Driver Update: ATI Catalyst 9.12

AMD has released this year’s twelfth and final Catalyst release for its ATI Radeon graphics cards with version number 9.12. The drivers are available for Windows XP, Vista and 7 versions, in 32bit, 64bit and Media Center versions. The new drivers are suitable for all Radeon models from the HD 2400 series; older maps rely on the 9.3 release. As usual, at the very bottom of this posting are the direct links to the pages where the available downloads can be found.

New in version 9.12 is support for DirectCompute, which makes it possible to use the graphics processor’s computing power for other tasks, and for some parts of version 3.2 of OpenGL. In addition, there would also be some performance improvements and of course the drivers again contain the usual list of bug fixes, followed by a collection of problems that are already known, but for which there is no solution yet:

New Features

• ATI Catalyst support for DirectCompute 10.1
  This release of ATI Catalyst provides full support for DirectCompute 10.1 for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4700 Series for both single card and ATI CrossFireX supported configurations.
• OpenGL 3.2 extension support
  This release of ATI Catalyst provides support for OpenGL 3.2 extension support on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series. The following is a list of OpenGL 3.2 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.12:
  • Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.50
  • BGRA vertex component ordering (GL_ARB_vertex_array_bgra)
  • Drawing commands allowing modification of the base vertex index (GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex)
  • Shader fragment coordinate convention control (GL_ARB_fragment_coord_conventions)
  • Provoking vertex control (GL_ARB_provoking_vertex)
  • Seamless cube map filtering (GL_ARB_seamless_cube_map)
  • Multisampled textures and texture samplers for specific sample locations (GL_ARB_texture_multisample)
  • Fragment depth clamping (GL_ARB_depth_clamp)
  • Geometry shaders (GL_ARB_geometry_shader4)
  • Fence sync objects (GL_ARB_sync)
  • transform_feedback2
  • texture_cubemap_array

Performance Improvements

• 3DMark Vantage – overall performance improves as much as 9% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 and ATI Radeon HD 5700 series products. GT1 – Jane Nash performance improves as much as 15% and FT4 – GPU Cloth improves up to 15%
• STALKER – Call of Pripyat – Performance improves as much as 6% on single card configurations

Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating Systems

• Confirmation dialog box is now displayed when extending the display through Catalyst Control Center
• Catalyst Control Center: all supported resolutions are now displayed in the Desktop Properties panel
• A confirmation dialog is now displayed when setting up an Eyefinity group

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System

• Sound output from Display Port audio is now heard with extended mode configurations with VGA or DVI panels
• Cyblerlink PowerDVD 9: setting the “Allow PowerDVD to automatically disable Windows Aero to optimize Blu-Ray playback” no longer causes the system to become unresponsive during Blu-ray playback
• Cyberlink PowerDVD: Blu-ray playback video no longer fails to render when swapping primary displays in a multi-monitor configuration
• Corruption no longer observed with some DX9 applications when Anti-Alias ​​8x is enabled.
• WinDVD10: Blu-ray playback will now start and does not require the application has been minimized and restored
• Resident Evil 5 Japanese version is now supported
• Playing back Blu-Ray content on some system with 120 Hz display no longer results in black screen playback
• Changing desktop resolution no longer causes the Operating System to stop responding when real-time protection is enabled in Microsoft Security Essentials
• Resolved: IL2 – Sturmovik Forgotten Battles game may stop responding or not free up system resources
• Resolved intermittently system instability when hot unplugging a HDMI display

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

• Video artifacts no longer occur when playing two or more SD video files with hardware accelerated Adobe Flash player
• WinDVD 8 no longer stops responding when resuming from sleep or hibernate

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

• Tom Clancy’s HAWX: VPU recover no longer occurs in some CrossFire configurations
• In some Clone Mode configuration with Windows XP, stretched desktop is now functional

Known Issues Under All Windows Operating Systems

• Setting Eyefinity group may not work for some configurations with DVI and Display Port devices
• Hot unplugging one of the displays in an Eyefinity configuration may cause the some rotation modes to disapear from Catalyst Control Center

Known Issues Under the Windows 7 Operating System

• On some configurations Ubisoft Wheelman may stop responding during gameplay
• Catalyst Control Center: enabling LCD overdrive may cause magnification of the mouse cursor when moved overtop of the Calibration Preview
• Adobe Flash player 10.1 Pre-release: dropped frames and browser lag may be noticed when playing multiple instances of Youtube clips with hardware acceleration enabled
• A performance drop does occur during Resident Evil 5 cinematics
• No sound output on HDMI when playing back some Blu-Ray content in Power DVD 9
• Catalyst Control Center: newly added custom modes may fail to be displayed in desktop tree view
• Loss of HDMI signal may occus on some HDMI TVs, on rescan of the HDMI signal it may apear in the wrong screen location.
• Cyberling Power DVD 9: DTS TrueHD option may not be visible in the HDMI tab on some systems.
• City of Heros: with certain graphics adapters some screen flashing might be observed during game play

Known Issues Under the Windows Vista Operating System

• Playing some Flash content with hardware acceleration enabled might result in video edges not appearing smooth
• WinDVD 10 may stop responding when moved to an extended display in a multi-monitor setup
• No audio when hotplugging HDMI display while media file is being played

The following downloads are available:
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows XP (32bit)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows XP (mobility)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows XP (64bit)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows XP (Media Center Edition)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows Vista (32bit)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows Vista (64bit)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows 7 (32bit)
ATi Catalyst 9.12 for Windows 7 (64bit)