AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta & Windows 8 Catalyst Feature Preview Are Available Now

AMD has just released the Catalyst 12.6 Beta driver, which comes with a multitude of fixes and performance improvements for a great deal of games and applications. On top of this they have also released a Catalyst Feature Preview for Windows 8. Not to mention adding support for the integrated GPU in AMD desktop and laptop APUs, such as the HD 7660D (A10-5700), HD 7560D (A8-5500), HD 7660G (A10-4600M), HD 7640 (A8 4500M) and HD 7520 (A6-4400M). The Catalyst 12.6 Beta Driver can be found here.

Resolved Issues:

• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Tri-CrossFire configurations + Eyefinity no longer results in a BSOD when launching a DirectX application
• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations no longer results in a BSOD when using desktop applications
• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards no longer hang when system goes to sleep
• Please ensure that your System BIOS is up to date some occurrences of this issue are related to outdated SBIOS
• Resolves CrossFire scaling issues seen in AMD Catalyst 12.4 with Elder Scrolls: Skyrim CrossFire
• AMD Catalyst Control Center Overdrive page is no longer intermittently missing
• AMD Catalyst Control Center GPU Activity gauge is no longer missing
• AMD Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Configuration no longer results in system hang after cinematic in Call Of Duty: Black Ops
• Heroes and Generals: Blocky corruption in scenes with smoke effects when run in DirectX 11 mode are no longer experienced.
• Dirt Showdown: Improves scaling for CrossFire configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• HDMI audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV is powered Off/On.

AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Dual Graphics Enhancements:

• Diablo 3
• Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
• StarCraft 2
• Portal 2
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare
• Call of Duty Black Ops

AMD has also released the latest Catalyst Application Profile, Catalyst 12.6 Beta CAP1 which improves Crossfire scaling performance in Max Payne 3 in directX 11 mode as well as resolving the full screen flickering issue seen in Krater. Catalyst 12.6 Beta CAP1 can be found here.

The Windows 8 Catalyst Feature Preview brings some interesting changes and features that users may want to check out for themselves. The Windows 8 Catalyst Feature Preview can be found here.. Further Info on the drivers and their features can be found at the source.