Catalyst 12.4 brings anti-aliasing improvements, XP support for HD 7000

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Like clockwork, AMD has unleashed its monthly driver update for Radeon owners, bringing new features and the obligatory list of bug fixes. Among the more notable additions is support for the Radeon HD 7000 series on Windows XP -- something missing in previous versions. AMD also promises various image quality enhancements when using super sampling anti-aliasing, morphological anti-aliasing and texture filtering in certain situations:

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing: Level of Detail (LOD) Image Quality Enhancements

• Supported on the Radeon HD 7000 series.
• LOD Image quality enhancements have been improved when enabling super sample anti-aliasing and adaptive anti-aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center for DX10 and DX11 applications.
• Applications must support in game anti-aliasing for the feature to work (forced AA through the CCC is not supported for DX10 and DX11 applications).

Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA): Significant Performance Enhancements

• Supported on the Radeon HD 7000, 6000 and 5000 series.
• MLAA now operates up to 80% faster than previous versions.

Texture Filtering Quality Improvements

• Supported on the Radeon HD 7000 series.
• Improvements have been made to the texture filtering algorithm (for DX9, DX10 and DX11 applications) to increase the quality of rendered textures, with no impact to performance.

Bug fixes are aplenty, with around a dozen mentioned for Windows 7 alone. Skyrim no longer hangs on single GPU machines with Catalyst 12.3 CAP1 and later CAP release, nor should you experience flickering square corruption anymore. VSync is no longer disabled in Rage after task switching, duplicating displays no longer produces random corruption, and tearing should be cleared up when using a third screen in 3x1 and 1x3 Eyefinity setups.

Download Catalyst 12.4 WHQL (release notes)
Desktop: Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Mobile: Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/48346-catalyst-124-brings-anti-aliasing-improvements-xp-support-for-hd-7000.html

 

[Guest]

2nd clock stuck in 3d mode idling at desktop on boot still broken in 12.4 whql same as 12.3 whql on certain multiple gpu setups, 2 months+ and counting for a fix, it's gonna slow roast the video cards.

 

[Guest]

so much to do and they end support for hd 4000( especially for win8).

 

[sapo joe]

And then AMD kills support for AMD 4000 series cards... SAD NEWS...

Glad I moved to nvidia, soon they'll be ending support for 5000 series as well... :|

 

[Guest]

XP support, how useless, just like what is left of the user base still running Windows XP (excluding business users of course).

 

[Guest]

I just found a way to stop people blowing their old cards up and use the latest drivers. For anyone that wants to have a go at fixing the stuck 3d clocks on bootup themselves in 12.3-12.4 try the following, it worked for me, I revoke my first post :

Download and install AMD GPU Clock Tool 0.10.6.0 older versions has less cards support.
Create a shortcut on the desktop to AMD GPU Clock Tool
Edit the shortcut after the target with the following options -i=* -restore
Drag the shortcut into the windows startup folder.
Change shortcut preferences to run minimised instead of normal window.
Reboot, all clocks at idle bootup should be fixed, check with GPUZ or CCC.

You can run the AMD GPU clock tool from the command line with /? to find out all the options.
Have fun.

 

[Ranger1st]

if ending the 4000 and back support gets rid of the plethora a of whiners then I'm all for it.. if it frees up time for ATI/AMD to focus on new HW and better drivers.. that just pure gravy..

HD4000 and older = failsville... gotta call it like it is.

 

[Guest]

Except culling cards won't make one bit of difference to driver quality, the same as it hasn't done when legacy support was hoovered from cat 9.4's previously.

Anyone in the know, knows that AMD/ATI drivers have always been flakier in comparison to Nvidia ones in general. And that has held true since the rage 128/Geforce 2 days.

Owners of 4000 series cards have a very good reason to whine, they can still utilise todays games in 1080p as opposed to 3000 or 2000 series owners who have less to whine about. A lot of people are not ready to throw 2.4 nor 4.8 teraflops of shading power in the trash so lightly, nor is everyone ready or either wants to move to Windows 8 and follow the infinite rat race, so AMD should expect the resulting backlash over this ill concieved debacle in part, by pulling support for what is at the bottom scale of things still perfectly acceptable cards by todays standards.

 

[Guest]

[LEFT] [/LEFT]
"if ending the 4000 and back support gets rid of the plethora a of whiners then I'm all for it.. if it frees up time for ATI/AMD to focus on new HW and better drivers.. that just pure gravy..
HD4000 and older = failsville... gotta call it like it is."

The above assumptions and statement is based on what, your vague insight into what you deem whiners, also your logic fails to recognise that if those same users left (4xxx series user base would be a tidy sum of consumers mind you) imagie the cost financially to AMD if not one of those ppl picked up or payed for a new AMD gfx card again.

Do you think AMD would say hey they (the whiners) left, let us spend more money on R&D and driver signing now that they have left, or do you think that AMD would stick to the norm as it is now not re invest the money in driver upgrading and try to please its shareholders nxt financial year (after 2 years in a row of loss) with a healthy dividend growth with profits in AMD shares.

Also plethora of whiners... seriously, atleats majority of those who are "whining" are doing so constructively and without whining about whiners, you sir are a pure example of a lemming who follows current trends with no forward thinking of what happens today effects tomorrow.

 

[slh28]

AMD aren't ending 4000 series support entirely, they're just moving it to a quarterly release cycle instead of monthly. Which kind of makes sense...

 

[dividebyzero]

HD4000 and older = failsville... gotta call it like it is.

Really?
The HD 4000 series -esp the HD 4850 and 4870 are iconic graphics cards. They were responsible for the upward trend in marketshare that sees AMD enjoying relative parity with Nvidia.
The relevance of the series might be better illustrated by how many of them still prominently appear in the Steam Hardware Survey.

 

[sapo joe]

"if ending the 4000 and back support gets rid of the plethora a of whiners then I'm all for it.. if it frees up time for ATI/AMD to focus on new HW and better drivers.. that just pure gravy..

HD4000 and older = failsville... gotta call it like it is."

Kid, seriously, go back to your xbox...

 

[Darth Shiv]

[LEFT] [/LEFT]
"if ending the 4000 and back support gets rid of the plethora a of whiners then I'm all for it.. if it frees up time for ATI/AMD to focus on new HW and better drivers.. that just pure gravy..
HD4000 and older = failsville... gotta call it like it is."

Perf of a HD4000 is still pretty respectable. Still years ahead of integrated solutions - even Ivy.

 

[Guest]

thanks for the tip on the 3d clocks, i was putting the computer to sleep directly after boot up and then the clocks went back to normal when the computer came out of sleep mode. also seemed to go back to normal if i played bf3 for a bit and then quit. stupid bug should be fixed by now.

 

[Guest]

Disable ULPS to fix stuck clocks. http://www.overclock.net/t/667144/crossfire-disabling-ulps

 

[davidm71]

Skyrim Triple Crossfire still broken with 12.4. No better than regular crossfire. Still not fixed!

 

[Guest]

Disabling ULPS won't work on all cards to fix the clocks, some cards have ULPS disabled by default in the registry yet still stuck in 3d crossfire problem. The solution I have given above works by resetting all adapters in the system whether crossfire, trifire or quadfire to default 2d clocks upon boot.