ATI Catalyst 6.12 Released

[Jonas Beckman]

The new 6.12 drivers seems to be out.

Driver link

New Features
This release of the ATI Catalyst™ software suite introduces DirectX video acceleration for CrossFire™ enabled configurations.

Issues Resolved in Catalyst® Software Suite 6.12
The following section provides a summary of the issues that are resolved in the latest release of Catalyst®. These include:

Black&White 2: Slow frame rate is no longer noticed when playing the game under Windows XP when setting the graphics to the lowest possible settings. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23714
Neverwinter Nights: Enabling super AA and CrossFire within the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in display corruption being noticed within the game's main menu. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23718
Catalyst® Control Center->CrossFire™: Attempting to resume from a standby state no longer results in the Windows XP operating system failing to respond when using a Radeon® X19x0 CrossFire™ Edition series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23713
Catalyst Control Center: Setting the language option to French for the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in the text found in Catalyst Control Center being cropped. This issue was known to occur under all supported operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23716
Using PowerDVD to playback a DVD no longer results in the playback appearing choppy. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23719
Catalyst Control Center: The translation for Centered Timings is now translated properly for Simplified Chinese. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24337
The index in the Catalyst Control Center help no longer contains double entries for various aspects. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24338
Catalyst Control Center->Help: Clicking on the CrossFire help no longer results in a page not found error message being displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24339
Using the Avivo Video Converter to convert a video file no longer exceeds the 300MB for a VCD encoded file. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24340
Catalyst Control Center->Help: Clicking on certain help file links no longer results in the incorrect help file being displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24341
Catalyst Control Center: The Profile Manager is now translated properly for Italian. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24342
Catalyst Control Center: Various options such as Select a Language and Deinterlacing for the Thai language are now translated properly. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24343
Changing the language to Korean in the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in the degree symbol appearing corrupted within the rotation page. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24344
Catalyst Control Center->Basic View: Selecting Japanese as the language no longer results in various aspects of the Easy Setting Wizard and Setup Display Settings not being translated properly. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24345
Using hotkeys to switch between LCD mode and CRT+LCD mode no longer results in the hotkey function failing when attempting to switch back to LCD mode only. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24288
Using PowerDVD to playback a DVD no longer results in the playback appearing jittery. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23719
CrossFire: Playing Windows XP games such as Labyrinth or HyperBowl no longer results in display corruption being noticed in the game's menu page. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24335
Hardware acceleration no longer becomes disabled when running the HQV benchmark DVD with CrossFire enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24336
Known Issues for Catalyst® Software Suite 6.12

The following section provides a summary of open issues in the latest version of Catalyst®. These include:

Battlefield 2: Attempting to launch the game under Windows XP with the in-game display setting at 1920x1440 or 2048x1536 and AA set to 6x may result in the game failing to launch. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22817
Sniper Elite: Playing the game under Windows XP with a Radeon® X1600 series installed may result in texture corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22820
Enabling CrossFire™ may result in display corruption being noticed when playing a DVD or media clip using either WinDVD 7, Windows Media Player or PowerDVD 6. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22806
Catalyst® Control Center->Basic View: Connecting a secondary display device and attempting to enable it, may result in the inability to enable the device when using Basic view. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23446
Intermittent display issues may be noticed when using an Apple Cinema HD 30" display device. Contact AMD Customer Care for a solution. AMD Engineering is aware of the issue and a resolve will be available in an up-coming software driver release. Further details can be found in topic number
During video playback, DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) may not be available when CrossFire mode is enabled. This will result in software mode video playback. To enable DXVA, CrossFire™ mode must be disabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23447
Uninstalling the graphics drivers may result in some of the files and folder failing to be removed in the Program File folder. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23715
Attempting to maximize an OpenGL application window may result in either the OpenGL window maximizing slowly or the system failing to respond. Further details can be found in topic number 737-23717
Clicking on the Restore Factory Defaults button found in the Catalyst Control Center->TV Properties may result in the TV position failing to be restored to the factory defaults. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24346
Catalyst® Control Center->Basic View: Connecting a secondary display device and attempting to enable it, may result in the inability to enable the device when using Basic view. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24347
Setting the display panel attributes to Scale Image to Full Panel Size, followed by entering an S3 state may result in the desktop failing to resume to a full screen mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24348
Catalyst Control Center: Connecting an HDTV or DFP display device may result in some of the HDTV formats being listed twice in the Catalyst Control Center->Digital Panel Properties->HDTV Support. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24349
Catalyst Control Center->Digital Panel Properties->HDTV Support: Adding custom formats to the 1080i and attempting to remove those custom formats may result in the formats failing to removed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24350
Catalyst Control Center->Help: Clicking on the Monitor and Digital Panel Properties found in the Contents section of the Help may result in a message indicating that the page cannot be displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-24351

