General Processing Units and Technology

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.

Just days before the actual release, the man in charge for Catalyst software at AMD announced the 10.12 version of AMDs Radeon drivers as being „huge”. And he didn't exxagerate. AMD has refurbished their Catalyst Control Center and re-done not only the looks of it - but it's still in a kind of advanced beta. Consequently, there's only an optional download including this new control panel. And it is huge. Around 110 Megabytes in fact, but they're for 32 and 64 Bit editions of Windows 7 and Vista respectively. Also, there's support for GPU acceleration in the latest version of Divx - but only for HD 6000 series and probably other AMD processors utilizing the UVD3 video processor.

AMD have released the november issue of their Catalyst Driver suite or rather the eleventh iteration this year, named Catalyst 10.11 accordingly. Great change has come with this driver as it is the first official WHQL driver for Radeon cards to bear the AMD signature. As a result of those tremendous changes, you'll see some new logos and artwork when installing the driver - that's perfectly normal, so do not be afraid, you're still keeping the same card you love so dearly.