AMD Catalyst™ Drivers Windows® 8 Consumer Preview

[hclarkjr]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Windows8ConsumerPreviewDrivers.aspx

Last Updated

2/29/2012
Article Number

GPU-153
Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ driver for the Windows® 8 Consumer Preview:

• Full WDDM 1.2
  
  • Highlights include:
    • Native Stereo 3D support: Windows 8 will natively support Stereo 3D for full-screen and windowed gaming, and video applications
    • Unified Video API – Video playback is now integrated within the DirectX® 11 API; enabling simultaneous high quality Video and 3D content, and the potential for enhanced video transcoding performance
    • Optimized screen rotation
    • improved sleep / resume performance
    • Optimized Power Consumption
• AMD Eyefinity
• OpenCL
• OpenGL®
• UVD
• Dual Graphics / AMD CrossFire™ Technology
• AMD Overdrive™
• Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center

Please note: A future AMD Catalyst Windows 8 driver release will add support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series in the coming weeks.
Instructions:

Download and install the Driver from the following location:

• AMD Catalyst Driver 8.93.7 RC10

Applicable Products for Driver Version 8.93.7 RC10:
This article applies to the following configuration(s):
Hardware

• AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
• AMD Radeon HD 7000M Series
• AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series
• AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series
• AMD A-Series APU
• AMD C-Series APU
• AMD E-Series APU
• AMD FirePro Series
• AMD FIrePro 3D Series

Operating Systems

• Windows 8 32-bit Edition
• Windows 8 64-bit Edition

 

[Elcs]

Sounds flash.

Almost tempted to download a Windows 8 Preview to try it out

 

[superjim]

AMD needs to get Windows 7 driver issues worked out (looking at you 12.2's) for the 7900 series before doing anything with Windows 8. Cart in front of the horse.

 

[ddarko]

AMD needs to get Windows 7 driver issues worked out (looking at you 12.2's) for the 7900 series before doing anything with Windows 8. Cart in front of the horse.

While I agree the drivers for released operating systems should be foremost for AMD's software team - although the 12.2 Pre-Certified drivers are fine for me - I also think using the release of Windows 8 drivers to take a swipe at AMD is silly. Microsoft, not AMD, set the schedule for the release of the Windows 8 preview - what was AMD to do, not support it? It would have been criticized for not releasing Windows 8 drivers. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

No question AMD should have had robust drivers 7/Vista/XP drivers available for their new cards upon their launch. But they should also support and release Windows 8 drivers now, even in its preview stage, because writing drivers for it now means - hopefully - better drivers when Windows 8 is finalized.

In any case, although I probably wouldn't try this preview release anyway on my sole computer, the point is moot because the new Windows 8 drivers don't yet support the 7900 or 7700 series lol.

 

[nanaki333]

i wish they would get a final version for 7900 drivers out already for windows 7. the latest ones caused my machine to hard lock.

 

[djnsmith7]

^This...AMD needs to address the issues with the current Win7 drivers before allocating resources to an OS that isn't even mainstream yet.

 

[-Slacker-]

They've already allocated the resources to an OS that isn't even mainstream yet, so what's all the commotion about?

 

[TC777]

Why are they updating Windows 8 drivers before they are updating Windows 7 drivers?

I've been noticing some annoying bugs lately with the 7900 drivers. For one thing they don't like sleep mode in Windows 7.

 

[Annon2255]

Well, SWTOR runs a lot smoother on Windows 8 with these drivers. Getting 40-50 FPS with my 4870 where I was getting ~30 before on average with Windows 7.