Moderator Edit:

Moved into its own thread since it is about the new 6.12's not the 6.11's and made a sticky to replace the old 6.11 catalyst thread - SortYa

[7thSeal]

Thanks for the heads-up, note also I've changed the link for the reason described in the Admin edit at the bottom of this post.

[Jonas Beckman]

Heh, totally forgot about the time limit AMD/ATI uses for some of the pages.

Anyway there's no real difference from the 6.11 but fixes and improvements are always welcome even though performance may remain the same.

They also fixed the EATM/ALPHA aa modes it seems so I can now enjoy those additions in games such as Oblivion.
(Made a post about it in Oblivion technical - basically better Adaptive AA with more performance and better visuals)

Though my 9800XT is fairly old by now so the drivers are probably even better for newer cards such as the X1000 series and perhaps the X100 series. (Served me quite well though and still performs OK so I'm happy with it for now)

EDIT: For EATM and Alpha AA just add these two new string values to the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/*/" path.

EATM "1"
ATMSHARPENMODE "1"
(Name and value, may be more than one video ID so add it to all of those)

[Danny]

Yupp, i started playing with EATM and ATMSHARPENMODE today and after some testing, i really like the results.

In terms of quality, QualityAAA still looks nicer (fences in HL2). But QualityAAA, as most of you ati-users know, comes with an huge performance hit in certain games (e.g. oblivion). It´s not playable for me. This is where EATM really makes it worth it.

EATM in oblivion not only improved quality, but also at an very small performance hit. I don´t have any numbers, but i didn´t notice any diffrence in performance with/without EATM and hence i take it the fps-hit is rather small (a guess would be 4-6fps) where QAAA takes my fps down ~30fps in the forrest parts of the game.

Can´t wait for it to be included in the CCC

[connos]

You can enable ATMSHARPENMODE in ATI tray tools by editing the New AA and AF Methods.dtb in the database folder in ATI tray tools installation folder with notepad and add this lines

Value13=ATMAlphaFix,ATMAlphaFix,0,0,0,
Value14=ATMAlphaSharpenBias,ATMAlphaSharpenBias,0, 0,0,
Value15=ATMAlphaSharpenmode,ATMAlphaSharpenmode,0, 0,0,
Value16=ATMAlphaSharpenScale,ATMAlphaSharpenScale, 0,0,0,

[TheDooce21]

Originally Posted by Jonas Beckman

Heh, totally forgot about the time limit AMD/ATI uses for some of the pages.

Anyway there's no real difference from the 6.11 but fixes and improvements are always welcome even though performance may remain the same.

They also fixed the EATM/ALPHA aa modes it seems so I can now enjoy those additions in games such as Oblivion.
(Made a post about it in Oblivion technical - basically better Adaptive AA with more performance and better visuals)

Though my 9800XT is fairly old by now so the drivers are probably even better for newer cards such as the X1000 series and perhaps the X100 series. (Served me quite well though and still performs OK so I'm happy with it for now)

EDIT: For EATM and Alpha AA just add these two new string values to the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/*/" path.

