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Good news for Radeon owners: AMD's latest WHQL-certified Catalyst driver (13.1) has finally materialized. After an unusually long wait -- no doubt thanks in part to AMD's recent "dynamic release" policy -- 13.1 contains all the improvements 12.11 beta made in October, but adds further bug fixes, enhancements and refinements.
Download AMD's Catalyst 13.1 (WHQL)
Note: All packages work with both desktop and mobile GPUs
- Windows XP 32-bit | 64-bit
- Windows Vista 32-bit | 64-bit
- Windows 7 32-bit | 64-bit
- Windows 8 32-bit | 64-bit
- Linux 32-bit | 64-bit
- Catalyst 13.1 release notes
AMD is touting some definite performance gains with Catalyst 13.1, at least when compared to 12.10 (the last official WHQL release). Noteworthy improvements for HD 7000-series desktop GPUs include a supposed 10-15 percent boost in Battlefield (up to 20 percent for certain maps) and an "up to 25" percent bump in Far Cry 3 with 8xMSAA and SSAO enabled @ 1600p.
Here are some other highlights:
- Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
- Up to 10% more performance in DiRT Showdown
- Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
- Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
- Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
- Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2
- Up to 5% more performance in Max Payne 3
Catalyst 13.1 also delivers fantastic news for owners of gaming laptop stuffed with Radeon HD 7970M GPUs and Enduro-based switchable graphics (e.g. some Alienware M17, MSI GX60 owners). After resolving issues discovered in previous drivers, gamers may see gains as big as 40, 50 -- even 90 percent -- for some titles. Examples include: AvP (11%), Battlefield 3 (25%), Call of Duty (13%), DiRT Showdown (62%), Just Cause 2 (90%), StarCraft 2 (25%) and Skyrim (45%).
In addition to performance improvements, 13.1 brings various bug fixes and tweaks to Windows 7, Windows 8 and certain desktop software.
- A sporadic system hang encountered with a single AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series GPU seen on X58 and X79 chipsets.
- An intermittent hang encountered with AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs in an AMD CrossFire + Eyefinity setup.
- Missing fonts in XBMC
- No video found in Media Player Classic Home Cinema when using full or half floating point processing
- Skyrim lighting (missing a lighting pass) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
- Skyrim cloud corruption experience in various in game locations
- A hang playing Dishonored on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
- Engine and memory clocks running too high when the GPU is idle.
- GPU activity runs at lower values than expected seen on the AMD Radeon HD 7870.
- Corruption seen in Darkness 2 and Carrier Command when using AMD CrossFire configurations
- Adobe Premier Pro CS6 may fail to launch
- Hang experienced with AMD Crossfire and Eyefinity enabled on X58 and X78 chipsets
- Corel PaintShop Pro X3 – Hangs at the "Initializing Command Manager" window
- Company of Heroes 2 – display corruption experienced when AA is enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center
- Cyberlink Powerdirector 10 crashes intermittently.
- Company of Heroes : Tales of Valor – Flickering experienced when AA is disabled
- Max Payne 3 – Flickering experienced in DirectX 9 mode with forced AA enabled
- Cyberlink PoweDVD 10 – crashes intermittently
- VLC - Green texture corruption seen in 720p MPEG2 video clips
- Black screen encountered when "Alternate DVI mode" is enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center
- Green display corruption seen in Skype webcam video
The list of known issues is a short one, indicating Sleeping Dogs may fail to launch under certain configurations. The second notice is for Shogun 2: Total War owners, who may experience flickering while playing the game with "medium quality" settings. Happy gaming. Finally, to give you a fresh start Advanced Micro Devices introduced the AMD Catalyst Un-install Utility to remove previous versions of their drivers.
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User Comments: 20
Got something to say? Post a comment-
This driver practically makes the 7770-7850 more perfect for mid range budget people which want to play good games at 1080p on exp battlefield 3 which can already be maxed on some maps
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Does this update solves the microstuttering issue detected on some games like Skyrim?
