Optimizations For The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
 Increases performance by up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs. 290.36 drivers (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 19×10 Ultra – Indoor Scene). Results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and in-game location.
 Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
 Added new 3D Vision laser sight /crosshair options to better match Skyrim crosshairs.
 
NVIDIA SLI
Adds the following SLI profiles:
 Afterfall: InSanity
 Trine 2
 WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship 2011
 
3D Vision
Added or updated the following 3D Vision game profiles:
 The Adventures Of Tintin: The Game - Rated 3D Vision Ready
 Ignite - Rated Good
 Orcs Must Die! - Rated Good
 PT Boats: Knights Of The Sea - Rated Good
 PT Boats: South Gambit - Rated Good
 Stronghold 3 - Rated Good
 Trine 2 - Rated 3D Vision Ready
 
Key Bug Fixes
 Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3 (fix is now enabled for GeForce 400 and 500 series GPUs).
 Fixes a default panel resolution-timing bug in 290.36.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 single-card and SLI solutions were both playable at 2560x1600 with 32X CSAA, 16X AF, Very High in-game settings, and the High PhysX setting. This is as high as the game will currently go in DX9.

The AMD Radeon HD 6970 single-card and CrossFireX solutions were both playable at 2560x1600 with 16X AF and Very High in-game settings, but without PhysX enabled. The dual-GPU Radeon HD 6970 CrossFireX setup was playable with 24X CFAA, and the single-card HD 6970 was playable with 8X MSAA selected.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 and AMD Radeon HD 6950 were also playable at 2560x1600 with 8X MSAA enabled. The GTX 570 was able to utilize the High PhysX setting, while the HD 6950 does not support PhysX at all.

The Radeon HD 6870 was a great performer at 2560x1600 with 4X MSAA selected. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti was likewise playable at that resolution with 4X AA, but was also able to use the Normal PhysX setting.

When DX11 becomes workable, these performance levels will probably change. We do expect some performance hit to come with enabling DX11 in this game, due to the advanced features that it uses. However, we also believe that the 50%+ performance hit we witnessed is exaggerated, and the result of bugged implementation. Certainly the stuttering and crashing aren't acceptable and can't be called normal, but some performance decrease with HBAO, MVSS, and Tessellation is expected. These issues are known, and we await the fix.

Elder Scrolls Skyrim
 New in Catalyst 11.11c: Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for the AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
 Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
 Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations
 Resolve corruption seen when enabling Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 Series

Assassin's Creed: Revelations
 New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling

Batman Arkham City
 Improves DirectX 11 performance for single GPU configurations

Rage
 Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling
 Resolves a number of image / stability issues seen with the title
 Fix geometry corruption, sometimes seen in Bash TV entrance
 Fix issues with Low-memory conditions on 32bit systems.
 Fix issue with extreme corruption with missing textures on 32bit systems.
 Fix memory leaks when deleting/reusing sync objects.
 Fix hitching and pausing, especially noticeable on some Quad Core systems when doing races and Stanley Express runs.
 Fix some missing shadows

Battlefield 3
 Resolves intermittent corruption seen when playing the game at specific camera angles

The new NVIDIA GeForce 290.36 beta drivers are now available to download. Recommended for gamers diving into Batman: Arkham City, the drivers also add official support for Ambient Occlusion in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Furthermore, a Battlefield 3 fix is included to combat the random appearance of triangular artifacts, a SLI shadow bug is stamped out in Crysis 2, and Settlers 7 corruption is eliminated.

On the tech side, the 290.36 beta drivers enable NVIDIA Surround on newly-released X79 SLI-certified motherboards, and native 3D Vision DisplayPort 1.1 connections are now possible on BenQ XL2420T and BenQ XL2420TX monitors.

We have added support for Stereoscopic 3D in the Frostbite 2 engine by rendering each frame twice (once for each eye). This gives us full control of how our game looks in 3D, and lets us create an even more visceral experience for the player. Rendering each frame twice is quite performance heavy, though, so take that into consideration if you want to play with Stereoscopic 3D enabled. To improve performance, you may want to reduce graphics quality or resolution compared to what you normally would use when playing without Stereoscopic 3D. Using a multi GPU setup will also improve performance, as each GPU can share the work load.

NVIDIA 3D Vision is a combination of 3D Vision wireless glasses and 3D Vision Ready monitors. You can look for the 3D Vision Ready icon on your monitor, or check this page to find out if your monitor and GeForce GPU support Stereoscopic 3D.

