AMD Rolls Out Catalyst 13.11 Beta Drivers with Radeon R9 290 and 290X Support

AMD ended the work week by making available the same Catalyst 13.11 beta drivers that reviewers were allowed to use when evaluating the Radeon R9 290X graphics card (be sure to check out our in-depth review). The beta release adds support for both that card and the regular Radeon R9 290, along with the rest of the recently announced R9 and R7 Series, though that's not all it brings to the table.

Performance improvements abound after installing Catalyst 13.11 beta. One of the biggest gains to be had is in Batman: Arkham Origins. When enabling MSAA at 8x, AMD claims framerates are bolstered by as much as 35 percent.


Other performance gains aren't quite as dramatic, though a few creep up into double-digit territory. Here's the full rundown:

• Total War: Rome 2 - improves performance up to 10 percent
• Battlefield 3 - improves performance up to 10 percent
• GRID 2 - improves performance up to 8.5 percent
• DiRT Showdown - improves performance up to 10 percent
• Formula 1 2013 - improves performance up to 8 percent
• DiRT 3 - improves performance up to 7 percent
• Sleeping Dogs - improves performance up to 5 percent

Finally, the new Catalyst release enables automatic AMD Eyefinity configurations and automatic plug-and-play configuration of supported Ultra HD/4K tiled displays.

Happy gaming!