ATI Catalyst 8.12 Beta Released, ATI Stream Now Available

ATI Catalyst 8.12 Beta Released, ATI Stream Now Available
It's already December, time for a new ATI Catalyst 8.12 driver. It's still a little bit early for the final driver release though, but a Beta version is already available, and now we know some inside information of what this driver will bring very soon. Here's a little sneak preview, with Catalyst 8.12 ATI will land its Stream support for Radeon video cards. The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now included in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream. Catalyst 8.12 is also said to bring Stream technology to ATI Avivo Video Converter, for enhanced video transcoding. For good or for bad, only ATI Radeon HD 4800 and Radeon HD 4600 series support this tool. At last, Catalyst 8.12 comes with many game performance improvements (read more below). Here's the link to the Catalyst 8.12 Beta version, the final release is coming soon. We'll inform you when it is available.

ATI Stream support:
With the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for millions of ATI Radeon graphics processors worldwide
ATI Stream harnesses the tremendous processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for high-performance, data-intensive computations over a wide range of scientific, business and consumer applications.
ATI Stream enables the hundreds of parallel cores inside AMD graphics processors to accelerate general purpose applications. These capabilities will allow ATI Stream-enabled programs, for a variety of different tasks and from a growing number of software vendors, to operate with optimized performance or with new functionality.
The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now include in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream


ATI Stream application: ATI Avivo Video Converter:
Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in Catalyst Control Center Basic View) to achieve incredible performance levels in video transcoding.
ATI Catalyst Control Center - Noise reduction for progressive video content:

This release of Catalyst introduces a new advanced video quality control: Noise Reduction for progressive video content, which removes ghosting artifacts while preserving details of the original video. The slider control can be found in the All Settings page of the Avivo Video tab found in the Catalyst Control Center.

Performance improvements:
Catalyst 8.12 Preliminary Performance Notes
Crysis + 2-7%
Crysis Warhead + 2-3%
Devil May Cry 4 + 1-6%
Far Cry 2
+ noAA scores are fixed for Crossfire configs; this is worth +20% on slower cards, and as much as 70% on faster ones
+ 5-10% gains when AA is enabled
FEAR + 2-6%
Left 4 Dead + 2-4%
Lost Planet Colonies + 3-10%, mostly in Area 2
Prey + 2-5%
STALKER Clear Sky + 5-10%, primarily on Crossfire configurations


http://www.techpowerup.com/77908/ATI_Catalyst_8.12_Beta_Released_ATI_Stream_Now_Available.html

 

once again mike, desktop cards. /facepalm

 

You have a great sense of humor

 

Dude the 3780HD Drivers comes from the Desktop Drivers then use the Mod.

so to you /facepalm

 

a mod has to be made for them so it takes a while and besides those are just beta



/fail

 

Duhh but am just announcing it am not saying it works for the M17

 

Are we sure the Mobility Modder won't work? I'm bored, so I'll give it a shot.

 

Worked just fine for me with the Mobilty Modder.

 

Jelly just got pwned and banned.

 

Good, he got banned.

Is there a way we can get vBulletin to make all of his sentences start with capital letter?

 

Lol

On a serious note, anyone has enough free time to make some new benchmarks to see if these new drivers are really as good as they said ?

People in the url of the OP saying that they have seen a nice boost from these drivers. Cant wait for the final release (and something to install them on!)

 

I think mobility modder is not good modded program. The code of gpu in mobility modder's inf show your gpu is 3870x2 but OCZ (M17) gpu is 3870 in crossfire mode. If you use mobility modder to mod, you also got the scaling problem.

 

It bumped my 3DMark'06 score up ~50 points. I haven't tried Crysis, but when you're talking single digit percentages on the fps, that's only ~1 fps. Still, any improvement is a step in the right direction, especially for ATI.

Can I ask another question? Why is everyone so worried about how the laptop labels the GPU's? I couldn't care less if it says I have 7950GTX SLI, as long as my performance is up to par.

 

Some people like to see perfection everywhere

 

Oh, well, I can see where you're coming from there.

When zephyr was talking about a 'scaling' problem, is that where the game exits full screen and pops down to the taskbar, as if you had pushed the Windows button? Or is it talking about games running at other than native resolution having the black bars on the top and bottom? I am having an issue with games exiting down to the taskbar, and it's getting really old, especially in games like Crysis and Fallout 3 that take forever to reload the engine. Before I post a new thread, is this what he's talking about, and is there a fix?

 

Didnt hear from anyone else having problems like those. Are you sure you dont have anything running in the background that can cause that ?

 

I'm not sure why this thread slipped to 2nd page.. These drivers are the biggest news since the OCZ/M17 release. This driver has fixed all FC2 problems, and I am about to run some other benches as well to see the results. Here's a quick heads up.

Both runs are @ native 1920.1200 - All settings Ultra - No AA.

FarCry2 8.11 Cat Package w/ modded inf


FC2 8.12-Beta Cat Package



I don't think most of you M17 owners know me..however in the OCZ forum here on NBR I have been preaching about these drivers for quite some time. The previous drivers didn't maximize the crossfire, or the stream processors with this setup. (side note, OCZ whitebook is the M17) Obviously, the system is now running in crossfire, as the FPS have doubled!

These drivers are absolutely crucial for maximum performance with the M17, and I personally am looking forward to the 10th. Hopefully the mobility(should be) cards will be supported without using the MobMod tool. Anyhow, just wanted to say.. Upgrade if you have the chance!

 

What did you use to mod it modder.net?

 

To mod the 8.12? Mobility Modder.. from http://www.driverheavendownloads.net

I modded 8.11 myself to fix the non-scaling issues. Gonna mod the 8.12 next to fix em.

 

Could you let me know when you mod the scaling or instructions how to do it.

 

Absolutely.. may take me an hour or so..but I'll post when completed.

 

Thank You

 

when is the final driver going to be released?

 

Think tomorrow (10th)

 

awesome!
someone please say something when they get it..

 

i got a 200 point (3dmark06) increase over 8.11

 

if you run your game at non native resolution you will get scaling problem.

 

I'm eagerly waiting for the inf modding tutorial, I want the scaling issue gone on my hd3650.

 

I managed to get rid of the scaling issue with the mod to the 8.12 .inf Im runnin..

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure how I did it. But, the only draw back is you don't have all resolutions available. 1900x1200, 1900x1280, 1600x1200, 1400x1050, 1280x1024, 800x600, 720x480.. I was gonna mod the .inf, but waiting on this final release to see if it's necessary. If it doesn't allow for mobility cards and fuqs up scaling I'll make sure to publicize the scaling fix in the main thread of AW and OCZ. Just download the .inf and install type of deal.

 

Great good to see that out of the way too

And try to remember how you did it since you will have to re-edit the new .ini