New AMD Catalyst 11.11 Supports Stage 3D in Flash

Catalyst 11.11 wasn't exactly an exciting release and it's been out for a few days, but according to Andrew D (@CatalystCreator) there's another performance driver they're going to release soon. They're also supposedly still working on a Skyrim Catalyst application profile, but something seems to be holding them up.

https://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator

If Flash is so obselete, how come AMD is writing new features for it into its latest drivers?
...
Reports of Flashs demise are greatly exaggerated

These drivers have FIXED ALL MY BATTLEFIELD 3 ISSUES!!! Thank you ATI

Still waiting on the HD3D Crossfire Support!

They still don't have any update for Skyrim.

These drivers fixed my FPS issues in Skyrim! HD 6870 Hawk card I get 60 FPS everywhere now.

@Kodiack
They STILL have no CFX support for Rage. I have both a 5970 in one computer and a GTX480 in another, and the Nvidia card has far, far less issues with new games than the AMD one. Honestly, I dont think I will ever buy another ATI/AMD videocard because of their horrendous drivers ever since i bought the 5970 almost 2 years ago. Its the SAME thing every major release: previous catalyst drivers have a critical performance bug with X major release. Wait a couple of weeks till the bug fix. Then wait for a time after THAT for the CFX CAP (if you're lucky, as I mentioned there STILL isnt one for Rage). Nvidia isnt perfect, and I'm not a fanboy, but their driver team(s) still kick the crap out of AMD's IMHO.

And dont get me started on how piss-poor Skyrim runs on the 5970. Runs flawlessly at Ultra settings on the 480 though.

I hear ya, blppt. I'm running a 5970+5870 tri-Crossfire configuration myself. In most games it runs like a charm, but AMD's really been dropping the ball over the last couple of weeks. Not sure what's taking them so long to roll some of these out, especially since some people are able to create their own multi-GPU profiles using 3rd party tools such as RadeonPro.

Both Nvidia and AMD seem to have struggling driver teams as of late, but Nvidia's got the upper hand here since they at least have something to show for it.

"Duude, multi-gpu setups..especially on a single card; you're going to have issues because the amount of people who own those setups is much lower. a.k.a your a lower priority to nvidia or ati/amd. I don't mean to sound like an ass, but that's just the harsh reality of it."

Even disabling CFX (by adding the "Disable" flag to Catalyst AI in the driver profiles) does nothing to help Skyrim. Still chugs along with major hitches in Whitefall, for example. I can see waiting for a CFX CAP, after all CFX is a rather miniscule portion of the AMD customer, but there are/were major playability issues for me in every major A-list release this year on my Radeon, even running without CFX for those games, as I mentioned above. While the 480 is a single card only, I had zero issues with any newly released A-list game this year with it, and disabling Catalyst AI makes my 5970 into a single 5850 anyways, so that should make it a level playing field in terms of bugs. But it doesnt. Not even close.

I *want* to have the option of AMD for my next upgrade, but despite them making some amazing hardware, it ends up being hamstrung and crippled by shoddy drivers.

"Whitefall" should be "Whiterun"---my mistake.

I'm just telling you dude, I've encounter no such issues in Skyrim with a single 6850 or my new 6950 unlocked. I HAD two 6850's and two 5770's before that (and two 8800gts b4 that) and CF/SLI is always the last thing to get fixed by developers and nvidia or Ati/Amd. Two GPU's on a single card is fuster cluck waiting to happen. It's a good idea, but in reality it's not the first thing these people rush to get right bc so few people have them. Think about it.. what looks worse for a dev or card manufacture?? to have a few people complain about their highend setups or to have a hundred thousand people complain the game won't run on their new graphics card?

Like I say, if you have the option, go with the most powerful single GPU and be done with it. A single 580 or 6970 will give you adequate performance in most games max'd out at 1080p and it's MUCH easier to deal with.

If you've got mult-monitor or 3D gaming going on you may NEED multiple GPU's. Again tho, you're going to be in the minority of gamers and therefore get the minority mindshare and time of the devs and manufactures.

Well, at least he's probably not bothered by microstuttering anymore

@masterofevil22
Disabling Catalyst AI completely makes my 5970 into essentially a single 5850, so there should not be anything going on related to CFX support in terms of bugs. It IS essentially then a single GPU card.

And I agreed in my last post....I do not blame AMD much for the CFX profile lacking for a few weeks, I understand it is rather low on their totem pole for development, but taking CFX completely out of the equation, there are still crippling video driver bugs I've had to deal with for every major A-list release this year which usually werent fixed till weeks after I bought the game(s) in question. Pretty much no problems at all for the Nvidia card.

Funny, my 5870 runs every new game I've bought this year, just fine, on high or ultra.
Granted, I did not buy Rage but that p.o.s. should have been developed better, it was a flop from day one.
People keep talking about AMD drivers and my rig keeps on running great, go figure.

lol for a few minutes i thought the main dragon in skyrim was ment to be light purple. until elven armor loaded in the same color. it only happens now and again. i get some tearing hear and there. like at the throat of the world time warp animation spot, my face gets split in 2. skyrim needs a bathesda patch also, my companions quest line is frozen after the leader gets killed, the story stalls there instead of loading the next quest start.

@blppt

I understand that your 5970 running only one gpu "should" act like a 5870, but that just may not be the entire story. Even with one gpu disabled, even though it's the same gpu technically, it's not a standard/reference design or layout as a single gpu 5870. I know a guy that has a 5870 that has had less issues than me with my 6970 (6950 unlocked 850/1400 - @6950 voltage). The guy's had non of the issues that I've seen in your post and he's got an oc'd reference board from Sapphire, using the latest catalyst drivers.

If you've had no issues with the nvidia card, that's a positive. I'd just always recommend a single gpu card (even if you had to CF/SLI them) over a multi-gpu card in terms of reliability and stability. I'm not an engineer, but I can tell you from my own personal experience that those cards just tend to have more issues and get less support; which is a shame bc they're blazingly fast and they cost a ton.

I'm not justifying ati's lack of a solid set of drivers btw. I'm only saying I think the multi-gpu cards from them or nvidia Typically will encounter more issues than their single gpu cousins. IMO

ATI for the win!

My HD 5970 was running Skyrim shockingly at 2560x1600 on 'High' settings - 1-3fps. Even dropping down to 1920x1200 didn't help, but when I mucked around with the Catalyst driver settings I've got it now running mostly smoothly at 2560x1600. I did have to turn anti-aliasing off, and anisotropic filtering down low, but it runs smooth and still looks great - my eyes really aren't getting hit by aliasing.

On a sour note though, Steam seems to have updated my tesv.exe file so that now I can't run Skyrim without launching Steam ... that greatly increases the load times of an otherwise quick-to-load (and quit) game, damnit! Also taxes my system with the Steam overhead - godsdamnit!

Hi all..
Have any of you tried running the pagefile OR the game on a different partiion ?

I have found that Diablo II LOD will NOT run properly when installed on the C: drive, regardless of gpu being used. eg.. HD 6870, HD 5830, GTX 285, 88/9800GT ect..