AMD Releases Catalyst 11.10 w/ Big Eyefinity Updates

After a drought of Catalyst releases with no real Eyefinity updates (beyond performance updates), AMD comes in with a trifecta of Eyefinity updates. The updates of particular importance to Eyefinity users are:

• Enables support for Eyefinity 5x1 display (portrait and landscape) configurations
• Maximum supported resolution has been increased to 16000 x 16000 pixels on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series. (limited to DX11 applications only)
• Bezel compensation is now possible when using sets of displays that have mismatched pixel densities.

This is the first WHQL release driver to incorporate 5x1 Eyefinity support. Additionally, res support has increased from 8k to 16k. Previously the 8k pixel limitation (that we all believed to be a Windows limitation) meant that 5x1-Landscape Eyefinity couldn't go beyond 1600x900x5. Even 1680x1050x5 was out due to the hard 8,000 pixel limit. This new feature means that even 2560x1600x5-L is possible (if you've got the horsepower for it).

The third update is a big one users have been asking for since Bezel Compensation was implemented - the ability to use BC with different monitor models. The initial implementation required matched monitors with identical EDID information. This proved problematic even for identical models, as the EDID information in monitors was sometimes not identical.

There were additional game-related improvements for OpenGL games (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars), Lost Planet 2, Mafia II, Dirt 2, F1 2010 and Homefront. While these are always appreciated, these updates pale in comparison (for most users) to the overall Eyefinity updates in this driver release.