AMD have today released the WHQL-certified Catalyst 11.1 and 11.1a hotfix packages. The 11.1 set brings a tonne of new features, performance increases and other goodies.

Catalyst 11.1 includes a new Catalyst Control Center which is made to simplify the user experience to help customers get the most use out of their AMD product. Below is a full list of what the AMD Catalyst 11.1 release includes:

New Features:

The new Catalyst Control Center

o The new Catalyst Control Center enables a simplified user experience to help users get the most out of their AMD product

o Easily enable 3D settings to enhance game image quality

o Setup multiple displays to increase productivity

o Adjust power settings to increase battery life

o Supports two unique views - designed for mainstream and advanced users

o User Interface dynamically updates based on available AMD hardware

Support for OpenGL 4.1

o New features introduced in OpenGL 4.1

o Full compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 APIs for easier porting between mobile and desktop platforms

o The ability to query and load a binary for shader program objects to save re-compilation time

o The capability to bind programs individually to programmable stages for programming flexibility

o 64-bit floating-point component vertex shader inputs for higher geometric precision

o Multiple viewports for a rendering surface for increased rendering flexibility

Performance highlights:

F1 2010:

o Performance increases up to 12% on AMD Radeon HD 6900 and AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.

o Performance increases up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single card configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.

Left 4 Dead 2:

o Performance increases up to 17% on AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series single and Crossfire configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.

o Performance increases up to 8% on AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series single configurations with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing disabled.

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix include:

Performance improvements for the AMD Radeon HD 6800 & HD 6900 series in a number of applications

Catalyst Control Center - New Tessellation controls

Gives users full control over the tessellation levels used in applications

Catalyst AI Texture Filtering updates

The Quality setting has now been improved to match the High Quality setting in all respects but one; it enables an optimization that limits tri-linear anisotropic filtering to areas surrounding texture mipmap level transitions, while doing bilinear anisotropic filtering elsewhere. This optimization offers a way to improve filtering performance without visibly affecting image quality

The Performance setting has also been updated to address comments about the sharpness of the default Quality setting causing shimmering in certain cases. It now provides a smoother filtering option that eliminates most shimmering while preserving the improved detail provided by anisotropic filtering.