I had the same pixel issue with earlier drivers when using AA. updated, and now my game looks like im in some kind of aquarium. Only middle of the screen is sharp, sides of the screen are blurred. any ideas?

Is it any good or is it messing up like 12.2?

just tried it, and didnt solve my problem. My screen in both morrowind and skyrim (not any other games) are blurred from sides, only graphics in the middle of screen is sharp.

v12.04 is a complete mess when it comes to Skyrim in my Mobility Radeon HD3650 - going back to v12.03.

Doesn't fix the shadows misplacement graphical glitch (I posted in its topic just a few minutes ago) and completely messes textures, they become misplaced, broken and totally stretched... Also, the sky is now filled with shadow triangles.

I don't understand why AMD/ATI releases drivers without fully testing them, their drivers half of the time are complete crap.

Did you see any improvement in frame rate from 12.1 to 12.3?

12.4 out now: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

I didn't notice much difference in framerate personally. I also tried out MLAA since they rave a bit about its new performance in their patch notes but it bogged down my game a lot, not sure what the problem was, but MLAA looks like poop anyways. Best is 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA, with a quality but low blur FXAA using the Injector. Unfortunately the injector overwrites MSI Afterburners ability to show the OSD, and to limit frames, which is a necessity with Crossfire to avoid the dreaded frame skipping bug, when it barely goes over the Vsync threshold. Another thing annoying about every new display driver release is having to uninstall all AMD components, driver sweep it, then install the new ones and the latest CAP, as it's a huge hassle with all the waiting and restarting of the computer.

Crossfire 5850's @ 890/1225mhz
X4 965 @ 3.9ghz
7-8-7-24 8gb @ 1600mhz
RAID-0 1gb @ 7200rpm

12.4 seems to be working quite nicely.
1920x1080, 16x Anisotropic Filtering, FXAA, everything on Ultra. Visual quality is quite pleasant and I rarely catch it dropping below 60 FPS.

I thought if you enable FXAA it is best to disable MSAA?

Nah you can layer them if you want I feel MSAA does enough on its own in Skyrim as well as BF3. I have been on 12.1 best for BF3 going to give 12.4 a try.

Sorry I should have clarified that I personally think it looks best with 4xMSAA and a low blur, but high quality FXAA using the Injector. 2xMSAA uses about 50mb less Vram than 4x, and coupled with a proper FXAA setting it still looks nearly identical. I use 4xMSAA alone because of the limitation I listed above, but if anyone is having Vram issues such as with 1gb cards like my own, try out this mod http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9080 . It works wonders for reducing size with little-to-no hi-def DLC quality loss.

Does anyone have a link to the 12.3 drivers? 12.4 was nothing but low FPS for me.

I use the same settings and resolution.

So you are getting a higher framerate compared to 12.1, 12.2, 12.3 with these same settings?

Everything is set as "Use Application Settings" from HD AA with MLAA off, AF, Tesselation Off, "Catalyst-Ai" on Peformance and Enable Source.. Mipmap Detail is on Max Quality, Vsync is enabled unless appl specifies and AA performance mode with Triple Buff Enabled, 1.4 is a MESS stay away from this horrible drivers... i am still waiting for the drivers that boost performance like nvidia did... Come on AMD!

Not really, but at least it was stable. I jumped from v11.12 (also stable) to v12.3 at the time.

12.5 has been leaked, but i am kinda scared that it may mess everything again... if anyone dares to be the first lab rat to test it please let us know:

http://www.ngohq.com/news/21741-amd-catalyst-12-5-beta.html

Guinea pigging. After switching to 12.4 my game wont launch unless running in crossfire for some weird reason. Reverted back to 12.3 after full uninstall and driversweeper cleansing and it was still doing it. At this point I don't care about trying stuff haha.

I tried 12.5 and... they arent as bad as 11.4 but at least for skyrim they arent constant, in some areas they raise fps too much and in others it goes down to 21 and then starts raisin little by little, not worth installing them.


Here is how to fix catalyst it after a c*appy driver, just run AMD uninstaller in "add/remove programs" and let it finish, reboot and after reboot then install 11.11c, just after those are done try installing the ones you know do work (in this case 12.1 PREVIEW or 12.3) DO NOT UNINSTALL 11.11c and instead just install over them, this way fixes all my issues and i can go back to any previous driver.

It's still available at AMD's page here:

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx

For some reason AMD haven't yet updated the page to 12.4.

I think I am honestly really REALLY sick of AMD. As soon as I get the cash for it, I am buying a single 3gb Nvidia. No more crossfire, no more crappy drivers, no more 1gb Vram wall.

Me too, im getting either 560 or 660 when it arrives, no more AMD for me EVER.


According to this:


http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-8-97-18-april-benchmark/3


12.5 are supposed to gain a lot of fps, which they do! but they also lose twice the fps in worst case scenario... like i said in my previous comment 12.5 do seems to give higher framerate (confirmed with fraps) but when fps drop they do it much more than they would in 12.1 PREVIEW or 12.3, it also feels much stuttering on 12.5 than later drivers.

Hey, I have a question: Since I have a notebook I cannot use all driver versions and it's a while ago since I updated for the last time. Is the 12.X series generally better than what 11.11x offers? My current version in system manager is 8.911.0.0...

