AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver 14.6 Beta 1.0

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

Watch Dogs performance improvements:
- AMD Radeon R9 290X - 1920x1080 4x MSAA – improves up to 25%
- AMD Radeon R9290X - 2560x1600 4x MSAA – improves up to 28%
- AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) - 92% scaling

Murdered Soul Suspect performance improvements:

- AMD Radeon R9 290X – 2560x1600 4x MSAA – improves up to 16%
- AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 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:

- Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
- Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays.
- 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
- 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 (1366x768; high settings) – 21% gain
- Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; high settings) – 14% gain
- Star Swarm: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; 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

Important Notes:

- Starting with AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta, AMD will no longer support Windows 8.0 (and the WDDM 1.2 driver)
- Users should upgrade (for Free) to Windows 8.1 to take advantage of the new features found in the AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta
- AMD Catalyst 14.4 will remain available for users who wish to remain on Windows 8
- A future AMD Catalyst release will allow for the WDDM 1.1 (Windows 7 driver) to be installed under Windows 8.0 for those users unable to upgrade to Windows 8.1
- This Catalyst Driver is provided "AS IS", and under the terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement provided with it.