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AMD Leo DirectX 11 Demo Released @ NGOHQ.com
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The Leo demo showcases a real-time DirectX 11 based lighting pipeline that is designed to allow for rendering scenes made of arbitrarily complex materials (including transparencies), multiple lighting models, and minimal restrictions on the number of lights that can be used - all while supporting hardware MSAA and efficient memory usage. Specifically, this demo uses DirectCompute to cull and manage lights in a scene. The end result is a per-pixel or per-tile list of lights that forward-render based shaders use for lighting each pixel. This technique also allows for adding one bounce global illumination effects by spawning virtual point light sources where light strikes a surface. Download"
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Catalyst 12.1 Windows 7 Driver Analysis
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If we look back to the 11.12 release that made its way to us just before December came to an end, it was one we said to skip, instead we suggested that you skipped the official WHQL driver and jumped onto the 12.1 preview that was released at the same time. This release sees a similar kind of setup when it comes to the release schedule. Outside of the new WHQL 12.1 driver we`re going to be looking at today, AMD have also released a Catalyst 12.2 preview driver."
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Preview: Intels Open-Source Driver Can Beat Mac OS X
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Thanks to recent advancements by Intel`s Open-Source Technology Center, the open-source Linux graphics driver not only supports more OpenGL 3.0 functionality than Apple`s Intel graphics driver for Mac OS X, but the performance is more competitive. In some cases, the OpenGL performance is now superior under Linux with the open-source driver that is developed by Intel in conjunction with the free software community. This article is looking at the performance of Intel Sandy Bridge graphics under Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and Ubuntu Linux."
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NVIDIA 2011 Driver Year In Review
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After re-testing every AMD Catalyst driver from 2011, the tables have now turned to do the same for the NVIDIA binary graphics drivers from 2011 as the year comes to an end."
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Catalyst 11.12 Windows 7 Driver Analysis
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I shouldn`t be doing this at the moment; instead I should be packing for my holidays, but after discovering that we haven`t missed a Catalyst Driver Analysis in seven years, I didn`t want this to be the first one. So with that said, we`ll move with haste and just get stuck into the performance side of things to see what exactly is going on with the latest driver set from AMD - the Catalyst 11.12. Quickly before we do that, though, we need to check out the release notes. To be honest, going through the release notes, you`re not going to see anything that stands out too much. We`ve got some improvements in some areas and as always we find ourselves with a decent list of resolved issues, but on the performance side of things we`re not seeing a whole lot."
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AMD Catalyst 2011 Driver Year In Review
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With AMD having published the Catalyst 11.12 driver yesterday, the year is now complete as far as their graphics drivers are concerned. As such, for the sixth year, it`s time for the year-in-review articles looking at how the NVIDIA and AMD GPU drivers have matured over the past twelve months in terms of features and OpenGL performance."
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AMD's Open-Source Radeon Driver After Four Years
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"While the BFS scheduler is getting ready to celebrate its
second birthday, in just three weeks AMD's open-source Radeon graphics
driver strategy for Linux will be turning four years old. It was on the
6th of September in 2007 that I exclusively broke the news to the world
on AMD's open-source strategy, which has ended up being a game-changer
in the Linux world. AMD continues to support open-source hardware
enablement on their latest graphics processors and recently even hired
more developers to work on the code and documentation. How far have they
come though in four years?"
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AMD Llano Compiler Performance
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""Last week were a set of AMD Fusion A8-3850 Linux benchmarks on Phoronix, but for you this week is a look at the AMD Fusion ""Llano"" APU performance when trying out a few different compilers. In particular, the latest GCC release and then using the highly promising Clang compiler on LLVM, the Low-Level Virtual Machine."""
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Radeon Driver Power Management Has Room For Improvement
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"Today on Phoronix are not only new benchmarks of the
proprietary Catalyst graphics driver compared to the open-source Radeon
Linux driver alternative when looking at the OpenGL frame-rates, but
also metrics on a number of other fronts. In this article is a graphics
driver comparison when looking at the system power consumption, GPU
operating temperature, and CPU usage too. The results are quite
interesting and not commonly looked at on Phoronix or by users."
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Nouveau Gallium3D Driver Performance
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"Last week we provided a fresh look at the AMD Radeon Gallium3D
performance using the latest development code for the Linux 3.0 kernel
and Mesa 7.11 library. Today we are now looking at the Gallium3D driver
performance of the Nouveau driver that is reverse-engineered to support
NVIDIA GeForce graphics processors."
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AMD Catalyst 11.6 Windows 7 Driver Analysis
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As we roll into the halfway mark for 2011, we see the latest iterations of the Catalyst drivers from AMD come in the form of the Catalyst 11.6. A little earlier than expected, the latest drivers seem to bring some nice features to the table as well as some promises of extra performance.
With a fair bit on offer from the latest drivers, we won't spend any more time blabbing on about them and instead we'll just get into some of the highlights from the release notes; then we'll take a quick look at our testbed and check out the performance of the latest drivers."
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ATI Catalyst 11.5 @ HT4U.net
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After the launch of AMD`s Radeon HD 6000 series, the Catalyst driver had here and there some performance issues. Continuously AMD worked on eliminating those issues with the affected game titles and promised a solution with the last Catalyst 11.4 beta driver. HT4U.net today shows what the WHQL certified successor 11.5 can deliver."
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AMD Catalyst 11.3 Windows 7 Driver Analysis
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"I knew this driver was going to come, but I have to admit I was a little worried that for the first time in a few years AMD might just miss it. Of course they didn't, and today we're looking at the latest version of the Catalyst drivers - the 11.3s.
The thing is, though, it's pretty clear that AMD don't care about this driver a whole lot and instead it's only here so they don't ruin their perfect record. That's fine, because it means I don't ruin mine either with the Catalyst drivers, but with no performance improvements being mentioned in the driver and AMD instead choosing to put more emphasis on the next iteration, it's clear that this is just a filler driver."
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Look at NVIDIA's GeForce 270 Driver
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During a recent briefing, NVIDIA went into detail about what its upcoming GeForce 270 graphics driver would be bringing to the table. In addition to general performance boosts in a multitude of games, an automatic updater is introduced, as are major improvements to certain 3D Vision features and also 3D Vision Surround performance.
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Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 9.2.0.1025 @ NGOHQ.com
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Intel has released a new build of the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility providing driver support for their motherboard chipsets for Windows operating systems. The Intel Chipset Device Software installs Windows INF files to the target system. These files outline to the operating system how to configure the Intel chipset function properly: - Core PCI and ISAPNP Services - PCIe Support - IDE/ATA33/ATA66/ATA100 Storage Support - SATA Storage Support - USB Support - Identification of Intel Chipset Components in the Device Manager This software can be installed in three modes: Interactive, Silent and Unattended Preload. Interactive Mode requires user input during installation; Silent Mode and Unattended Preload do not. This software also offers a set of command line flags, which provide additional installation choices. If you`re updating, don`t forget to add the -OVERALL -OVERIDE command-line."
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