Enable 3D Vision by going to the NVIDIA control panel, and in the Stereoscopic 3D tab, make sure "Enable stereoscopic 3D" is set. Battlefield 3 will use the standard 3D Vision settings and hotkeys. Adjust the amount of depth effect using the scroll wheel on the 3D Vision IR emitter or by using the keyboard shortcuts. The default shortcuts are CTRL-F4 to increase the depth, and CTRL-F3 to decrease the depth. You can customize these shortcuts in the Stereoscopic 3D control panel.

Elder Scrolls Skyrim
 New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossFire performance scaling for AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
 AMD Radeon HD 5000 CrossFire support will be supported soon in an updated driver
 Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations
 Resolve corruption seen when enabling Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 Series

Assassin's Creed: Revelations
 New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossFire performance scaling

Batman Arkham City
 Improves DirectX 11 performance for single GPU configurations

Rage
 Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling
 Resolves a number of image / stability issues seen with the title:
 Fix geometry corruption, sometimes seen in Bash TV entrance
 Fix issues with Low-memory conditions on 32bit systems.
 Fix issue with extreme corruption with missing textures on 32bit systems.
 Fix memory leaks when deleting/reusing sync objects.
 Fix hitching and pausing, especially noticeable on some Quad Core systems when doing races and Stanley Express runs.
 Fix some missing shadows

Battlefield 3
 Resolves intermittent corruption seen when playing the game at specific camera angles

Now it's time to see everything all put together. We've taken all of the tweaks from the previous two pages and put them all in at once. In SkyrimPrefs.ini, we have set the following commands:

bDrawLandShadows=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
iShadowMapResolution=8192
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32
fGrassStartFadeDistance=14000.0000
And in the Skyrim.ini file, we have added one simple line:
uGridstoLoad=7

In doing so, we have added self-shadows to rocks, boulders, mountains, and trees. We have doubled the dynamic shadow map resolution and softened the shadow edges by a magnitude of about 10. We have also doubled draw distance for grass and increased object draw distance by 40%. Before we show what the game looks like now, we have to look at performance. After all, the best graphics in the world aren't worth much if you can't play it.

Tweaking Skyrim's INI files was an interesting experience. We scoured various web sites and gamer communities looking for all the information we could find in order to enhance our Skyrim gameplay experience. We tested a very large number of settings, and a lot of them just flat did nothing, or at least they didn't visibly improve our gaming experience. At the end of the day, we came up with a list of six lines to modify that gave us great results. By increasing shadow resolution and applying a more aggressive blur filter, we effectively removed the jagged, blocky appearance of up-close shadows, which looked just horrible before. We also added shadows to the landscape and allowed trees, which gave the landscape a more dynamic, vibrant atmosphere. Increasing the draw distance for grass and landscape objects decreased the amount and severity of grass, object, and object detail pop-in happening while we traveled around the province. Before we changed these settings, we felt the game looked just good. But after tweaking, the game looks more rich and detailed.

We have received reports of performance issues from players of Batman: Arkham City on PC. After researching the matter, we found that running the game with DX 11 is causing the performance issues. We’re working on a title update to address this matter and expect to make it available in the near future.

In the meantime, a workaround for this issue is to run the game with DX 9 instead of DX 11. Instructions on how to turn off DX 11 are listed below.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience with your gameplay experience and thank you all for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

Instructions for changing DX 11 to DX 9
The Launcher can be accessed on Games for Windows LIVE and Steam to change DX 11 to DX 9 in the Settings menu.
Change both DirectX 11 Features and DirectX 11 Tessellation to OFF.

Games for Windows LIVE
Start > All Programs > Games > Right click on Batman: Arkham City and select Launcher > Settings
1. Open the Start Menu
2. Select All Programs and then the Games folder
3. Right click on Batman: Arkham City and select Launcher
4. Choose Settings then click on the arrow next to DX options to change

Steam:
Launch Steam Client > Library > Right click on Batman: Arkham City > Configure PC Options
1. Open Steam
2. Select Library
3. Right click on Batman: Arkham City and select Configure PC Options
4. Choose Settings then click on the arrow next to DX options to change

