AMD Catalyst™ Driver Windows® 8 Release Preview
Last Updated
5/31/2012
Article Number
GPU-153
Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ feature preview driver for the Windows® 8 Release Preview
Featuring support for the new WDDM 1.2 driver model, this new driver enables customers to utilize the model’s features as applications are updated to leverage them. These features include:
Support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series.
Native Stereo 3D support: Windows 8 natively supports stereoscopic 3D gaming and videos via compatible applications. Middleware applications will not be required for such apps.
Unified Video API: Video playback has been integrated into the DirectX® 11 API, enabling simultaneous video and gaming content. Transcoding performance may also be improved for supporting applications.
Optimized screen rotation for rotation-aware devices.
Improved sleep/resume performance.
Optimized GPU power consumption.
Support for AMD Features:
AMD Eyefinity
OpenCL™
OpenGL
UVD
AMD Dual Graphics/AMD CrossFire™ Technology
AMD Overdrive™
AMD Catalyst Control Center/Vision Engine Control Center
Known issues found in the AMD Catalyst feature preview for Windows 8 (these issues will be addressed in the AMD production release for Windows 8).
AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 performance in DirectX 9 applications may be slower under Windows 8 vs. Windows 7.
AMD CrossFireX configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 in DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 applications may be slower under Windows 8 vs. Windows 7.
AMD CrossFireX configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and the AMD Radeon HD 7700 in OpenCL accelerated applications may cause a BSOD or system hang.
Blacklight Retribution (DirectX11 mode) played with a CrossFire configuration may result in a system crash when launching the application (32-bit OS only).
Video corruption can be seen when playing back movie trailers with Metro video player.