ATI Catalyst™ 9.12 Driver – What’s New?

  • Jay Marsden
  • Graphics

ATI Catalyst™ 9.12 Driver – What’s New?

It’s that time again for the ATI Catalyst™ driver update!  We have been getting great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site.  Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.

*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new in ATI Catalyst 9.12:

ATI Catalyst™ support for DirectCompute 10.1

  • This release of ATI Catalyst provides full support for DirectCompute 10.1 for the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 4700 Series for both single card and configurations supporting ATI CrossFireX™ technology.

OpenGL 3.2 extension support

  • This release of ATI Catalyst provides support for OpenGL 3.2 extension support on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 Series GPUs.
  • The following is a list of OpenGL™ 3.2 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.12:
    • Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.50.
    • BGRA vertex component ordering (GL_ARB_vertex_array_bgra).
    • Drawing commands allowing modification of the base vertex index (GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex).
    • Shader fragment coordinate convention control (GL_ARB_fragment_coord_conventions).
    • Provoking vertex control (GL_ARB_provoking_vertex).
    • Seamless cube map filtering (GL_ARB_seamless_cube_map).
    • Multisampled textures and texture samplers for specific sample locations (GL_ARB_texture_multisample).
    • Fragment depth clamping (GL_ARB_depth_clamp).
    • Geometry shaders (GL_ARB_geometry_shader4).
    • Fence sync objects (GL_ARB_sync).
    • transform_feedback2
    • texture_cubemap_array

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.12 driver release for Linux include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

  • This release of ATI Catalyst driver release for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
  • RedFlag DT6.0 SP3
  • SLED and SLES 10SP3

ATI Catalyst Control Center™ –  Linux Edition:  Displays pages: user interface enhancements

  • This release of ATI Catalyst driver release for Linux introduces support for a number of new display features found in the ATI Catalyst Control Center –  Linux Edition, highlights include:
    • CRT/VGA settings
    • TV settings
    • Component Video settings
    • Support for display projectors
  • New Size and Position page
  • New HDTV page
  • New option for “Automatic setting for Size and Position adjustment”
  • New image quality settings:  “flicker removal” and “S-Video/Composite sharpness”
  • New Scaling Options page – new Overscan / Underscan controls
  • New custom mode support for 576 modes
  • Enables quick display configuration of display projectors

For more information on ATI Catalyst 9.12 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst 9.12 release notes.

To download the Catalyst 9.12 driver, click here.

In addition, the ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix driver will be made available today!

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release includes:

Support for the OpenCL™ GPU component of the ATI Stream SDK v2.0

  • The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release provides full support for GPU acceleration of OpenCL when used in conjunction with the ATI Stream SDK v2.0.   This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series and the AMD FireStream™ 9200 Series of products.

For more information about ATI Stream technology and OpenCL, please visit. http://www.amd.com/stream

Support for ATI CrossFireX™ technology on configurations employing ATI Eyefinity technology configurations The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release provides support for ATI CrossFireX™ technology on configurations employing ATI Eyefinity technology, allowing users to take advantage of their additional GPUs for increased gaming performance when driving high resolution displays

  • Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series

Support for DisplayPort audio

  • The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release adds support for DisplayPort audio for DisplayPort panels

Fixes the following issues:

  • Resident Evil 5 – Performance drop during the opening cinematic
  • Call of Duty Modern Warfare – Negative performance observed with a configuration supporting  ATI CrossFireX™ technology when using the thermal scope
  • Wheelman – Game freezes while loading the game menu
  • Flashing in various OpenGL titles – City of Heroes, Enemy Territories: Quake Wars, and Chronicles of Riddick
  • Heaven benchmark (DirectX 9 mode) – Grass flicker and white boarders observed around the edges

Grab the hotfix driver : Here

Till Next Month, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

181 Responses

  1. Reuben

    after upgrading, bsod’s right before it boots completely.

    any help?

  2. Carlos

    I’ve had a Toshiba laptop with ati Radeon HD-2400. I use linux (slackware), and this last driver catalyst 9.12 simply doesn’t work. After install, my X-server just hangs out, stops working and leave with a system totally halted. I had to downgrade to 9.11 again to have something functional… but none of the Xkb drivers works, which is annoying trying to fix my keyboard layout. Will there be any “decent” driver linux compatible soon?

