AMD Releases Catalyst 12.1 Preview – Custom Application Profiles, HD3D CrossFire, & More

Damien. · 14 Dec 2011 at 12:25

And said:
Just getting the 11.12s now.

Never had a problem with AMD/ATi or nVidia drivers dating back to the GF2 to be fair.

Dont.

Use these drivers. They are better than the 11.12's.

JeffyB · 14 Dec 2011 at 12:30

Liking these so far

wedgie · 14 Dec 2011 at 12:56

drunkenmaster said:
For the umpteenth time, a WHQL driver goes to MS ages before release for testing, it doesn't have potential unstable tweaks included. Hotfix drivers do and they aren't WHQL tested, nor have any guarantee's made with them.

Umpteenth time? Must have slipped my mind to check all of your previous posts before posting.

drunkenmaster said:
Yet people still can't work this out, still install every new driver without knowing what they are improving or making worse.

I guess this must be the sole cause of everyones problems then.

drunkenmaster said:
The last game I had "problems" with, was Rage, and these were entirely down to the engine not detecting high end settings for AMD OR Nvidia cards, and config tweaking the game fixed it all, before that, I can't remember.

This is relevant how?

drunkenmaster said:
I also don't jump to every new driver every 4 seconds for no reason just because it's new.

Nor do I.

drunkenmaster said:
No problems with Skyrim, Batman, rage, Star wars beta, Ass Creed, nor anything else I've played lately.

drunkenmaster said:
AMD drivers have never been as bad as they are right now? I don't have any problems right now, and I have had problems before, they've never been BETTER than they are right now, there have never been more AMD users on here, and there hasn't been as close a group of top end games released in a long time as the past couple months, which means there hasn't been as many hotfixes in such a short space of time to help those users with problems, and there has never been as many people normally creating their own problems installing every last driver possible.

Who is this response to? :confused:

Arcane · 14 Dec 2011 at 14:29

drunkenmaster said:
No problems with Skyrim, Batman, rage, Star wars beta, Ass Creed, nor anything else I've played lately.

You're not a Crossfire user though are you?

Single card performance hasn't really ever been much of an issue. Having not owned a Crossfire setup for a while I'm not the best person to comment, however, from my personal experience with 5850 crossfire and reading other users experiences it seems to me that the vast majority of issues with AMD are crossfire related?

Surely these drivers are great news and will help ease that with the ability to adjust the settings not previously available?

jkb · 14 Dec 2011 at 14:51

No problems with them so far, not sure if they have resolved the incorrect error report I got when windows started if I used DP rather than DL-DVI, can't be bothered to swap cables over yet again!. 6990.

Nutella33 · 14 Dec 2011 at 15:18

with this new feature does it mean CAP's will no longer be needed?

drunkenmaster · 14 Dec 2011 at 15:39

wedgie said:
Umpteenth time? Must have slipped my mind to check all of your previous posts before posting.

I guess this must be the sole cause of everyones problems then.

This is relevant how?

Nor do I.

Who is this response to?

Why do people feel the need to when they see their post quoted, automatically assume the entire post is directly related only to what was quoted, then feel the need to pick apart a post and point out which parts don't relate to their quote.

Is there really no common sense left anywhere.

If what I said didn't seem directly related to what you posted, but did seem somehow, possibly related to other posts or the thread in general, here's an assumption you could have come to.... that part of the post wasn't related to your quote and was relevant to the thread and therefore posting to point out you don't comprehend this brings nothing to the thread, and is a waste of yours, mine and everyone else's time.

As for the only part directly related to your post....... I neither said i'd posted responding to you for the umpteenth time, nor that you had to check my previous posts, I was merely commenting that the kind of post you made is made in basically every single AMD driver thread...... yet someone people don't know what is patently obvious.

drunkenmaster · 14 Dec 2011 at 15:44

Arcane said:
You're not a Crossfire user though are you?

Single card performance hasn't really ever been much of an issue. Having not owned a Crossfire setup for a while I'm not the best person to comment, however, from my personal experience with 5850 crossfire and reading other users experiences it seems to me that the vast majority of issues with AMD are crossfire related?

Surely these drivers are great news and will help ease that with the ability to adjust the settings not previously available?

I go in and out of using xfire and sli(the latter not for a good while though), and I never get all the issues people seem to find during the games release while I used xfire. I can't say with absolute certainty I wouldn't have encountered problems in more recent games if I was still "using" , but based off experience and my lack of problems in other games people had issues with, I'm going to go with the idea I likely wouldn't have had problems.

Some games won't respond well to xfire/sli, some games are design to work in such a way that its almost anti xfire/sli, that is part and parcel of gaming, sometimes games have problems on single cards, sometimes on xfire, or sli.

As I was talking about a post that claimed this was the worst the drivers had ever been........ and I've had problems with single cards both AMD and Nvidia previously, though rarely, I dare say if the drivers really were the worst they'd ever been........ I'd have felt it as well.