Throughout all of our testing it was apparent that the NVIDIA GPU based video cards were providing better performance and more enjoyable gameplay than the AMD GPU based video cards. There were no instances that we found where any AMD card provided better gameplay performance than it's NVIDIA counterpart. We also experienced an issue which we believe to be driver related with all AMD video cards. We experienced an extremely noticeable lag any time there was a large amount of debris flying around, explosions from missiles, grenades or vehicles, or buildings in the environment being destroyed. This was not present on any of the NV based GPUs.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 SLI and AMD Radeon HD 6970 CFX were both able to play Battlefield 3 Multiplayer at 2560x1600 with FXAA High, 16X AF, and all Ultra in-game graphics options with HBAO selected. They performed 12-16 average FPS above our 60 average FPS goal with maxed settings and were both enjoyable. In the Apples-to-Apples tests the AMD Radeon HD 6970 CFX had a 1 FPS advantage but the lag during explosions was much more evident than during highest playable settings testing, thus providing a worse gameplay experience.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and AMD Radeon HD 6970 both performed within .2 FPS of each other at 1920x1200 with 16X AF, FXAA High and all Ultra in-game settings including HBAO. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580's performance was favorable without the lag that all AMD cards experienced.

Both the AMD Radeon HD 6950 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 mimicked the GTX 580 and HD 6970 with one difference. They both required Ambient Occlusion to be turned down from HBAO to SSAO. After applying this change the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 performed 1.8 average FPS faster than the AMD Radeon HD 6950 at 60.7 FPS.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti had more power than the AMD Radeon HD 6870. Both video cards were playable at 1680x1050 and 16X AF, FXAA High, all Ultra in-game settings. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti was able to handle SSAO while the AMD Radeon HD 6870 required Ambient Occlusion turned completely off. During Apples-to-Apples testing the AMD Radeon HD 6870 fell to 38.5 average FPS with high amounts of lag.

SKYRIM:
 Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations
 Resolve corruption seen when enabling Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 Series
 Disables CrossFireX (to resolve negative scaling and image quality issues seen when CrossFireX is enabled)
 AMD is continuing to work on a CrossFireX solution for Skyrim - as soon as it's ready we'll make it publicly available

BATMAN ARKHAM CITY:
 Improves DirectX 11 performance for single GPU configurations

BATTLEFIELD 3:
 Resolves intermittent corruption seen when playing the game at specific camera angles

Allowing restarts to occur without user interaction has helped us to rapidly update a major portion of the Windows ecosystem with critical updates. On average, within a week of releasing a critical update, 90% of PCs have installed the update (see Figure1). On the other hand, this behavior of automatic restarts has some unintended consequences for the user. Restarts can occur without notice, and might occur monthly or even more often if there is an out-of-band update. This unpredictability can potentially result in loss of user data. Most of our automatic installs and the subsequent restarts happen at 3 AM, when users are not around to save any important work. We have heard a lot of painful stories of users coming back to their PCs in the morning to find that a restart occurred, and that some important data was lost. In other cases, the user doesn’t lose data, but needs to restart a job that they were in the middle of (for example, a long copy job).

NEW FEATURES
- Adobe Flash Player 11 support
- Enables full support of the GPU accelerated Stage 3D API and Stage 3D applications
- Supported on the AMD Radeon HD Series of GPUs, A-Series APU and E-Series APU

RESOLVED ISSUES
- Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
- This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalystâ„¢ 11.11 software suite for Windows 7. These include:
- Images and textures are no longer corrupted (Blue) in Rage.
- Bezel compensation now works correctly with Far Cry 2.
- Screen tearing is no longer randomly observed while moving a window on the desktop while in Clone mode or Eyefinity mode.
- A black screen is no longer observed when extending displays.
- Homefront no longer crashes randomly when Crossfire is enabled.
- DC - Universe Online no longer hangs soon after selecting a character and entering the game.

The Catalyst Application Profile (CAP 1) brings:
- Battlefield 3: Tweaks to the CrossFire profile
- Global Ops - Commando Libya: Improves CrossFire performance
- Driver San Francisco: Disables CrossFire

- Fixes cases of irregular performance (stuttering) primarily seen on DirectX 10 GPUs. The fix improves the performance of both DX10 and DX11 GPUs.
- Fixes shadow map corruption seen with DirectX 10 GPUs.
- Fixes cases of black corruption lines/triangles with DirectX 10 GPUs.

If you're still intent buying MW3 on PC, you should be able to scrape by with nearly any modern entry-level gaming hardware. The fact that an $80 Radeon HD 6670 can deliver 30fps at 1680x1050, while the obsolete GeForce 9600 GT provides 37fps, really says it all. If you're aiming for 40 frames or better, you'll only need a $120 GTS 450 or $100 HD 6750.

