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AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Drivers Officially Released, Drops Support For Windows 8

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AMD has officially released a new beta driver for its graphics cards. According to its release notes, this is the first driver that does not support Windows 8 (from now on, all AMD Catalyst drivers will no longer support Windows 8). This means that PC gamers will have to upgrade to Windows 8.1 in order to take advantage of newer drivers for their graphics cards.

Alongside Windows 8.1, AMD’s Catalyst 14.6 Beta driver supports Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit version with SP1 or higher). There is no mention of Windows Vista, meaning that this driver may not be compatible with that OS.

Those interested can download these new drivers from here.

And here is the complete changelog for AMD’s Catalyst 14.6 Beta drivers:

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst™ 14.6 Beta Driver for Windows

  • Performance improvements
    • Watch Dogs performance improvements
      • AMD Radeon R9 290X – 1920×1080 4x MSAA – improves up to 25%
      • AMD Radeon R9290X – 2560×1600 4x MSAA – improves up to  28%
      • AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X)  – 92% scaling
    • Murdered Soul Suspect performance improvements
      • AMD Radeon R9 290X – 2560×1600 4x MSAA – improves up to 16%
      • AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X)  – 93% scaling
  • AMD Eyefinity enhancements:
    • Mixed Resolution Support
      • A new architecture providing brand new capabilities
      • Display groups can be created with monitors of different resolution  (including difference sizes and shapes)
      • Users have a choice of how surface is created over the display group
        1. Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
        2. Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays.
        3. Expand – create a virtual Eyefinity surface using desktops as viewports onto the surface.
    • Eyefinity Display Alignment
      • Enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors
    • One-Click Setup
      • Driver detects layout of extended desktops
        1. Can create Eyefinity display group using this layout in one click!
  • New user controls for video color and display settings
    • Greater control over Video Color Management:
      • Controls have been expanded from a single slider for controlling Boost and Hue to per color axis
    • Color depth control for Digital Flat Panels (available on supported HDMI and DP displays)
      • Allows users to select different color depths per resolution and display
  • AMD Mantle enhancements
    • Mantle now supports AMD Mobile products with Enduro technology
      • Battlefield 4:  AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1366×768; high settings) – 21% gain
      • Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; high settings) – 14% gain
      • Star Swarm:  AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; medium settings) – 274% gain
    • Enables support for Multi-GPU configurations with Thief (requires the latest Thief update)
  • AMD AM1 JPEG decoding acceleration
    • JPEG decoding acceleration was first enabled on the A10 APU Series in AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta, and has now been extended to the AMD AM1 Platform
    • Provides fast JPEG decompression
    • Provides Power Efficiency for JPEG decompression

Known Issues  

  • Running Watch Dogs with a R9 280X CrossFire configuration may result in the application running in CrossFire software compositing mode

  • Enabling Temporal SMAA in the AMD Catalyst Control center under a CrossFire configuration when playing Watch Dogs will result in Flickering

  • AMD CrossFire configurations with Eyefinity enabled will see application stability with BattleField 4 or Thief when running Mantle

  • Catalyst Install Manager text is covered by Express/Custom radio button text

  • Express Uninstall does not remove C:\Program Files\(AMD or ATI) folder