14 DAY TRIAL // It seems to be that time of the month again, when Advanced Micro Devices is ready to unleash its newest version of the driver responsible for keeping its various graphics products running.
Advanced Micro Devices, like NVIDIA, releases a new graphics driver on a monthly basis, each time bringing new features, performance optimizations and/or new product support, provided new models were revealed in the time since the last update.
The newest installment of the AMD Catalyst software suite is the one labeled 11.5 and modifies both the display driver itself and the AMD Catalyst Control Center.
More to the point, the package includes the Control Center version 8.85, AMD display driver version 8.85, the HydraVision technology for Windows XP/Vista/7 and a Southbridge/IXP Driver.
Among other things, HydraGrid (a feature of HydraVision) will now recognize user created Bezels and can also align Eyefinity display layouts via the “Automatic Grid” option.
To this new functionality are added the benefits of some fixed issues previously present in Windows 7.
For one, applications will no longer crash while transcoding MPEG-2 video to H.264, and video will not lag while transcoding H.264 to AVCHD.
What's more, PowerDVD will not crash randomly anymore when having the HDMI 8 Channel option enabled, nor will it suffer from intermittent crashed after enabling or disabling crossfire.
AMD also made sure that playing VCI videos for over four hours on Windows Media Player will not cause black screens or random video hangs.
Finally, the Avivo settings will display correctly in the AMD Vision Engine Control Center even after plugging in a secondary display.
Those who own a desktop or laptop AMD graphics adapter from the Radeon or FireStream series can get the appropriate driver version from one of the links below.
AMD Catalyst Display Driver 11.5 for XP
AMD Catalyst Display Driver 11.5 for XP64
AMD Catalyst Display Driver 11.5 for Vista, Win7
AMD Catalyst Display Driver 11.5 for Vista64, Win7 x64 AMD Catalyst Mobility Display Driver 11.5