With the end of March drawing near, AMD has released its monthly driver update for Radeon graphics cards. Catalyst 11.3 doesn't offer much in the way of new features besides "seamless GPU compute support," and there are no individual application performance gains to speak of. That said, AMD has squashed a handful of bugs in Windows, including one on Windows 7 that caused tearing in Bioshock with Vsync and MLAA enabled, and another that crashed Need for Speed Shift on Windows XP.
Catalyst 11.3 release notes
Desktop: Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Mobile: Windows Vista/7 32-bit | Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Intrepid individuals might want to skip the stable 11.3 release and download the more substantial Catalyst 11.4 Early Preview. Version 11.4 improves performance in more than a dozen games when running the Radeon HD 6000 series and Windows 7, including Shogun 2, Civ V, Black Ops, HAWX, STALKER, and L4D2. There's also various tweaks to the Catalyst Control Center including new task-based Display Management controls, a Catalyst update notification, and a new Eyefinity setup group.
Catalyst 11.4 release notes
Desktop: Windows Vista/7 32-bit and Windows Vista/7 64-bit
Meanwhile, folks running an Nvidia card can take advantage of the new GeForce 270.51 beta drivers -- the first release in the 270 family (versions 270.xx to 274.xx). Nvidia's 3D Vision Controller is included in all 270 drivers and today's release brings a massive 241% to 516% performance increase in Dragon Age 2 when playing with certain quality settings on the GTX 580 and GTX 560 Ti. There are also minor boosts (4% to 11%) in Just Cause 2, Far Cry 2, Black Ops, HAWX 2, Civ V, L4D2 and Metro 2033.
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