About three weeks ago, I met with AMD to go over some concerns with their Enduro graphics switching technology. At the time, AMD gave me a preview release of their Mobility Catalyst driver and promised a public beta by the end of October. We’re over a month ahead of that schedule, and today I received an email from AMD indicating the Catalyst 12.9 Beta for laptops is officially available.

I’m still working on the final review of the Clevo P170EM with 7970M from AVADirect, but in the meantime I’ve updated to the 12.9 Beta and everything appears to have gone smoothly. One thing to be aware of is that the current beta may not fix the GPU underutilization issue, particularly with HD 7970M, but AMD is working on a hotfix. They expect that to be released to the public in the next week or two, and they’re offering us a chance to do some early testing of the driver so we’ll be putting it through some tests over the next couple of days.

For all of you that have Enduro/PowerXpress 4.0 or later laptops and have been waiting for a driver update, head on over to AMD’s site and grab the latest beta. If you give it a shot and have a minute, post your comments on how the new drivers work (or don’t?) on your laptop. We’d love to get a collection of testing results from a wider variety of hardware than what we currently have on hand.

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  • The_Kristoffer - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    When are you going to publish the rundown of Haswell? I've been waiting for, what feels like, forever!
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    And when's you're next podcast!
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    you're = your, sheesh
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    As soon as Intel's NDA lifts?
  • The_Kristoffer - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    And when is that?
  • Homeles - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link

    He's looking for the post-IDF Haswell architecture writeup that Anand has been teasing us with for ages. That information isn't under NDA.
  • greylica - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    OpenCL compiler using AMD Drivers are still waiting for a fix, laptops are still waiting for good linux drivers (Samsumg chronos 7 with Linux, anyone ???) as well as PCs.

    I'm not sure this will solve both problems, OpenCL and Linux mobile drivers. But I have lost my expectations, and now I will stick with Intel, it's not so fast, but it's fully Linux compatible...
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    If you're looking to run Linux, you're still best off getting non-switchable graphics for notebooks (or something with a hardware switch and muxes). It's basically such a small market that neither AMD nor NVIDIA are all that concerned with investing the manpower to address the requirements for Linux Enduro/Optimus.
  • Deanjo - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    and now I will stick with Intel, it's not so fast, but it's fully Linux compatible...


    How do you figure with intel having no openCL support in linux for their igp's?
  • TrantaLocked - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

    THIS RELEASE DOESN'T SUPPORT THE 7000M SERIES.

    "The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:
    Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks."
    7000m NOT LISTED IN SUPPORTED GPU LIST.

    TROLLED HARD BY AMD.

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