I have the 4870 as well. I think this last update- 12.1- may actually have improved my performance by a bit. (I could just be imagining it.) Thanks OP for the link and news.

i think the 12.1 drivers fixed the anti-aliasing issue where there was blue lines around weapons in dark areas.

and it only took amd over a month to solve this issue

It should perform worse than 11.11b or c preview drivers.

Remember there are two tracks for AMD drivers, the release (stable) track and the performance/preview track.

The stable track release in time for their monthly numbers, so november's stable release is 11.11. December's is 11.12. These drivers are tested thoroughly and only include features that have also been tested for a while. The preview track however are advanced viewings of features that might one day make it into the stable track. So 11.11b/c etc. contain new features that haven't been tested/polished enough to make it to the stable driver - but we can expect them to be included a few months down the line.

(if you want further distinction, performance drivers are ones with specific quick hotfixes, such as 11.11b/c, while preview drivers are advance viewings of a future possible stable track release).

This is a little confusing, but that's why they are hidden away so that only those people who are interested and can understand these things (and understand that they are not final/polished products) should be using them. If you are unsure, stick to the stable release set which is the one Steam will find for you.

i found this http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-november-drivers-11-11-and-11-12-beta-benchmark, hope it will help a bit

Hi, i am using 11.11c, and i don't experience issues.
I will try 12.1 a bit later.

They introduced some nice things in the CCC, so I think it's a good upgrade.
Most importantly an easy way to setup new profiles for any game/applications, with specific settings.
Performance differences are a little uncertain at the moment.

However with all the changes to the CCC I'd say it is a must, at the least it gives more options for those who want to Use 8aa/16af in one game, but 2aa/2af in another, without any need manually change it each time.

Is there any word on the black screen crashes and these drivers? Still patiently awaiting either a driver fix or a gameside fix from bethesda :/

you know even wtih a known poor card (faulty) that bsods and such.. i cannot get it to produce a black screen so i'm really curious to know what is causing it.

Thanks for the link. Shame the tests are done so badly as to be no use in forming a conclusion (he doesn't provide any confidence intervals/variance for his data, and instead tries to accentuate statistically irrelevant differences by adding the results together :/)

Performance wise, it doesn't seem to make sense to go with the 12.1 preview. The http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-11-12-whql-benchmark show the 11.12 WHQL driver is almost 10% faster than the 12.1 preview, at least on their test setup.

My 4870 performance improved with 11.11a

well it worked on me..i upgraded to an nvidia

i think if they made and sold the cards they might be a lil bit more worried about people changing camps.
its a lot harder to win back customers who get a better driver service with nvidia and spent months waiting for amd/ati to stop pissing about with cfx/sli and fix the major issues..

not sure whether I should have started a new topic. with these drivers I get a strange bug, as if the filter that makes everything blend into a blue-greyish hue at night (which is correct since colors in the dark are less distinguishible) is not being applied, so what I get is a weird purple-red hue especially noticeable on mountains and sky, although everything in the world is affected and looks definitely wrong.
I've tried pretty much any possible driver setting and ran the game on default ini's to no avail. I'm running vanilla.
Has anybody noticed this? Installed 12.1's, I was around Whiterun at night. After an aurora borealis all night colors looked completely screwed up. Can't tell if it's a game bug or driver related.
Anyone?

12.1 works great for me. Gave me about 2-3 fps boost over 11.11c. Still have some microstutter though, mostly when exiting a building in a city. I have a mid-level card, but the framerates are smooth and I am rock stable (2 ctd in a month of playing).

Windows 7 x64
8gb DDR3 1600
Athlon II x4 (overclocked to 3.7)
XFX 6770 1gb.

anyone having the problem where settings aren't being applied scaling and gpu scaling?

I know that im off topic here but http://benchmark3d.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-benchmark that might help.

Are most of these problems only happening to people with multi-card setups? I have an AMD 6850, single-card (no Crossfire). I don't think I'm getting any graphics problems, and actually, a driver update about a week after Skyrim launched seemed to stop the frequent CTD's I was experiencing, so just wondering if this thread should be addressed more specifically to people with multi-card installs?

almost all the problems that people are having related to video cards are those running SLI or Crossfire... aka .. multiple cards...

those running single cards generally are flawlessly expericing a good game.... aside from the few getting still some issues which is damn hard to pinpoint the issue.

Using the 12.1 preview, and it worked fine for me

So maybe I'm missing something obvious here. I've got 12.1 installed now. I want to create an application profile for Skyrim. In the 3D Application Settings menu I chose the options I want. I clicked the save button. It opened a dialogue which was confusing at first until I read the help which said to go find the program the profile is going to be for. I navigated to TESV.EXE and clicked "Open" which is the only option other than "Cancel" on the dialogue box. Nothing happens at that point. No file is saved. No profile is created. No error messages come up. Nothing.

Performance wise, it would seem 11.10 WHQL is still the best, given what he writes at the bottom "I can’t stress this enough, the best driver for Skyrim is 11.10 WHQL…".

If this is true then I have to ask just what the f... AMD is doing.
I will download those and test for myself.

Thanks or the hint @OP what I do not get why does AMD always fail with their websites? They constantly shift download locations like for a year or so it was best to use just sites.amd.com/us/game (if you didn't needed preview drivers). Since a month or two one can not find the Southbridge or Raid drivers there anymore...And why did they fail to post their 12.1 preview message on sites.amd.com/us/game where I downloaded the 11.12 just this morning...

talk about fail.. how bout going to NVidia's website and selecting a driver.... clicking the continue button and being presented with the NVidia home page repeatedly..

Just the other day i had to manually add a download location to the address bar to get it to download...... simply because of an NVidia website glitch and occasionally i see them moving stuff around too where old links do not work...

You're going to trust some cracker-jack site over AMD's own advice about their drivers?

Personally i'm seeing improvements every time i update to the latest beta/preview for skyrim.... just unfortunately not for crossfire support...

but that's just me... and about 10 other ATI computers...