AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL Software Suite Released

AMD released a timely update to its Catalyst software suite, the package that provides display drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD chipset video, APUs, HDMI audio, and related software. The AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL release itself packs very little changes. At least the communication sent to us by AMD only mentioned one significant change: that the Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) OpenCL runtime is enabled by default within Catalyst.

Other than that, AMD advertised its next Catalyst release, which is now just a "Preview" driver (not WHQL-signed, use isn't covered under warranties). The Catalyst 11.4 Preview comes with a much larger changelog, which is listed below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit
Changelog of Catalyst 11.4 Preview

• A number of performance optimizations, as highlighted here.
• Performance enhancement for Shogun 2 (DX11 version) when running Anti-Aliasing
• Includes enhancements to the AMD Catalyst Control Center
o New task based Display Management controls
- Simplifies the configuration of displays and display settings
o New Eyefinity setup group
- Setting up an Eyefinity group has never been easier
o New branding (based on system configuration)
- AMD based platform – AMD VISION Engine Control Center
- Discrete AMD GPU with Intel CPU – AMD Catalyst Control Center™
o AMD Catalyst update notification (found within the Information Center)
- Please note this functionality is not yet enabled, but will be in a future AMD Catalyst release
- This feature will be used to notify users that new AMD Catalyst software packages are available

• Includes fixes where Dragon Age 2 would hang in DirectX11 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series products.
• Includes fixes where MediaEspresso 6.5 and 6.0 may crash while initializing
• Includes a fix for game corruption issues in BulletStorm
• Includes a fix for the AMD Catalyst Control Center install; resolves the issue of not being able to launch CCC after Catalyst has finished installing
• Includes a fix for the Tessellation slider sometimes setting the incorrect value

AMD Catalyst 11.4 Preview can be downloaded from here.