AMD made available a new Catalyst beta driver today, version 13.8 for all Radeon video cards starting at series 5000, including mobile chips. The new driver, announced several months ago, is enhanced for Crossfire systems allowing the user to control how rendered frames are delivered to the connected displays, which AMD calls “Frame pacing” feature.

Even though the Frame pacing for Crossfire systems was the most expected feature for the new 13.8 BETA, it also improves performance for Metro Last Light and includes very welcome features for users using a single video card, like OpenGL 4.3 support, Catalyst Application Profiles (CAP) support for OpenGL games and the ability to set custom settings for OpenGL games in Catalyst Control Panel on a per-application basis. These new features were already available for Direct3D games.

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.