ATI Catalyst 12.8 and Photoshop

with ATI Catalyst 12.8 (HD7970) Liquify filter not work (error message) and 3D (black screen)

The Catalyst 12.8 driver would not load my monitor calibration files (*.icm), so I rolled back to 12.6 which works fine.  One thing I noticed is that uninstalling the 12.8 drivers (using the install manager) was very slow; it took 5 or 6 times longer than normal. 

-materialsguy

Noel

I had a very old ATI drivers so I though why not update.  I think I had 10.9 installed. I updated to 12.2 tough the drivers seem to work well the Catalyst Control Center crashes nevet put anything on screen. So I updated to 12.4 thing are the same CCC crashes. Installed 12.8 drivers seem to work well ADM I have installed work as does Photoshop to the best of its ability.  CCC.exe crashes.  Any idea as to how I can get Catalyst Control Center operational? I did see a very old ATI entry in the control palem Programs and removed that and the reinstalled 12.8 CCC still crashes on me..  In the programs all I see is AMD Catalyst Install Manager and the two AMD demo Ladybug and Mecha I have a HD 5770.

In the windows start meme the a Catalyst Control Center shortcut for "C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\CCC.exe" as well as in the widows right click popup window. Window 7 Pro 64bit

Some early findings:

1.  I encountered an error where the Microsoft Installer crashed during the update - this hasn't happened before with a Catalyst release.  However, upon closing the installer the Catalyst Install Manager retried the installation of that component and it ultimately succeeded.

2.  I did some before/after benchmarks, and after the restart the display performance is slightly better (e.g., 1% or 2%).

3.  Photoshop CS6 subjectively seems to come up a little faster.  I timed it with a stopwatch and from a cold start Photoshop comes up to the point where the UI is fully displayed iin 3.4 seconds.  This is a few tenths faster than before (3.6 seconds).  Not a huge difference.

4.  I checked all the Performance settings, and everything's enabled (Advanced mode, OpenCL, etc.).

5.  I did some raw conversions, photo manipulation, Liquify, Lighting Effects.  All worked flawlessly and quickly.

6.  I did some 3D stuff, including opening some existing designs I have and trying some new stuff.  Unfortunately, With one of my modestly complex meshes I think there may be some new slowness I'm seeing specifically manifesting as a few seconds lag whenever I switch to different elements in the 3D panel and before the preview and all the other panels update.  It seems to work once there, and I've been able to move things around at about the same speed as before - the frame rate for that is decent, and possibly a little better than before.  Trouble is, I never objectlvely characterized the time between switching layers before with this design, so I'm not really sure whether it's acting differently than before.  It's just that I noticed it, and that may mean that it wasn't there before.  It's on the hairy edge of distractingly slow.  Rendering seems to work fine, as before, no difference in speed (and none expected, as rendering is all CPU activity).

7.  On an attempt to map an image to the "Hat" preset mesh, I got a preview of the result, but then when I tried to rotate the Current View Photoshop crashed with this error:

Faulting application name: Photoshop.exe, version: 13.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4f61c045

Faulting module name: atio6axx.dll, version: 6.14.10.11762, time stamp: 0x50135a41

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x0000000000b9a8b3

Faulting process id: 0x560

Faulting application start time: 0x01cd7d52e437cdff

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64 Bit)\Photoshop.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\atio6axx.dll

Report Id: 8e60f4aa-e946-11e1-9688-005056c00008

Note that the faulting module is atio6axx.dll.

This may say the Catalyst 12.8 driver isn't as good as 12.6, as I have been able to do most anything I want with Photoshop 3D before without a crash like this, and (I think) without the delays.

I'll continue to use 12.8 for a while, and I'll follow up here with more info as I learn it, but I'd say for now that if you have Catalyst 12.6 and no specific problems to solve, you might want to stay with that version.

-Noel