ATI Catalyst 12.6 Released - Early Results
Noel Carboni Jul 1, 2012 8:37 AMI have updated my Windows 7 x64 workstation, equipped with VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 5670, to use the new ATI Catalyst 12.6 release, just out. I upgraded from their last stable release, 12.2.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx
Early indications, with just a few hours testing, are that the GPU-enhanced features of Photoshop CS6 x64 appear to work OK with this ATI driver version:
- I've been able to enable use of the Graphics Processor in Advanced mode, as with 12.2.
- I've been able to enable OpenCL and it appears to stay enabled.
- Liquify works well and it appears fast.
- Oil Paint works well and fast, though there's a slight flicker when panning the image.
- The new blurs (e.g., Iris Blur) work well and fast.
- Animated zooms are smooth.
- Painting with various brushes, including bristle and mixer brushes, seems just about as quick as with earlier driver versions.
- No change to the prior slow performance of the Smudge Tool with larger brushes. That may be a Photoshop issue.
- Accelerated color-management (Normal and Advanced GPU modes) appears to work the same as before. No change to the inaccuracy issue with documents in the ProPhoto RGB profile.
New Problems Discovered
- I now see a minor new transparency glitch, as reported by others in the thread below, where I did not see this problem with Catalyst 12.2: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4530588#4530588
Questionable Things With Workarounds (Geek Stuff):
- The driver insists on putting a couple of things in front of the system PATH on installation that are absolutely not needed, and worse, can cause problems on a development system (e.g., with Visual Studio). These can be removed without downside I can see.
- The installer sets a registry value that causes the recording of a whole bunch of extraneous events in the System Event Log. This can be undone by setting this value:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Atierecord]
"eRecordEnable"=dword:00000000
Recommendations:
Keep in mind I only updated to this version of the driver earlier today, so I haven't got a lot of experience with it yet. Early indications are that it's not bad, but if you're already on Catalyst 12.2 and you have a stable system, I see no reason to upgrade.
The new version does not appear to be faster, and there is the one new issue where there's a slight transparency glitch in 16 bits/channel documents showing on the screen after a canvas rotation.
I'll update this thread if I find more things to report. Given the new transparency issue and the fact that I had no problems with 12.2, I'll probably test with 12.6 for a few days then drop back to 12.2.
-Noel