  3. Splat

    Once upon a time I owned an ATI X800 and it was great! Had very little issues if any… after that I spent sometime with nVidia after I upgraded my PC a couple of years ago, they simply had a more powerful card at the time. I recently upgraded again and because of my experience with ATI those years ago and what I read about the new 5xxx series I thought I would steer back to an ATI card. So I went and got myself an Asus HD5870 and I was truly impressed by the power. However, I have been truly DISAPPOINTED with the drivers and the constant intermittant crashing, from games simply freezing, to pretty lines and in worse case scenarios a good ol’ BSOD. For the time being I have had to revert back to an nVidia card I had put away for that just-in-case, my trusty GTX285 which has been working problem free. Trying to raid in WoW with a card that has a botched driver and of course likes to freeze up at the worst of times is a no go! So I would suggest you guys over there at ATI pull your finger out and seriously test the next driver past breaking point, particularly where W7 and DX11 are concerned. Put simply if the effort doesn’t go in to fix these rather crippling issues I will be either returning the card or selling it on eBay.

  4. Marcel

    i have problem with v-sync in many games on my ATI 4870/catalyst 9,10/11/12.Under XP is all fine but under W7 64 bit v-sync/allways on/ do not function and have horrible screen tearing or video stuttering in games.Torchlight,Serious Sam HD,Dawn of War 2… sorry my english is poor.I am from slovakia :)

    core i5 750
    4 GB RAM
    ATI 4870 1gb
    W7 64 bit home premium

  5. Robert

    My machine just totally turns off after heaven benchmark and 3d vantage always at the same points,only does it in drivers 9.11 and 9.12 ,doesnt do it in others

    i use a 4870×2 and now a straight 4870 in crossfire
    its NOT a power issue or cooling as i am custom water ,as no other games do it at all,all maxed at 1920 x1080

  6. Rando

    hey:)
    does anyone have 4870×2 and cat 9.12???
    in mass effect 2 get black screen after few minutes gameplay and red light on my hd 4870×2 turns on….
    is it drivers error? no other game does that…

  7. Jacob

    Wallie :
    Yeah this newest driver is a joke the hot fix did fix the stripes but only now to cause it to freeze up or have a driver failure message pop up. come on please don’t make me go back to NIVIDA =(

    the newest drivers (9.12) came nowhere close to fixing the stripes for me. i still get crashes doing everything from watching browsing the internet to playing mw2. sometimes it crashes to a different color though (still with the stripes). with the 2-3 times i have to look at the stupid vertical lines before i hard reset my system, i’m now finding myself becoming rather excited when it displays a color i haven’t seen before. unfortunately i think my excitement may be running out as in the less than 2 months i have owned my 5770 i must be close to having seen every color known to man.

  8. Josie Wales

    Read my previous post..the Catalyst 10.1 drivers for Winxp 32bit will not detect my Hanns-G HH251 monitor.
    XFX RADEON 5770.

    • Josie Wales

      The dvi connection from the video card to hdmi monitor connection solved the problem…I was using dvi to vga; there is no dvi to dvi connection; sorry about the fuss but the other way always worked before..Tks. for the blog.

  9. mbojan

    Hi i hawe big problem with my ati gainward 4870, 512
    .I buy this card last week and my ati control center allways crashes,…no game will work,….it says that is directx problem but i install lots of directx versions with no sucsess,…what is the problem im using core2quad cpu 2.66 and Gigabyte GA-P35-DSL4 board with 8 gb of ram. I had never problems before with my old 8800GTX,…thx for help :)

  10. Slicer Jen

    Yeah, when we can safely say we have entered bios with every combination possible, uninstalled/reinstalled old drivers and new drivers, updated drivers and other video cards, and spoken to others that have the same exact issue…and oh btw when the mouse pointer gets bigger and while watching videos you get white dots and if you use the slider on youtube movies it eventually crashes and the message “AMD Display driver crashed’….yah, don’t tell me I don’t know how to install a driver. I spoke to the guy at the store I returned my card at and his friend had the same issues and was currently awaiting a ‘hotfix’. And yes, fellow 4870 buyers, that was my card too. This is why we need nVidia’s competition, so companies can at least try to put out a polished product instead of a box of chips and a blueprint on how to solder it all together.