Catalyst 11.10 WHQL - First official Battlefield 3 driver for Radeon graphics cards, 11.9 CAP4 still recommended (Updated)

Catalyst 11.10 WHQL is finally available and it is the first official driver release for Radeon graphics cards after the final version of this years' most anticipated game, Battlefield 3, came out. Strangely enough, Battlefield 3 is nowhere mentioned throughout the release notes, which you can review for yourself here or use the attached version below (Updated, see below!). AMDs Andrew Dodd, going by the name of CatalystCreator in the microblogging service twitter, recommends to use Catalyst 11.9 CAP4 after installing Catalyst 11.10 WHQL. Catalyst Application Profiles or CAP for short, are linked below as well. He goes on to say, that Catalyst 11.10 WHQL contains the same fixes as are present in the earlier Catalyst 11.10 Preview v3 drivers.




Official Catalyst 11.10 WQHL
As of this writing AMD's official download-site has not been updated with the new Catalyst driver version but that can only be a matter of minutes now. However, they continue to offer running an auto detect program in order to determine the downloads most suitable for you. This auto detection tool is about 268 kB in size and is available here. For those of you preferring to make your own choices, you can go to AMDs other official site (this one's been updated) or use these links to the Catalyst 11.10 WHQL driver files.

• Catalyst 11.10 WHQL (Windows XP, 32 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.10 WHQL (Windows XP, 64 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.10 WHQL (Windows 7/Vista, 32 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.10 WHQL (Windows 7/Vista, 64 Bit)
• Catalyst 11.9 (!) WHQL Application Profiles Cap4 (all OS)

Note for Windows 7 users: Since Catalyst 11.9, AMD requires as per release notes an installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 officially in order for the Catalyst drivers to work. The release notes for Catalyst 11.8 did not mention it.

Here are the version numbers for AMDs Catalyst 11.10 WHQL, indicating that the driver has been put together on october 12th. AMDs developer site has a driver out already that supports OpenGL 4.2 but the official 11.10 WHQL, as the drivers before it, still remains at OpenGL 4.1. The OpenGL 4.2 extension are all reporting basically nothing yet.

• Catalyst Version 11.10
• Open GL ICD 6.14.10.11161
• Direct3D Driver 7.14.10.0867
• 2D Driver 8.01.01.1199
• OpenCL Driver 775.2
• CAL-Driver 1.4.1589 (VM)
• Catalyst Control Center 2011.1012.1625.27603
• Packaging 8.902-111012am-127455C-ATI

The release notes for the official Catalyst 11.10 WHQL mention mostly feature improvements for Eyefinity users (they can now create up to 16.000 x 16.000 resolutions) and usability improvements for GPU Overdrive and Software Information inside the Catalyst/Vision Engine Control Center.
The list of fixed bugs under Windows 7 include:
Update: After publishing time, AMD snuck in the following additions to the release notes. Somehow, it's got to pay using a website rather than a PDF file. Note how it's still referring to Battlefield 3 Open Beta, heh.

• Improves performance in Battlefield 3 Open Beta release for both non-Anti-Aliasing and application enabled Anti-Aliasing cases on single GPU configurations using the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 series of products.
• Improves performance in Battlefield 3 Open Beta release for both non-Anti-Aliasing and application enabled Anti-Aliasing cases on AMD CrossFire™ configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 series of products.
• Reduces stuttering seen on Dual CPU and Tri CPU core systems.
• Rage - users may experience random texture corruption. Please use the AMD Catalyst 11.10 V3 Preview if you are experiencing these issues.

Funny note: The section regarding Windows XP also mentions that last one - I've never seen Aero in XP though. The whole list of improvements is posted over at AMD's release notes website (in zipped format attached in case the URL moves). A little less funny are the shortcomings especially for multi-GPU or multi-monitor users. Dropped performance in Unigine Heaven DX11 with AMDs APU-dual graphics setup has been fixed in Catalyst 11.10 WHQL, but other issues persevere.

Background and useful links regarding AMD Catalyst drivers

1. AMD App SDK 2.5
If you are into open standards as AMD is, you should try installing the AMD App SDK 2.5 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 August 3rd 2011 but finally, HD 5970 is supported in Dual-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 2.5 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. Starting with App SDK 2.5, double precision calculations are finally supported via cl_khr_fp64 extension - as of August 3rd 2011 for Cypress-based GPUs only.

As of this writing, the most recent version of AMDs APP SDK still is the previously released version 2.5.

• AMD APP SDK 2.5 Windows 7/Vista x86
• AMD APP SDK 2.5 Windows 7/Vista x64
• AMD APP SDK 2.5 Linux x86 (openSUSE 11.x, Ubuntu 11.04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x)
• AMD APP SDK 2.5 Linux x64 (openSUSE 11.x, Ubuntu 11.04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x)

The installed applications and tools include the APP profiler in version 2.3 and the Kernel Analyzer, which has just been updated to version 1.9. The release notes can be found as PDF on AMDs site; a blog entry from AMD highlights some more points of this APP-SDK release 2.5:

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 and the footnote on AMDs developer website that indicated XP support still being included in the 32 and 64 Bit installers respectively has disappeared. That seems to complete the discontinuance for Windows XP support in the APP SDK.Please note that the requirements for Linux versions have change also. For Ubuntu and Redhat you need versions 11.04 and 6.x respectively.

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. As of this writing, the most recent listed catalyst version there is 11.8, but 11.9 will be up soon I think.

• Archived Catalyst Drivers for Vista/7 x86 (8.10 - 11.9)
• Archived Catalyst Drivers for Vista/7 x64 (8.10 - 11.9)
• Archived Catalyst Drivers for XP x86 (8.10 - 11.9)
• Archived Catalyst Drivers for XP x64 (8.10 - 11.9)

3. Radeon HD series with AGP interface - Hotfix awaits
Also, there's the special page for the AGP-versions of the drivers.

• Catalyst 11.10 AGP-Hotfix (Windows XP x86)
• Catalyst 11.10 AGP-Hotfix (Windows XP x64)
• Catalyst 11.10 AGP-Hotfix (Windows 7/Vista x86)
• Catalyst 11.10 AGP-Hotfix (Windows 7/Vista x64)

4. 10.2 Legacy Driver for Radeon 9500/9700 series to X1950 series
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 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 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. Over the course of the next few days, I will try and rework this into a more reader friendly form - bear with me, if you see broken formatting inbetween.