Same plan probably around XMAS time.

Here's what happens to my games (not only to Skyrim, although it is the most affected game) with v12.4 drivers, total texture mess:

It also didn't fix the shadows glitch related to the v1.5 patch that I was experiencing (thread over here: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1361153-update-15-shadows-are-invisable-move-with-camera-have-lines-issue-possably-figured-out/).

My only option was to revert back to v12.3 (staying with the shadows glitch, though), so I did a complete uninstall of the drivers (also using Driver Sweeper to delete any leftovers), so Windows could install the default Win7 drivers and then proceed to install AMD/ATI v12.3.

What I found was surprising to me... I discovered that the default Win7 AMD/ATI drivers work better than the drivers that AMD themselves release on my pc (ATI Mobility Radeon HD3650)!
Using the default drivers I don't get any more shadows glitches, no texture corruption, the weather/magic effects (and spider/cobwebs, etc) that were totally invisible are now visible... Skyrim is playable again!

I'm totally dumping AMD/ATI drivers for Skyrim and for now, until I need them for a new game, because the Win7 default ones are very operable with my current games.
Once I get the chance, I'm dumping AMD/ATI cards for good... It's a shame, but it's the truth.
They only get worse and worse in each driver release - at least nVidia are more responsible in that matter.

For the first time I can play Skyrim the way it was meant to be played... See what I did here?

Here's the Win7 default AMD/ATI driver's info:

PS: With the Win7 default AMD/ATI drivers I only get a minor glitch, sometimes there's a "ghost" effect on the grass.
Once I get the chance I'll upload a screenshot or a video. Does anyone know how to fix it?

All right--possibly against my better judgment, I decided the only way to find out what's what with 12.4 was to test for myself on my system, so I bit the bullet and upgraded. tl;dr: end verdict? ...These drivers work fine for me.

Longer explanation: my AMD card is a 6970 2GB, stock speeds and a custom fan profile run through MSI Afterburner 2.2.0. Everything in the CCC is set to let applications decide except for Vsync, which is always on, and Tesselation, which is set to AMD quality. I do not use CAP profiles.

For Skyrim itself: I run the game in windowed mode, 1440x800 resolution. Everything is set to Ultra except for shadows, which are on medium with a few ini tweaks. I do not use the HD texture DLC, but I do use a few other texture mods. Nothing too fancy. 8X AA, 16X AF, FXAA on, water set to reflect everything.

For installing the driver, I did my usual method. I disabled MSI Afterburner, then express uninstalled all AMD software (I have an Intel CPU, obviously; if you have an AMD-based one this is a terrible idea) via the Catalyst Install Manager. Let that do its thing. Rebooted, then installed 12.4. Reboot again, then turn MSI Afterburner back on. Everything went as normal there, for the record.

Then it was time to launch Skyrim up and get down to testing. For this, I launched Fraps for the first time in ages to get a more accurate feel for what was going on with FPS and so on. I also had a list of stuff I wanted to check out, since people had been reporting various issues in certain spots. I played the game for about 20-30 minutes...started in Honeyside, in Riften. I ran around Riften a bit, then fast traveled to Whiterun. Ran around Whiterun a bit, then fast traveled to Blind Cliff Cave (near Markarth). Ran around a bit there, both inside the dungeon (to test out combat) and out, and then jogged to Markarth and ran around Markarth a bit. Here's what I found:

- random texture corruption and triangles everywhere (reported by Raen Yrtham): not evident at any point throughout my testing. I saw no texture corruption whatsoever.
- z-fighting (flickering on distant mountain LOD) still present: check. Engine issue. Moving on.
- severe drop in performance/FPS: not evident. I had 58-60FPS pretty much throughout, even in combat with dragons and multiple Forsworn, with a few exceptions I'll go into below.
- FPS drop only when turning while walking/running: not evident.
- game freezing/crashing when casting lightning spells (reported on the AMD forums): not evident.
- game crashing, hard freezing, BSODing, etc: not evident, although obviously I'll need to play for more than 30 minutes to be absolutely sure. Fairly confident this won't be an issue however.
- I feel like I saw more obvious shadow pop-in, particularly while in Blind Cliff Cave. This may just be my imagination however.

- FPS drops when standing in the fabled "FPS kill zones" of Whiterun up by Dragonreach and just...Markarth: evident. In that magic spot in Whiterun I got dips down to 45FPS; in Markarth I saw as low as 37FPS at one point. However, it's worth noting that: I've never tested the Whiterun FPS kill zone extensively, and I literally have not been to Markarth in months. Game time and RL time. I haven't been there since prior to the optimizations we got in the 1.4 patch. So I cannot say with 100% certainty that those FPS drops are new and caused by 12.4. Also it's worth noting that, again, I'm not experiencing FPS drops anywhere else. Everywhere except the "FPS kill zones" is a pretty steady 60FPS.

So, that's what I've found out so far. I'll keep testing, of course. I intend to play more Skyrim tonight along with a couple of other games, like TF2. If I find anything that's deal-breaking I'll of course report back, but for now...I can't really say I see anything egregiously wrong with these drivers on my system. YMMV, but that's just what I've found.

The 12.4 drivers with latest CAP are working for me after two separate sessions of roughly 3 hours. No texture bugs and good fps.