14 DAY TRIAL // Since Advanced Micro Devices just days ago launched its Llano A-Series APUs with integrated graphics, the outfit also delivered its newest Catalyst driver, version 11.6 to be exact.
Advanced Micro Devices, much like NVIDIA, releases a new driver version once a month, as well as on any occasion when it happens to unveil a new graphics hardware product.
In this instance, it is the A-Series of Fusion Llano APUs (accelerated processing units) that was unveiled, with built-in Radeon HD 6000 series graphics.
Sure enough, the new drive package showed up in short order, ready to install version 8.861, along with HydraVision technology, the Southbridge/IXP driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center /AMD Vision Center Control Center (also version 8.861).
As always, new features were added and some issues were fixed, even enabling some performance gains in such games as Crysis, F1 2010, Far Cry 2 and HAWX, among others.
What's more, enthusiasts should get to experience performance gains of up to 10% even in the Unigine OpenGL tests (on Radeon HD 6000 cards).
As for actual new features, Microsoft video player should be able to more quickly decode MPEG-4 part 2 content, while YouTube should enjoy some image stabilization.
Furthermore, AMD Steady Video, based on the AMD APP technology, applies advanced algorithms in order to remove the problems of shaky or unstable video.
Meanwhile, among the bugs that the driver fixes are flashing tiles in F1 2010, incorrect game score computing in Windows Performance Index, screen tearing and rendering issues in some games, random BSOD errors and Crossfire mode enabling, plus poor performance in certain titles.
As always, graphics cards from both the desktop Radeon and the Mobility Radeon series are supported, along with FireStream and chipset product families.
End-users who own one of these many AMD video solutions need only follow one of the links below in order to download the appropriate driver version.
AMD Catalyst Display Driver 11.6 for XP
AMD Catalyst Display Driver 11.6 for XP64