Amraam · 14 Dec 2011 at 16:06

Wait, you mean to say that until now, AMD/ATI users haven't been able to set custom profiles for different .exes?

WTF?!

wedgie · 14 Dec 2011 at 16:22

drunkenmaster said:
Why do people feel the need to when they see their post quoted, automatically assume the entire post is directly related only to what was quoted, then feel the need to pick apart a post and point out which parts don't relate to their quote.

Is there really no common sense left anywhere.

Not seeing where common sense comes into this tbh. I quoted your points individually purely to give direct responses to your arguments which essentially boiled down to you don't have issues so drivers must be fine and if not then it's because people are aimlessly installing drivers left right and centre for no apparent reason. Might be common sense in your mind, absolute nonsense to the rest of us.

drunkenmaster said:
If what I said didn't seem directly related to what you posted, but did seem somehow, possibly related to other posts or the thread in general, here's an assumption you could have come to.... that part of the post wasn't related to your quote and was relevant to the thread and therefore posting to point out you don't comprehend this brings nothing to the thread, and is a waste of yours, mine and everyone else's time.

You're right, asking who exactly you're rambling on about clearly does mean I don't comprehend what you're saying. Consider my bottom smacked, I shall try not to waste everyones time in future

.

drunkenmaster said:
As for the only part directly related to your post....... I neither said i'd posted responding to you for the umpteenth time, nor that you had to check my previous posts, I was merely commenting that the kind of post you made is made in basically every single AMD driver thread...... yet someone people don't know what is patently obvious.

Even taking this into account, it was actually possible to make your point with zero arrogance required. Surprised you failed this? Not really, along with the monster word count it's easily the most recognisable element to 99% of your posts round here.

Sorry for multi quoting once again, not really my style to throw down huge walls of text wandering like a headless chicken from one nonsensical point to the next.

pgi947 · 14 Dec 2011 at 19:54

Installing them now, and will try run a few games and mess around with some profiles, see what I can do. And just so everyone is clear this is from AMD:

The AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 Preview includes all of the features found in AMD Catalyst™ 11.12 and also includes all of the latest optimizations found in the AMD Catalyst 11.11c performance drivers (AMD Catalyst 11.12 does not include the latest 11.11c optimizations). It is highly recommended that all gamers use the AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver.

Source: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst121Previewdriver.aspx

schnipps · 14 Dec 2011 at 20:05

do we need caps with this driver?

pgi947 · 14 Dec 2011 at 20:16

11.11 CAP3 is recommended.

Just had a little play and test. Overall I'm very impressed, the only thing the application profiles are missing is and import/export feature.

Fifa 12 on all other drivers stuttered like crazy while CF was enabled, disable it and it was fine, but was a pain turning CF on and off while jumping between games. Created a profile for Fifa 12 in 12.1, left all other options as standard and set to force disable CF when this game launches and its worked a treat. Very very impressed with AMD right now, 2012 could be a good year for them after the mishaps of 2011.

wedgie · 14 Dec 2011 at 20:17

The impression I get from the OP's article is that customizable profiles is an added feature rather than a CAPs replacement.

Has anyone tried 12.1 with 11.11's CAP3? I tried them when they first came out, but they made Skyrim and Saints Row 3 worse.

pgi947 · 14 Dec 2011 at 20:30

Will try skyrim now for you wedgie, 12.1 w/11.11 cap3.

Edit: 45fps down from 115

BF3 running perfectly though, 115-120fps.

And also steam appears to be down.

wedgie · 14 Dec 2011 at 20:53

Damn, just tried Saints Row and that's still a no go, is there any combination of drivers/CAPs that gives appropriate performance for this game? If Skyrim drops for me as much as it has done for you I'll go back to CAP2.

Never had any issues with BF3 yet, it appears I'm quite fortunate there however.

pgi947 · 14 Dec 2011 at 20:58

Let me know how CAP2 and skyrim work out for you if you try it, won't be playing much skyrim until the LAA situation is sorted so can work away with BF3 for now.

wedgie · 14 Dec 2011 at 21:09

I was on CAP2 previously and Skyrim was fine, rock solid @ 60 which has been a rare thing ever since the game was released.

pgi947 · 14 Dec 2011 at 21:21

I was fine with 11.11c with CAP3 on skyrim, 120fps in-doors, 100-115 outside. Now its 40-45 everywhere, which is how it was when the game launched to be fair. Almost as if the CF profile isn't opening.

elrasho · 14 Dec 2011 at 22:10

pgi947 said:
Very very impressed with AMD right now, 2012 could be a good year for them after the mishaps of 2011.

They're a bit late though, so that's not so impressive. I'm giving these drivers a miss until WHQL comes out.

PS I don't get the stuttering in FIFA 12 under CF