AMD Catalyst

AMD Catalyst, formerly ATI Catalyst, is a driver package for Radeon graphics cards from AMD acquired ATI company. In addition to the actual driver, the package includes the Catalyst Control Center (CCC ), which is used to set the driver options. The Catalyst package was first released with the Radeon 8500, since then a new version is published monthly. By the end of 2005, instead of the old CCC ATI Control Panel used that is integrated into the display settings of the Windows operating system. The latest official version of the Catalyst Control Panel was 5:12.

Technical details

The version numbering of the driver follows the scheme Jahr.Monat. For example, the version 7.4 was released in April ( 4th month ) in 2007, therefore there are twelve official drivers per year. Rarely appeared at the end of the year, a thirteenth version that mostly fixes serious bugs or add minor features. Furthermore, appeared in the past nor called hotfix drivers that are either the performance of a newly released program improved or eliminated major problems with a program. Examples of this were about the game Crysis or the benchmark 3D Mark Vantage.

Apart from the official Catalyst drivers there are more or less known modifications. The best known are the some time not more advanced ATI Omega drivers and DNA drivers.

Application-specific settings are stored in the so-called Catalyst Application Profiles (abbreviated CAP) to control the behavior of the graphics card (s ). This application profiles have been introduced in order to accelerate the development process of the driver package.

Revision history

With version 10.8, which was released on 25 August 2010, the programming OpenGL ES is officially fully supported in version 2.0. In addition, be supported with this version all AMD and ATI GPUs from Radeon HD 2400 ( including mobile versions ).

On September 15, 2010 Version 10.9 was released, with the new feature that can now be owner of a Radeon card in the future via the Steam program will automatically notify you of updated drivers.

Since the published on 22 October 2010 Version 10.10, in addition to a further improvement to some DirectX games that open graphics interface OpenGL in version 4.1 and the morphological antialiasing recent Radeon graphics cards, the HD 6000 series supports.

With published on 13 December 2010 Version 10:12 the user interface from the Catalyst Control Center has been heavily revised, the driver package with full support for OpenGL in version 4.1, as well as the hardware acceleration for video in DivX format and more support for the HD 6000 series extended.

With published on January 26, 2011 Version 11.1a a fix was provided in addition to the version 11.1, which does not have a WHQL certificate, but for the first time offers the possibility of a regulator the degree of refinement of geometrical details or tiling ( tessellation English ) graphics to decrease.

On 29 March 2011, version 11.3 has been released and the driver package, in addition to the usual bug fixes, enhanced with a programming and runtime environment for OpenCL.

With the published 17 August 2011 version 11.8, it should be possible with the help of the 3D display method HD3D images in stereoscopic representation, tailed with about the connection standard DisplayPort screens. So that addition can be overclocked AMD processors now the Black Edition.

Since the published on 13 December 2011 Version 11:12 the OpenGL graphics interface is supported in version 4.2 and stereoscopy for three simultaneously operating screens.

With the upcoming version 12.1, which will be published in January 2012, including a profile management is supplemented with the help of which users can store their settings for different applications for the first time.

On 31 May 2012, the company has officially announced that it will no longer pursue the monthly update frequency for the WHQL drivers. Instead, there should be more frequent hotfix and beta drivers that future optimizations for the latest games releases and urgent bug fixes are delivered. New WHQL releases are only provided if they bring significant benefits to the customers themselves.

Supported Hardware

  • Desktop Radeon graphics cards DirectX 9.0 cards ( regular support up to version 9.3 ( .1 ), afterwards only by isolated versions (9.8 9.11, 10.2) for Windows only ) ATI Radeon 9000 Series, ATI Radeon X - series and ATI Radeon X1 series
  • ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series
  • ATI Radeon HD 3000 series or ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series
  • AMD Radeon HD 7000 series
  • AMD 's Radeon R200 series
  • Mobility Radeon 9500 series and higher

Settings

  • Monitor settings Multi-monitor settings, if more than one monitor connected to the PC
  • HDTV support - Settings for resolutions ( 720p/1080i/1080p ) and refresh rates for connected HDTVs via component or HDMI

Linux

For Linux, the driver will be released as fglrx ( " FireGL and Radeon for X" or as " ATI Catalyst Proprietary Linux Display Driver "). It contains not only open source, but also proprietary parts.

For the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI ), the kernel header sources must be installed and compiled. Without the kernel module driver works only without DRI.

Normally it is published simultaneously with the driver for the Windows operating system and corresponds to this in the supported hardware.

Advanced Micro Devices ATI Technologies Benchmarking 3DMark R300 R400 Series Radeon R520 R600 (ASIC) Radeon R700 Evergreen (GPU family) AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series High Definition Television Anti-aliasing ATI Avivo Decoder Accelerated Graphics Port AMD PowerPlay Mantle (API)
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