AMD
Today is October 22, and that means Windows 8 will be available in just a few short days. Today, however, the AMD Radeon graphics team would like to take a moment to remind you that Radeon Graphics are ready for Windows 8! We also have a pair of exciting announcements for enthusiast gamers and users of older AMD Radeon GPUs!
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta
First: for advanced users and enthusiasts, we are making the AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta available today as a part of our awesome new NEVER SETTLE campaign. This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL28nm AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD 7800 and HD 7900.
Performance improvements (vs. AMD Catalyst 12.8)1:
- Up to 18% in Battlefield 3Up to 15% in Civilization V
- Certain maps will see an improvement in excess of 20%
- Up to 18% in Medal of Honor: Warfighter
- Up to 11% in 3DMark 11
- Up to 8% in Borderlands 2
- Up to 9% in StarCraft 2
- Up to 8% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Up to 15% in Unigine Heaven
- Up to 5% in Just Cause 2
Across a large number of titles, the 12.11 beta provides significant performance improvements for HD 7000 Series owners.
AMD Catalyst 12.11 enhancements:- Full support for Windows 8 on AMD Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000 and HD 7000 Series graphics cards
- AMD Catalyst driver 12.10 CAP1 for AMD CrossFire technology users
- New user interface for AMD Enduro technology in AMD Catalyst Control CenterTriFire and QuadFire + AMD Eyefinity technology configurations: Users will no longer see lower-than-expected performance in certain DirectX®10 and DirectX 11 applications
- View all profiled applications, create new application profiles, expert mode control and customization of power profiles.
- Mozilla Firefox: We no longer observe flickering and/or courruption in the UI on AMD CrossFire configurations
- Enabling AMD OverDrive technology no longer increases clocks in all GPU power states
- Resolves the system delay observed when opening the Windows Audio system tray on Multi-GPU configurations to configure HDMI®Audio setting.
To be clear, this driver enables full support for WDDM 1.2 on the AMD Radeon HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series. WDDM 1.2 is an updated model for graphics drivers that Microsoft has developed to ensure smooth performance and wide compatibility in their new operating system. AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series users will additionally enjoy full support for DirectX 11.1. Amongst other features, this includes support for stereo 3D gaming that is now built right into DirectX. Future games can be designed to enable stereo 3D graphics without relying on third-party SDKs or libraries, and were ready to support these titles with AMD HD3D technology. AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics further support a new DirectX 11.1 feature called Target Independent Rasterization (TIR), which enables hardware anti-aliasing for vector graphics. Examples of vector graphics include: charts in a PowerPoint presentation, tiles on the Windows 8 home screen, or many elements of your favorite webpage. As always, please leave any feedback you have on 12.11 on the official AMD driver feedback form.
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/10/22/never-settle-driver/
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NVIDIA
The new NVIDIA GeForce 310.33 beta drivers are now available to download. Featuring GTX 600 Series performance improvements of up to 15%, the new GeForce 310.33 beta drivers are a recommended download for all Kepler users. In addition to performance improvements, the GeForce 310.33 beta drivers include a number of new and updated SLI and Ambient Occlusion profiles that benefit and enhance all GeForce PCs.
You can download the GeForce 310.33 beta drivers with one click from the GeForce.com homepage; Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 packages are available for desktop systems, and for notebooks there are Windows 7 and Windows 8 downloads that cover all products, including the GeForce GTX 680M. If you have any feedback or comments, please drop us a note via the comments section or use the NVIDIA Display Driver Feedback Form.
Performance Improvements
Weve increased performance in numerous games over the past year, and today were increasing performance yet again, with gains of up to 7.5% on the GTX 660, and 15.7% on the GTX 680. Other GTX 600 Series products will see gains also, though the extent of those improvements will of course vary and be further influenced by a users software and hardware configuration.
Game Settings & Results:
- Batman: Arkham City: Performance increased by 3.3% at 1920x1080 when using Very High detail settings, Tessellation High, PhysX Off and 4xMSAA.
- Civilization V: Performance increased by 2% at 1920x1200 when using DirectX 11 and max settings in a late-game benchmark.
- DiRT 3: Performance increased by 2.1% at 2560x1600 when using DirectX 11 and Ultra settings.
- Dragon Age 2: Performance increased by 3.1% at 1920x1080 when using max settings and 8xMSAA.
- The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena: Performance increased by 7.5% at 2560x1600 when using max settings.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Performance increased by 6.2% at 1920x1080 when using High settings in an outdoor scenario. At the same resolution, an improvement of 4.1% was measured when using Ultra settings.
Game Settings & Results:
- Batman: Arkham City: Performance increased by 5.3% at 1920x1080 when using Very High detail settings, Tessellation High, PhysX High and 4xMSAA.
- Civilization V: Performance increased by 2.8% at 1920x1200 when using DirectX 11 and max settings in a late-game benchmark.
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Performance increased by 3.2% at 1600x1200 when using DirectX 11 and max settings.
- F1 2011: Performance increased by 4.4% at 2560x1600 when using DirectX 11 and max settings.
- StarCraft II: Performance increased by 5.6% at 1920x1080 when using Ultra settings.
- The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena: Performance increased by 15.7% at 2560x1600 when using max settings.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Performance increased by 10.9% at 1920x1080 when using High settings in an indoor scenario. At 2560x1600, an improvement of 6.9% was measured in an outdoor scenario.
NVIDIA Control Panel Game Enhancements
The GeForce 310.33 beta drivers include a number of NVIDIA Control Panel enhancements that allow you to further increase in-game fidelity in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Darksiders 2, and MechWarrior Online:
- Added NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Cross Fire.
- Added NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Dragon Nest.
- Added NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Meng San Guo.
- Updated NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Counter-strike: Global Offensive.
- Updated NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Darksiders 2.
- Updated NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for MechWarrior Online.
Each enhancement is easily applied via the respective game's profile in the "Manage 3D Settings" section of the NVIDIA Control Panel. Simply select the desired quality level of the Ambient Occlusion effect in the dropdown, click "Apply", and launch the game before basking in the accurately-shadowed surroundings.
New & Updated SLI Profiles
As always, our new GeForce driver includes new and updated profiles for todays top titles, increasing performance and unleashing the full power of SLI systems.
- Dirt: Showdown Updated SLI profile
- Dota 2 - Updated SLI profile
- Dou Zhan Shen Updated SLI profile
- F1 2012 - Added SLI profile
- FIFA 13 Added SLI profile
- Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad Updated SLI profile
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-310-33-beta-drivers-released/
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