the special page for the now inofficial AGP-versions of the drivers. God knows why they're not worthy of a WHQL-sign any more (my guess it's cost-related…). Anyway, here they are:

Legacy Driver for Radeon 9500/9700 series to X1950 series - no change, still at 10.2
For all you brave souls hanging onto your trusty Radeon 9x00, X300, X550, X600, X700, X8x0, X1K, X2100 and Radeon Xpress Integrated Graphics, there's hope. Sometimes, when the stars' constellations are aligned just right, a new driver for the officially no longer supported graphics chipsets is spawning at the following sites:

• Catalyst Legacy-Drivers for X1K and older cards for Vista/7 x86 (currently: 10.2)
• Catalyst Legacy-Drivers for X1K and older cards for Vista/7 x64 (currently: 10.2)
• Catalyst Legacy-Drivers for X1K and older cards for XP x86 (currently: 10.2)
• Catalyst Legacy-Drivers for X1K and older cards for XP x64 (currently: 10.2)

Overview about supported standards and functionality
And now for the „GPU-Tech.org added value”, I am promising to deliver. Here's the supported standards and tech for most of the recent desktop Radeon cards - something that's not very well documented on the web, not to speak of being crammed into one single place.

Radeon HD 6970/6950 (Cayman based):

• DirectX 11 (Compute Shader 5.0, 4.1, 4.0) and lower,
• OpenGL 4.1
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.1 (OpenCL Codename Cormorant)
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• Double Precision (at 1/4th speed), FMA (at full speed), triangle-setup at double speed

Radeon HD 6870/6850 (Barts based):

• DirectX 11 (Compute Shader 5.0, 4.1, 4.0) and lower,
• OpenGL 4.1
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.1 (OpenCL-codename Buzzard)
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• FMA (at 4/5th speed), triangle-setup at full speed

Radeon HD 5970 (Cypress based):

• DirectX 11 (Compute Shader 5.0, 4.1, 4.0) and lower,
• OpenGL 4.1
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.1 (single-gpu mode only)
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• Double Precision (at 1/5th speed), FMA (at 4/5th speed), triangle-setup at full speed

Radeon HD 5870/5850/5830 (Cypress based):

• DirectX 11 (Compute Shader 5.0, 4.1, 4.0) and lower,
• OpenGL 4.1
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.1
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• Double Precision (at 1/5th speed), FMA (at 4/5th speed), triangle-setup at full speed

Radeon HD 5770/5750 (Juniper based):

• DirectX 11 (Compute Shader 5.0, 4.1, 4.0) and lower,
• OpenGL 4.1
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.1
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• FMA (at 4/5th speed), triangle-setup at full speed

Radeon HD 5670/5650/5570 (Redwood based):

Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar based):

Radeon HD 4890/4870/4850/4830/4730 (RV770/790 based):

• DirectX 10.1 (Compute Shader 4.1, 4.0) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.0
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• Double Precision (at 1/5th speed)

Radeon HD 4770 (RV740 based):

Radeon HD 4670/4650 (RV730 based):

• DirectX 10.1 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.0
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

Radeon HD 4550/4350 (RV710 based):

• DirectX 10.1 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• OpenCL 1.0
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

Radeon HD 3870/3850 (RV670 based):

• DirectX 10.1 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• no OpenCL
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)
• Double Precision (at 1/5th speed)

Radeon HD 3650 (RV635 based):

• DirectX 10.1 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• no OpenCL
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

Radeon HD 3470/3450 (RV615 based):

• DirectX 10.1 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• no OpenCL
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

Radeon HD 2900 XT/Pro/GT/OEM (R600 based):

• DirectX 10 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• no OpenCL
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

Radeon HD 2600 XT/Pro (RV630 based):

• DirectX 10 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• no OpenCL
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

Radeon HD 2400 XT/Pro (RV610 based):

• DirectX 10 (no Compute Shader though) and lower,
• OpenGL 3.2
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• no OpenCL
• Ati Stream (now called AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, short APP)

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Radeon drivers make their official 2011 debut with Catalyst 11.1 WHQL for all DX10/11 Radeon cards

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