AMD Releases Catalyst 13.1 Drivers

[Truckinupga]

I'm not running an AMD GPU, But all I can say is if you can get those kinds of improvements from a driver update it would be like an upgrade to a newer GPU.

 

[seinfeld]

little behind the ball TOMS this is old news!, catch up!

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]iam2thecrowe[/nom]i'm laughing at you. Your talking about servers, not a graphics card driver for a home pc, noone would do a hdd image of their home pc before updating a driver. I've had a long list of 3d video cards from the nvidia riva 128, TNT, TNT2, Geforece2, radeon 8500, 9800pr0, nvidia 7600gt, AMD 6850, nvidia 8800gts and now gtx660. I have NEVER bricked a computer by doing a driver update, And i would update them regularly. If something did go wrong there would be an easy way to fix it, boot in safe mode and remove the driver.[/citation]

Probability. There's always a chance that something will go wrong, and the more computer you have, the more likely one of them will go wrong. He just happen to witness the updating of a huge sample of computers.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]Cy-Kill[/nom]When the hell are those of us who are still on the HD 4000 series going to get a new driver, I know my card is in legacy support, but I remember AMD saying we'd get a new driver approx. every 3 months or so, it's been just over 7 months since 12.6....[/citation]
I've got one box with a 4850 in it, but newer driver releases aren't going to help it much. If you play older or less demanding games, you don't need a new driver. If you play newer games, you're going to need MORE than a new driver. Consider this, even a lowly 7770 Ghz walks all over a 4870. I've seen them for $115/$100 after rebate. If you use your machine for gaming such that you're desperate for driver improvements (despite the fact that the 4000 series already saw MANY driver improvements and are about tapped out driver wise), you'd better at least be able to plunk down 100 beans. I'm not advocating elite-level graphics here. Just something bearably modern. My personal favorite for price/performance is the 7850, however.[citation][nom]frank_drebin[/nom]I used to be a ATI fan. But finally i got tired of Radeon heat and noise and switched to Nvidia ti560. now its quiet and cool. so sadly i don't care anymore about AMD driver updates ...[/citation]Sounds like you haven't used any AMD-branded cards at all, or if you have they were prior to 5000 series. For the past few years AMD has been quite good at balancing performance, thermals/power, and noise. Also... the chip isn't the only factor. Temps and noise are also influenced quite heavily by the vendor implementation. Last but not least, the 560 range is not a high-end chip where you'd have to worry about noise levels. High-end Nvidia chips are not immune to such problems. Full-blown original Fermi was a particularly big offender, and I'm glad those days are gone.

For the record, I own and use chips from both vendors, and in the past I've used names you probably haven't even heard of. So I'm far from opposed to using cards from either camp. However, lately AMD's cards have been very competitive from a price/performance standpoint. Enough so that I rarely recommend an Nvidia card in the sub-$300 range unless they need CUDA/PhysX. But that doesn't mean I bash the Nvidia cards either, far from it.

 

[myromance123]

[citation][nom]hakesterman[/nom]No mention of the Linux release notes? Why not?Because Linux represents less than half of one percent of all Pc's in themarket that's why dumb Dumb.........[/citation]

Oh! I'm sorry, I had no idea THD was a Windows-Only site. /sarcasm
We live in a time with multiple platforms. Furthermore, with the advent of Steam being on Linux, now gamers are going to NEED to know what the drivers hold for them.

Broadening your horizons can't hurt you. I point this out because THD is supposed to be an authority on tech, not just an authority on monopolies.

 

[Guest]

Hopefully the new drivers don't also cause older games to stop working. Back when I was running a Radeon 4870, updating my drivers from (I think) 10.x to 11.x caused GTA:SA to stop working. Had to uninstall the new driver and reinstall the old one in order for the game to work again. ATI has been notorious for their funky drivers. Hopefully AMD has corrected that.

 

[trunks-power]

hey i have a problem everytime i try updating to AMD Catalyst 13.1 when its installing after my screen flashes a couple times i got fuzzy screen for a second and then get a blue screen then my computer restarts with my resolution is messed up then i get a error message saying my AMD graphics was not detected and to told me to install them right done to me twice now any help would be good. thanks

 

[commonsense]

We live in a time with multiple platforms.

But multiple platforms do not receive equal treatment from chip makers and game publishers. As you know, Windows is the dominant OS (and choice) for gamers and for this reason, companies will always give priority to Windows platform.

 

[commonsense]

[citation][nom]myromance123[/nom]We live in a time with multiple platforms.[/citation]

We live in a time with multiple platforms.

But multiple platforms do not receive equal treatment from chip makers and game publishers. As you know, Windows is the dominant OS (and choice) for gamers and for this reason, companies will always give priority to Windows platform.

 

[llkooljo]

I installed the drivers yesterday for my 7850. They made my video skip like it was a scratched DVD. Had to reinstall the old drivers.

 

[Russell White]

I don't know about needing a new card to play the latest releases at this stage, I play almost every major release in med/high settings (with dx10 of course) on my 4870 at 1920x1080 without any problems at all. I am getting a 670 or 680 in a couple of weeks but there is still quite a bit of life in my nearly 5 year old 4870, best value and longes lasting card I've ever bought, only really upgrading for physx and dx11 and it's not like that really enhances gameplay... I just like looking at pretty graphics.