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Does this update solves the microstuttering issue detected on some games like Skyrim?
Skyrim lighting (missing a lighting pass) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Skyrim cloud corruption experience in various in game locations
these were the skyrim patches though download the driver still u may never know
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psycros said:
I hope Catalyst actually appears on the start menu now.
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1 person liked this |JC713 said:
The awkward moment when you go through the whole clean uninstall procedure (very long) and you notice they made a uninstall tool after you are done. lol
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Blkfx1 said:
Finally! A driver that successfully fixed my Metro2033 problems. This has to be the first time I've actually had anything good happen for me after installing a new graphics driver lmao.
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Great uninstall tool! Everything goes smooth and quickly on Win7 64bits.
Also a good thing is that the drivers releases are coming just when new things are added, not every month.
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Reiz3rx said:
This update is working fine,to solve stutter I lock my games to 50fps with MSI on-screen display server
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Puiu said:
" AvP (11%), Battlefield 3 (25%), Call of Duty (13%), DiRT Showdown (62%), Just Cause 2 (90%), StarCraft 2 (25%) and Skyrim (45%)."
... what in the hell did they do to get those numbers? it's like they released a new generation of video cards. were the drivers before this that bad? ^_^
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Darth Shiv said:
@Puiu hmm yes agreed... doesn't sound like they were too performance oriented before.
Good news that the driver update finally out tho for desktop
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JC713 said:
I went from 45 fps in blop2 to 35 fps.... amd fail
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dcnc123 said:
Yeah... time to upgrade
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I'm curious how the AMD uninstaller compares to Driver Fusion (Formerly Driver Sweeper) when updating Radeon drivers and clearing enough of the Radeon leftovers out for a clean GeForce driver install...
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TS-56336 said:
Already installed. I got a new graphics card as well, worth the upgrade.
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Puiu said:I went from 45 fps in blop2 to 35 fps.... amd fail
try making a new thread in the forum. maybe you can figure out why the sudden drop in frame rate. maybe it's a settings problem in the game or in the catalyst.
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I'm running dual monitors on a 5830. I often get screen tearing when scrolling a webpage and also anytime a Flash video begins to play (and also when I leave the page with the video or close the tab) both screens have a 'glitch' real breifly. Hopefully this fixes it, but I really doubt it. This is my first AMD/ATi video card since a Radeon 9600XT and I am not impressed with it, never had tearing or flash issues with my 8800GTS.
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JC713 said:try making a new thread in the forum. maybe you can figure out why the sudden drop in frame rate. maybe it's a settings problem in the game or in the catalyst.
I restored factory defaults and something changed. I uninstalled the 12.8 driver and installed 13.1... I got bad frame drops in BF3. I tried the uninstall tool--worked great. I installed 13.1 again, frame drops in BO2. I guess I am gonna stick with BF3 for now.
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I'm running dual monitors on a 5830. I often get screen tearing when scrolling a webpage and also anytime a Flash video begins to play (and also when I leave the page with the video or close the tab) both screens have a 'glitch' real breifly. Hopefully this fixes it, but I really doubt it. This is my first AMD/ATi video card since a Radeon 9600XT and I am not impressed with it, never had tearing or flash issues with my 8800GTS.
So far so good (hope I don't jinx myself by saying this), screen tearing and screen glitches starting and closing flash video seem to be gone with this update! I did run the uninstall utility, reboot, then install the new driver.
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Puiu said:I restored factory defaults and something changed. I uninstalled the 12.8 driver and installed 13.1... I got bad frame drops in BF3. I tried the uninstall tool--worked great. I installed 13.1 again, frame drops in BO2. I guess I am gonna stick with BF3 for now.
I guess you're out of luck then. Wait for 13.2 which has some nice changes in it.
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JC713 said:I guess you're out of luck then. Wait for 13.2 which has some nice changes in it.
Anything for cards other than the 7000 series. This is what I hate about AMD, they abandon us while nVidia is still optimizing old cards.
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