3 Replies Latest reply: Jul 2, 2012 3:06 AM by Noel Carboni RSS

    ATI Catalyst 12.6 Released - Early Results

    Noel Carboni Community Member

      I 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

       

       

       

      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