AMD Catalyst Driver 11.6 with AMD Steady Video - first fruits from Fusion [Update: hotfixes 11.6a/b support A-Series APUs, resolve blue screens/ BSODs with HDMI/DP]

AMD has put it's Catalyst driver suite 11.6 WHQL on its way a few days ago. With the official integration of AMD Steady Video, which I've reported on earlier already, the company is starting to pick some more or less low-hanging fruits from it's Fusion-platform. Steady Video leverages the processing power of the GPU in order to remove shakiness from cheap internet video aka Youtube - more on this further down the page. This 11.6 Catalyst WHQL driver is intended for all HD-Radeons capable of DirectX 10, 10.1 or 11 as well as Fusion-APUs from the Brazos-Series (C-50, E-300, E-450) and the recently introduced Llano quadcore-APUs (A4,- A6- and A6-series).

[Update July, 9th 2011: AMD has rolled out two hotfixes for Catalyst 11.6 Radeon drivers and has made available an early preview of Catalyst 11.7 on it's Developer's website. The hotfixes add support for AMD's A-Series APUs (Hotfix 11.6a) and resolve bluescreens (BSOD) when a Radeon graphics card is connected via HDMI or Display Port instead of DVI.
The following A-Series APUs (Llano) with their integrated Radeon Graphics cores are supported in the hotifx-drivers:

• A8-3850 - AMD Radeon HD 6550D
  
• A8-3800 - AMD Radeon HD 6550D
• A6-3650 - AMD Radeon HD 6530D
  
• A6-3600 - AMD Radeon HD 6530D
  

Apparently, the 11.6b hotfix already includes the fixes from the earlier 11.6a hotfix driver. You can download the respective hotfix drivers from these AMD websites:

• Catalyst 11.6a Hotfix
  
• Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix
  
• Catalyst 11.7 Early Preview for Developers
  

Or you use the following links to the drivers:

• Catalyst 11.6a Hotfix June 30th (Windows 7, Vista, 32 & 64 Bit)
  
• Catalyst 11.6a Hotfix June 30th (Windows XP, 32 & 64 Bit)
  
• Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix July 4th (Windows 7, Vista, 32 & 64 Bit)
  
• Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix July 4th (Windows XP, 32 & 64 Bit)
  
• Catalyst 11.7 EP early preview (Windows 7, XP & Vista, 32 & 64 Bit)

[/update]
Here are the version numbers for June 2011:

• Catalyst Version 11.6
• Open GL ICD 6.14.10.10834
• Direct3D Driver 7.14.10.0841
• 2D Driver 8.01.01.1162
• Catalyst Control Center 2011.0524.2352.41207
• Packaging 8.861-110524a-119606C-ATI

The whole list of improvements is posted over at AMD's release notes website (in zipped format attached in case the URL moves). As always you can go over to AMD's official download-site or use the links below - they might work or not though:

• Catalyst 11.6 WHQL (Windows XP, 32 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.6 WHQL (Windows XP, 64 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.6 WHQL (Windows 7/Vista, 32 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.6 WHQL (Windows 7/Vista, 64 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.6 WHQL Application Profiles Cap1 (all OS)

AMD Steady Video
As has been leaked through in the first version of Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix drivers, AMD was going to introduce a new function to the video section of the Catalyst Control Center called AMD Steady Video. With Catalyst 11.6 the feature has become available - under certain conditions. First, it is available in Adobe Flash Player, Windows Media Player, Cyberlinks PowerDVD, Corels WinDVD and Arcsofts Total Media Theatre only - granted, those are the most important and presumably widespread players to date, so their choice makes sense. But there's more.

As you might have noticed, the screenshot comes from one of my earlier articles where I discussed the feature for Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix and while it has moved into the official realm of the video section now, there are additional requirements. You need to have special hardware in order to enjoy it and even though it is based on AMDs APP Technology and thus should follow open standards like Open CL, you need one of the following combinations of AMD CPU- and GPU-technology:

• AMD Radeon HD 6000 on an AMD-CPU
• AMD E-300/E-450 APU (Brazos)
• AMD A4-, A6- or A8-Series APU (Llano)

In addition to my HD 5870 and an AMD Opteron 165, I only have a borrowed AMD C-50 APU (Brazos) at my disposal right now. So, despite having quite a lot of AMD products, I cannot tell you any more about the functionality besides what AMDs talks about in their release notes: Steady Videos supposedly applies advanced algorithms „behind the scenes” so that users won't have to deal with shaky video ever again. In a non-public document, AMD also talks about how the tasks are divided in the APU between the GPU and the CPU part. It begins with decoding the video which takes place in a dedicated hardware block (presumably the UVD). Then a motion search is performaned where GPU and CPU inside the APU work together using the GPUs massive parallelism and instructions like „Sum of absolute differences” (SAD) and the CPUs „intelligence”. The next part, statistics, takes place purely on the CPU because of the more complex code required and a faster deployment time for AMD in order to integrate it into the catalyst earlier. The last step is done on the GPU again and is called „Warp and Fuse”. Here, all the pixels are being manipulated for each frame and this of course requires the massively parallel GPU-portion inside the APU.

