AMD's Catalyst Omega Graphics Driver Bursting With New Features, Including FreeSync, 5K Support, And More

[Sakkura]

SO basically this is a driver that copies what Nvidia's pioneered? It's a good thing Nvidia is willing to invest in R&D not just for their graphics cards, but in gaming technology all around. AMD wouldn't be releasing VSR or Freesync had Nvidia not developed and marketed them. And now they're basically copying Geforce Experience (but not nearly as well). *jumps for joy* so exciting to be getting this tech 3 months behind.

This driver pioneers support for higher resolutions (5K) and multiple monitors, areas where Nvidia has been copying AMD for the last many years. Mantle is another example of AMD pushing things forward, with Nvidia and Microsoft responding with DirectX 12.

Team green and team red each come up with new things, and if they're important enough they'll soon be copied by the other team. That's how the technology moves forward.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I only hope this driver revision is worth the wait. I had to tear lock of hair when my system became very unstable even during regular desktop/web surfing sue. I did take the time to detail the issues and the driver revisions show that they fixed it though a test drive of the driver should speak volumes.

Let me know if it can do more than 17 days of Folding then I might be interested as up until now I have only found 1 driver (14.2) that is, all the rest have been pants.

 

[none12345]

"SO basically this is a driver that copies what Nvidia's pioneered? It's a good thing Nvidia is willing to invest in R&D not just for their graphics cards, but in gaming technology all around. AMD wouldn't be releasing VSR or Freesync had Nvidia not developed and marketed them. And now they're basically copying Geforce Experience (but not nearly as well). *jumps for joy* so exciting to be getting this tech 3 months behind. "

Which is exactly what they both do. And what is quite common in all industries. If a feature is good, USE it, why not.....

As far as gsync goes, freesync is just using something already in the VESA standard. NVIDIA decided to not use the whats already in VESA and made their own proprietary thing, AMD is not copying them in that respect. They just trademarked the word freesync, so they have a marketing word to use against gsync. Basically the same thing, nvidia addressed it first openly, and i give them props for that. But i do not like their proprietary closed solution.

VSR vs DSR. Neither of these are new. This is what an old form of antialiasing use to do....so both of them are just bringing back an old feature and calling it something new....

 

[renz496]

"SO basically this is a driver that copies what Nvidia's pioneered? It's a good thing Nvidia is willing to invest in R&D not just for their graphics cards, but in gaming technology all around. AMD wouldn't be releasing VSR or Freesync had Nvidia not developed and marketed them. And now they're basically copying Geforce Experience (but not nearly as well). *jumps for joy* so exciting to be getting this tech 3 months behind. "

Which is exactly what they both do. And what is quite common in all industries. If a feature is good, USE it, why not.....

As far as gsync goes, freesync is just using something already in the VESA standard. NVIDIA decided to not use the whats already in VESA and made their own proprietary thing, AMD is not copying them in that respect. They just trademarked the word freesync, so they have a marketing word to use against gsync. Basically the same thing, nvidia addressed it first openly, and i give them props for that. But i do not like their proprietary closed solution.

VSR vs DSR. Neither of these are new. This is what an old form of antialiasing use to do....so both of them are just bringing back an old feature and calling it something new....

is that really the case? then why AMD has to proposed the spec to be included in VESA in the first place if such spec already exist? (hence the need to be compliance with DP1.2a spec which is not available in DP1.2) nvidia also make use of VESA standard when they use DP1.2 for their G-sync. if they not they will come up with their own proprietary interface like intel thunderbolt.

 

[Mousemonkey]

"SO basically this is a driver that copies what Nvidia's pioneered? It's a good thing Nvidia is willing to invest in R&D not just for their graphics cards, but in gaming technology all around. AMD wouldn't be releasing VSR or Freesync had Nvidia not developed and marketed them. And now they're basically copying Geforce Experience (but not nearly as well). *jumps for joy* so exciting to be getting this tech 3 months behind. "

Which is exactly what they both do. And what is quite common in all industries. If a feature is good, USE it, why not.....

As far as gsync goes, freesync is just using something already in the VESA standard. NVIDIA decided to not use the whats already in VESA and made their own proprietary thing, AMD is not copying them in that respect. They just trademarked the word freesync, so they have a marketing word to use against gsync. Basically the same thing, nvidia addressed it first openly, and i give them props for that. But i do not like their proprietary closed solution.