EATM "1"
ATMSHARPENMODE "1"
(Name and value, may be more than one video ID so add it to all of those)

I plan on using this mainly for oblivion due to the small performance hit vs. using Quality AA.

A couple questions...I add those strings to the proper directory, and set the value to 1 to enable? Does setting the value to 0 disable it? And if so, is this the only way to control it without the use of ATT? Should I be using this in place of regular AA because it would be real nice to just enable it and leave it.

Stuff like this makes me wish everything was included someway or another between game options and the CCC.

[Jonas Beckman]

Correct, you just create two string values and assign them a value of either 1 or 0 depending on if you want to enable or disable them.

It's currently the only way to add it without using ATT and there's even some reports of ATT creating some problems when used to add them though I never noticed any issues with it.

Also the more AA and AAA you use the better the effect will look since it's mainly a alternative to Adaptive AA. (Same as Adaptive looking better with more AA)

I haven't really compared the effect to the normal AAA method but my first impressions are that it looks really good but depending on the hardware there may be a few issues such as the alpha enabled models becomming transparent.
(Have this issue with the trees in Oblivion during certain view angles)

There's a thread about the effect here with alot of screens from a few games and some comparison shots between EATM, Alpha, EATM + Alpha and AAA. -> http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...3874363&page=4

EDIT: Seems I was wrong, Alpha AA is not supposed to be a string value, it's supposed to be a binary value, whoops.
(Managed to stop it from crashing and hanging by turning off Tray Tools wich I used to add the values - seems the fps counter or somethinig similar caused it)

EDIT2: Wrong again, had the wrong value enabled, still crashes now and then with alpha sharpen aa together with eatm.
(Guess it's a hardware limitation then, still not really problematic though some objects are transparent after a certain range or near other alpha objects but since everything looks better that's just minor stuff)

EDIT3: Heh, seems it can be all maner of values since both string and binary worked.
(ATT added it via a binary but some forums said it should be a string - seems both work though I wonder wich one is best)

[framaris]

Today I updated the drivers of my video cards to 6.12

On the first system (1900XT 512MB), install OK, no extra performance noticeable.

On the second system (1950PRO 256MB), Couldn’t install without fault(s) (using setup.exe) so I did it manually in save mode. I also updated ATI tray tool. Performance wise, it has improved almost 200 points in 3DMark 06.

I reinstall my old PC (9800PRO 128MB) with the new Catalyst 6.12. No problems and no change in benchmarks.

PS: I never use or install the control center, so I can’t comment on it.

XP PRO SP2 (updated)
DirectX 9.0c (December update)
ATI Catalyst 6.12
ATI Tray Tool v1.2.6.964

[TheDooce21]

Here's is a pair of comparison screenshots I just took with Oblivion with EATM and Alpha Sharpening. Although you can enable these features with ATT, I would suggest that you just add the registry strings instead due to some crashing issues people are having.

2xAA alone

2xAA+EATM+Alpha Sharpening

Switch back and forth between screenshots, keeping your eye on the trees.

I would suggest everyone that uses AA and Adaptive AA make a transition to AA+EATM and Alpha Sharpening...The quality is unmached with almost no performance hit.

[cinemod]

Hi everyone,

I recently installed the ATI 6.12 driver w/ Catalyst.

I followed the uninstall instructions including removing ATI entries from the
registry.

When I went into Catalyst, and selected 3D, I got a popup notification:

"The currently used OpenGL driver does not support the required extentions to run the 3D preview"

I uninstalled, re-installed my previous drivers - and still get the same error.

I uninstalled again, rebooted twice, and shutdown the PC for 10 minutes and still get the error.

Even URLs in my browser load with a top-to-bottom effect - like I have a cheap VGA card.

I Googled the error and searched this forum for a while and found no common cause or resolution.

Any recommendations?

The card is a 9600XT 256MB

best regards,
cinemod

Administrator Edit:

Merged into existing 6.12 Driver thread - post in existing threads when one exists on a similar topic