AMD has released its newest version of the Catalyst driver, the Catalyst 12.8. The new Catalyst 12.8 is actually AMD's first official unified and logo certified driver for Windows 8, 7 and Windows Vista and brings a couple of new features as well as performance improvements in current popular game titles.

As far as the features are concerned, in addition of being the first official unified driver, the new Catalyst 12.8 features Target-Independent Rasterization (TIR) which is a new rendering path that enables superior anti-aliasing in Direct3D driver applications, brings native Stereo 3D support, unified video API that has been integrated into the DirectX 11 API enabling simultaneous video and gaming content as well as an improved transcoding performance, optimized screen rotation, improved sleep/resume performance and optimized GPU power consumption.

The new AMD Catalyst 12.8 driver also brings support for major technologies and feature under Windows 8 that include AMD Eyefinity, Dual Graphics, Crossfire, Overdrive and Catalyst Control Center/Vision Engine Control Center as well as OpenCL, OpenGL and Unified Video Decoder (UVD).

The new Catalyst 12.7 driver also brings some performance improvements, up to 25 percent in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, up to 3% in Battlefield 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, up to 15% in Total War: Shogun, Up to 6% in Batman: Arkham City and Crysis 2, up to 10% in Dirt 3, and up to 8 and 5 percent in Crysis Warhead and Just Cause 2. The bug fixes include a couple of over/underscan fixes, Max Payne 3, Star Wars - The Old Republic, Shogun 2 and Dirt Showdown fixes.

In addition to the new Catalyst 12.8 driver, AMD has also released Catalyst 12.7 CAP 3 (Catalyst Application profile) that fixes some issues and improves performance in various game titles when running Crossfire system.

You can check out the full release notes as well as download the new Catalyst 12.8 driver and Catalyst 12.7 CAP 3 here.