Ever wondered what happened to Catalyst 12.5? We thought we'd missed it amid all the jubilee festivities, but it turns out there's been a significant change in the way AMD delivers its Radeon driver updates.
After years of pushing out new graphics drivers on a monthly basis, the red team has confirmed that it is abandoning the "Monthly Catalyst release plan" in an effort to ensure that "every Catalyst release delivers a substantial benefit to our end users."
AMD's naming convention will remain in place; each driver release will be served up in the familiar format of Catalyst: Year.Month, but we'll now see gaps in the numbering scheme. Following April's 12.4 release, AMD has this week made the jump to a 12.6a beta driver, which should evolve into a WHQL release later this month.
Offering less-frequent but feature-packed updates is arguably a good thing - you'll no longer need to gamble with driver updates every four weeks - and, who knows, perhaps having more development time will enable AMD to deliver an improved Catalyst experience.
