John Mautari

To infinity, Radeon!

AMD Catalyst™ 13.8 Beta 2 with performance improvements for Saints Row IV, Splinter Cell Blacklist and more

AMD made available a new build of Catalyst 13.8 beta driver for all Radeon video cards starting at series 5000, including mobile chips. It includes optimization for just released games like Saints Row IV and Splinter Cell Blacklist.

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Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 13.8 Beta 2 for Windows®:

  • Saints Row 4: Performance improves up to 25% at 1920×1280 with Ultra settings enabled
  • Splinter Cell Blacklist: Performance improves up to 9% at 2560×1600 with Ultra settings enabled
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Improves single GPU and CrossFire performance
  • Van Helsing: Fixes image quality issues when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center
  • Far Cry 3 / Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon: Resolve corruption when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center
  • RIPD: Improves single GPU performance
  • Minimum: Improves CrossFire performance
  • Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Improves CrossFire performance
  • CrossFire: Frame Pacing feature – includes improved performance in World of Warcraft, Sniper Elite, Watch Dogs, and Tomb Raider
  • Doom 3 BFG: Corruption issues have been resolved

Known Issues of The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta2 Driver for Windows:

  • CrossFire configurations (when used in combination with Overdrive) can result in the secondary GPU usage running at 99%
  • Enabling CrossFire can result in the PCI-e bus speed for the secondary GPU being reported as x1
  • Bioshock Infinite: New DLC can cause system hangs with Frame Pacing enabled – disable frame pacing for this title to resolve

Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 13.8 Beta for Windows®:

  • Support for AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing
    • Frame Pacing ensures that frames rendered across multiple GPUs in a CrossFire configuration will be displayed at an even and regular pace.
    • Enabled through the AMD Catalyst Control Center; Globally or on a per application basis.
    • Frame Pacing is enabled by default.
    • Supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications, and resolutions up to and including 2560×1600 (single display).
  • OpenGL 4.3 support – full support for the OpenGL 4.3 feature set
  • Performance improvements found in AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta for Windows:
    • Metro: Last Light – improves performance up to 7% on the AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series
  • OpenGL support for User Profiles and Catalyst Application Profiles:
    • Users can now create per application 3D setting profiles for OpenGL applications.
    • OpenGL applications are now supported through Catalyst Application Profile updates (for single GPU and AMD CrossFire configurations).
  • AMD Enduro Technology enhancement – Catalyst Control Center will now show which applications are active on the Performance GPU, and the Power-Saving GPU
  • Resolved issues:
    • Resolved crash when enabling AMD CrossFireX™ on some AMD 970 platforms
    • Improved stability for AMD Radeon HD 7790
    • Resolved intermittent mouse cursor corruption when rapidly moving the cursor across window borders

System Requirements:

  • Windows® 8 (32 & 64-bit versions)
  • Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit versions with SP1 or higher)

Download it at AMD web site.

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