Those that argue the lower-quality graphics are a good thing because games like Battlefield 3 are too demanding confuse me. There's nothing stopping anyone from playing BF3 on budget hardware, they simply need to lower the graphics to MW3 levels and they will receive similar performance. As we found when testing Battlefield 3 recently, the high quality visuals merely allow those with higher-end hardware to enjoy the game even more.

After all, if graphics are irrelevant, why did we ever leave CoD MW2 (not that it really feels like we have) or even the original CoD for that matter. That game was awesome and they could have just kept producing DLC content forever. As a huge fan of the earlier Call of Duty titles I'm disappointed with this latest release as it continues to head in the same direction as Black Ops -- somewhat of a downward spiral, you could say.

I do think the GTX 580M provides the best overall user experience with support for Optimus switchable graphics as well the potential future-looking graphics performance seen in our Ultra quality settings test of Battlefield 3. The NVIDIA Verde driver program is also a benefit over what AMD has traditionally done in the mobile market. The NVIDIA driver team has been releasing mobile-compatible driver updates on a much more regular basis than AMD has been and in most cases are running version-for-version with the desktop parts. A quick check as of this writing shows the 285.64 driver that has been released for the desktop GPUs is also available for notebooks - if you are serious mobile gamer that cares about day-of releases (like getting BF3 running at its best as soon as its out) then this is a serious concern, right?

NVIDIA is asking for $300 more for the GTX 580M than AMD is asking for the HD 6990M. That is a significant difference in a gaming notebook that you can get for a little as $1799. NVIDIA claims that features like Optimus, the improved driver support, 3D Vision (optional) and PhysX (returning to the scene with Batman: Arkham City) can justify that kind of price difference. I am not sure most of our readers would agree with that but if you are a high-end mobile gamer it is possible that those kinds of added benefits really do matter to you.

When it really comes down to it, I feel that most gamers will pick the Radeon HD 6990M that comes with similar performance levels at a much lower price (at least on the M17x). For all we know, AMD might be losing money on this part and undermining the market as a whole but most consumers don't really care about that kind of stuff. To them it is about performance and about value. For those gamers that are NVIDIA fans or really do put a lot of weight on the idea of Optimus technology, day-of-release driver updates and the specific hardcore features mentioned above, the GTX 580M will provide the best overall experience, but just be prepared to pay for it.

Looking at single-GPU performance we find the GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 6970 to match exactly for performance. There doesn't seem to be any perceptible differences between the two video cards in terms of performance. We also experienced no stuttering, and completely smooth gameplay on both AMD and NVIDIA video cards. Keep in mind, the Radeon HD 6970 is still much less expensive than GeForce GTX 580, so you get the same performance as GTX 580 for a much lower price in BF3.

For our multiplayer testing we used an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 graphics card with NVIDIA ForceWare 285.62 WHQL driver. We found our highest playable settings to be 1920x1200 with Antialiasing Post on "High." Antialiasing Deferred "Off," 16X AF, and all other in-game graphics options set to "Ultra." We did turn off Motion Blur because it was conflicting with our ability to spot enemies using our peripherals; we will look more into the motion blur performance impact in our following article. Our test system consists of an Intel Core i7 920 at 3.6GHz on an MSI Eclipse X58 motherboard.

With these settings our framerates were fairly stable around 60 average FPS. The framerates varied from 57 FPS to 63 FPS. There were a few instances where frame rates would drop significantly but this usually only happened near fires. Framerates in vehicles were normally 10-15 average FPS higher than on foot. Even on the extra large maps with 64 players and 20 players shooting at each other in a small area with lots of explosions and crumbling surroundings the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 provided very playable framerates at 1920x1200. This seemed to be the sweet spot for competitive framerates as well an immersive experience.

So far we can say that Battlefield 3 is living up to the hype in terms of graphics and GPU power needed to provide a good gameplay experience. We think BF3 certainly sets a new benchmark in terms of visual quality in gaming; some of the scenes are just breathtaking and take gaming graphics to the next level. Surprisingly, it isn't as demanding as we might have thought in single player, as a Radeon HD 6970 and GTX 580 are able to play the game with the highest in-game settings in single player. However, we have not played every level and map yet, so we may yet see some more demanding scenarios as we continue to play the game. Multiplayer demands higher framerates, and thus will need even more powerful video cards to keep framerate up along with image quality.