I tried to make AMD Steady Video work with the following modifications to the installers' INF-file but to no avail.


Background and useful links regarding AMD Catalyst drivers

1. AMD App SDK 2.4
If you are into open standards as AMD is, you should try installing the AMD App SDK 2.4 formerly known as Ati Stream SDK. OpenCL 1.1 conformance is assured by AMD for basically all DirectX 11 conformant Radeons, meaning from the HD 5400 series up to the HD 6900 series with the exception of HD 6700 series which includes some renamed Juniper-based SKUs as well as the Barts salvage part HD 6790. Also - and quite curiously - the HD 6990, which with it's two-GPU-power of over 5 TFLOPS would be quite a nice computing device, is not supported as of the list posted on April 16th 2011 and additionally, HD 5970 is only supported in single-GPU mode.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 2.4 is true as well for the corresponding FirePro and Radeon Mobility variants. Since version 2.3 AMD is supporting their Fusion-APUs C- and E-series in OpenCL as well as the Radeon HD 6900 based on the 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.

• AMD APP SDK 2.4 Windows 7/Vista x86
• AMD APP SDK 2.4 Windows 7/Vista x64
• AMD APP SDK 2.4 Linux x86 (openSUSE 11.3, Ubuntu 10.04/9.10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5/5.4)
• AMD APP SDK 2.4 Linux x64 (openSUSE 11.3, Ubuntu 10.04/9.10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5/5.4)

Please note, that as of this driver release, AMD has yet to unlock the use of their 64 kiB on-chip Global Memory for inter-SIMD communication with a separate OpenCL extension in order to unleash the full potential of their GPUs. GPU-Computing programmers will have to take this limitation into account for their work.As you may have noticed, separate versions for Windows XP are no longer offered. A footnote on AMDs developer website indicates that XP support is still included in the 32 and 64 Bit installers respectively; but that surely is a hint of a soon-to-be-announced discontinuance for Windows XP support in the APP SDK.

2. Archived Drivers
For the bug-ridden of you who might need to roll back to earlier Catalyst versions AMD has support pages up and running with archived Catalyst drivers from version 8.10 (yes, October 2010 that is) untill the most recently relieved ones.

• Archived Catalyst Drivers for Vista/7 x86 (8.10 - 11.5)
• Archived Catalyst Drivers for Vista/7 x64 (8.10 - 11.5)
• Archived Catalyst Drivers for XP x86 (8.10 - 11.5)
• Archived Catalyst Drivers for XP x64 (8.10 - 11.5)

3. 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…).

• Catalyst 11.6 AGP-Hotfix (Windows XP x86)
• Catalyst 11.6 AGP-Hotfix (Windows XP x64)
• Catalyst 11.6 AGP-Hotfix (Windows 7/Vista x86)
• Catalyst 11.6 AGP-Hotfix (Windows 7/Vista x64)

4. 10.2 Legacy Driver for Radeon 9500/9700 series to X1950 seriesFor all you brave souls hanging onto your trusty Radeon 9x00, X300, X550, X600, X700, X8x0, X1K, X2100 and Radeon Xpress integrated graphics, there's little 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 functionalityAnd 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 6990/6970/6950 (Cayman based):
Radeon HD 6870/6850/6790 (Barts based):Radeon HD 6770/6750 (Juniper based, renamed for OEM usage): Radeon HD 6670/6650 (Turks based):Radeon HD 6450 (Caicos based):Radeon HD 5970 (Cypress based):Radeon HD 5870/5850/5830 (Cypress based):Radeon HD 5770/5750 (Juniper based): Radeon HD 5670/5650/5570 (Redwood based):Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar based): Radeon HD 4890/4870/4850/4830/4730 (RV770/790 based):Radeon HD 4770 (RV740 based):Radeon HD 4670/4650 (RV730 based):Radeon HD 4550/4350 (RV710 based):Radeon HD 3870/3850 (RV670 based):Radeon HD 3650 (RV635 based):Radeon HD 3470/3450 (RV615 based):Radeon HD 2900 XT/Pro/GT/OEM (R600 based):Radeon HD 2600 XT/Pro (RV630 based):Radeon HD 2400 XT/Pro (RV610 based):