AMD issued a new WHQL-signed Catalyst driver. Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, along with Catalyst 12.7 beta, were released on Thursday. Catalyst 12.6 WHQL ships with a wide range of stability optimizations, while 12.7 beta ships with the same, plus performance optimizations for a wide range of games.

With Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, AMD fixed several outstanding bugs such as GPUs with ZeroCore hanging when the system goes to S2/S3 sleep, certain CrossFire setups hanging after cutscenes in Call of Duty: Black Ops, display corruption in Heroes and Generals in DirectX 11 mode, CrossFire + Eyefinity with Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs resulting in BSOD errors, etc. Catalyst 12.7 beta includes all these, plus performance improvements for games, except that it lacks WHQL certification. Optimizations include up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, 15% in Total War: Shogun, 10% in DiRT 3, 6% in Batman: Arkham City, and 3% in Battlefield 3.

A list of changes follows - Resolved Issues:

• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Tri-CrossFire configurations + Eyefinity no longer results in a BSOD when launching a DirectX application
• AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations no longer results in a BSOD when using desktop applications
• AMD Catalyst 12.6 includes some additional fixes(not found in the AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 graphics cards for issues related to the GPU hanging when the system goes to sleep. Please ensure that your System BIOS is up to date. Some occurrences of this issue may be related to outdated System BIOS.
• Resolves CrossFire scaling issues seen in AMD Catalyst 12.4 with Elder Scrolls: Skyrim CrossFire
• AMD Catalyst Control Center Overdrive page is no longer intermittently missing
• AMD Catalyst Control Center GPU Activity gauge is no longer missing
• AMD Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Configuration no longer results in system hang after cinematic in Call Of Duty: Black Ops
• Heroes and Generals: Blocky corruption in scenes with smoke effects when run in DirectX 11 mode are no longer experienced.
• Dirt Showdown: Improves scaling for CrossFire configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• HDMI audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV is powered Off/On.

Performance Highlights of 12.7 BETA:

• Up to 25% in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
• Up to 3% in Battlefield 3
• Up to 6% in Batman: Arkham City
• Up to 3% in Dues Ex: Human Revolution
• Up to 6% in Crysis 2
• Up to 15% in Total War: Shogun
• Up to 8% in Crysis Warhead
• Up to 5% in Just Cause 2
• Up to 10% in Dirt 3