Download AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.8

The newest Catalyst driver suite from Advanced Micro Devices, version 12.8 composed of the AMD display driver, the AMD Catalyst Control Center and the AMD Vision Engine Control Center, has been completed and released.

We'll first list the things that used to cause problems but will work fine once the new software package is properly installed on a Radeon system (desktops and laptops apparently).

Under Windows XP, there is just one fix: black screens should no longer appear randomly while running QQ Dancer.

Windows 7 is where most of the bug fixes were made, and they don't only have to do with games, though they make up a large part of it. Though eliminating graphical corruption and hangs is all well and good, AMD also made sure that overscan and underscan settings were correctly restored when rebooting the PC.

Furthermore, when switching a PC-linked HDTV off or on, audio will no longer be disabled. Not only that, but there should not be any instances when the system hangs upon returning from sleep mode.

That said, there should be no more flickering texts in Shogun 2, or black screens in Max Payne 3 (DirectX 11). Speaking of which, Max Payne 3 will no longer crash while applying in game settings.

That leaves us with Windows 8 fixes. Apart from the few game refinements, green corruption is gone from the Metro and other video players, while blocky video corruption has been removed from VLC. PowerDVD will prevent system hangs from now on as well.

And thus we reach the point where we say what new things the driver brings, like Target-Independent Rasterization, for one (a new rendering path that “enables superior anti-aliasing in Direct3D driver applications”).

Secondly, Native Stereo 3D support is included, useful in Windows 8, where stereoscopic 3D gaming and video playback is natively supported.

Thirdly, AMD tossed in optimized GPU power consumption, better sleep/resume performance and smoother screen rotation when applicable.

There are some issues left to squash, but we'll let everyone go through the list in their own time. The details are found at the download locations listed below.

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.8 for XP

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.8 for XP64

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.8 for Vista, Windows 7 x86, Windows 8 x86

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.8 for Vista64, Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64