Driver Update: AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta

AMD has released a new beta Catalyst driver. There is only one download and it is only suitable for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Support for Windows 8.0 will expire with version 14.6 and AMD therefore recommends installing the free update to Windows 8.1. The new driver includes performance improvements for the games Watch Dogs and Murdered: Soul Suspect, as well as making it possible to use Eyefinity on screens that do not all have the same resolution. The full release notes can be found below.

AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Driver for Windows

• Starting with AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta, AMD will no longer support Windows 8.0 (and the WDDM 1.2 driver)
• Users should upgrade (for Free) to Windows 8.1 to take advantage of the new features found in the AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta
• AMD Catalyst 14.4 will remain available for users who wish to remain on Windows 8
  A future AMD Catalyst release will allow for the WDDM 1.1 (Windows 7 driver) to be installed under Windows 8.0 for those users unable to upgrade to Windows 8.1

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Driver

• Performance improvements
  • Watch Dog’s performance improvements
    • AMD Radeon R9 290X – 1920×1080 4x MSAA – improves up to 25%
    • AMD Radeon R9290X – 2560×1600 4x MSAA – improves up to 28%
    • AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) – 92% scaling
  • Murdered Soul Suspect performance improvements
    • AMD Radeon R9 290X – 2560×1600 4x MSAA – improves up to 16%
    • AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) – 93% scaling
• AMD Eyefinity Enhancements:
  • Mixed Resolution Support
    • A new architecture providing brand new capabilities
    • Display groups can be created with monitors of different resolution (including difference sizes and shapes)
    • Users have a choice of how surface is created over the display group
      • Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
      • Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays.
      • Expand – create a virtual Eyefinity surface using desktops as viewports onto the surface.
  • Eyefinity Display Alignment
    • Enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors
  • One Click Setup
    • Driver detects layout of extended desktops
      • Can create Eyefinity display group using this layout in one click!
• New user controls for video color and display settings
  • Greater control over Video Color Management:
    • Controls have been expanded from a single slider for controlling Boost and Hue to per color axis
  • Color depth control for Digital Flat Panels (available on supported HDMI and DP displays)
    • Allows users to select different color depths per resolution and display
• AMD Mantle Enhancements
  • Mantle now supports AMD Mobile products with Enduro technology
    • Battlefield 4: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1366×768; high settings) – 21% gain
    • Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; high settings) – 14% gain
    • Star Swarm: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; medium settings) – 274% gain
  • Enables support for Multi-GPU configurations with Thief (requires the latest Thief update)
• AMD AM1 JPEG decoding acceleration
  • JPEG decoding acceleration was first enabled on the A10 APU Series in AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta, and has now been extended to the AMD AM1 Platform
  • Provides fast JPEG decompression
  • Provides Power Efficiency for JPEG decompression

Known Issues

• Running Watch Dogs with a R9 280X CrossFire configuration may result in the application running in CrossFire software compositing mode
• Enabling Temporal SMAA in the AMD Catalyst Control center under a CrossFire configuration when playing Watch Dogs will result in Flickering
• AMD CrossFire configurations with Eyefinity enabled will see application stability with BattleField 4 or Thief when running Mantle
• Catalyst Install Manager text is covered by Express/Custom radio button text
• Express Uninstall does not remove C:Program Files(AMD or ATI) folder