VSR vs DSR. Neither of these are new. This is what an old form of antialiasing use to do....so both of them are just bringing back an old feature and calling it something new....

Incorrect, renz496 has it right.

 

[videobear]

Still no decent support for Open GL, I guess. Meh.

 

[renz496]

Still no decent support for Open GL, I guess. Meh.

well actually that pick my interest as well. they mention OpenGL ES 3.0 but what about OpenGL 4.5? i thought that OpenGL ES is more for mobile device like SoC.

 

[Lutfij]

:lol:

Aye, MM, I thought all the drivers since 14.2 were bumm too! So far so good with Omega. I'm talking about gameplay and ofc stress testing but haven't been on the folding warfare since 2012. Sorry mate no info there

When spending time here on Tom's I'd get intermittent reboots all while running a dual monitor setup, streaming matches and viewing Youtube. So I'm seeing what I first saw prior to 14.2 with the new drivers.

I doubt they would want to ruin the holidays with a busted driver

 

[johnnyb105]

Lol everyone wants to rag on AMD for how hot there chips /cpu get well start over clocking a Intel chip it gets right up there too infact a lot of them around or close to 100...I remember a time when I had a Intel Prescott Pent 4 I could turn the heat off in my bedroom because it kept my room nice and toasty. Not knocking intel just get tired of folks point the finger at one back yard when there are examples of this in others back yard enough said....

 

[Mousemonkey]

Lol everyone wants to rag on AMD for how hot there chips /cpu get well start over clocking a Intel chip it gets right up there too infact a lot of them around or close to 100...I remember a time when I had a Intel Prescott Pent 4 I could turn the heat off in my bedroom because it kept my room nice and toasty. Not knocking intel just get tired of folks point the finger at one back yard when there are examples of this in others back yard enough said....

Are you sure you're posting in the right thread?

 

[Lutfij]

+2

 

[Eddie0711]

I tried the new driver with my r9 295x2 and I I'm pleased with the results. Finally I get a shadow of mordor crossfire profile! I tried vsr as well and the results were mixed however I think I need to switch aa of for it to run better. All in all very pleased with the new driver hopefully this is a sign of things to come!

 

[alidan]

anyone got benchmarks on the opencl 2.0 thing, i got a 280X partially for gameing, and partially to make video render faster... my 5770 accelerated 720p to about 90fps, my 280x is not used at all, and render is about on 5-30 fps depending on render settings.

useing sony vegas

if it improves performance there, ill upgrade as soon as i can, otherwise ill upgrade when i see something broken.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

bc they want you to upgrade your GPU, although my CFX 7970 ghz ed's still do pretty well. I want VSR NOW

the only thing stopping vsr on your card is the driver, im sure the hardware is capable, they just want you to upgrade your card.

 

[r0llinlacs]

Just installed with my 290x. 4k is not selectable, the highest it goes is 3200x1800.

It is buggy. I tried changing the DPI to make text more readable and it bugs out. With VSR enabled, after changing the DPI, the resolution resets itself to 640x480 with no other options.

The only way I could get DPI settings to change and actually work, was to change the DPI settings BEFORE you enable VSR, reboot the computer, then enable VSR and change the resolution.

This works fine for the desktop, however, I briefly tested NBA 2k15 with it, and the resolution was so jacked up, it looked horribly worse than 640x480 and the resolution was set to 1920x1080. The highest selectable resolution was 1920x1200. I did not try that 1920x1200, I just closed it and will have to mess around with it later on.

I really hope, when it comes to games, that it is not this big of a hassle to get to work right.

 

[renz496]

Just installed with my 290x. 4k is not selectable, the highest it goes is 3200x1800.

It is buggy. I tried changing the DPI to make text more readable and it bugs out. With VSR enabled, after changing the DPI, the resolution resets itself to 640x480 with no other options.

The only way I could get DPI settings to change and actually work, was to change the DPI settings BEFORE you enable VSR, reboot the computer, then enable VSR and change the resolution.

This works fine for the desktop, however, I briefly tested NBA 2k15 with it, and the resolution was so jacked up, it looked horribly worse than 640x480 and the resolution was set to 1920x1080. The highest selectable resolution was 1920x1200. I did not try that 1920x1200, I just closed it and will have to mess around with it later on.

I really hope, when it comes to games, that it is not this big of a hassle to get to work right.

AMD already mention that only R9 285 can select resolution above 3200x1800. they attribute that to hardware limitation in their GPU making go higher than 3200x1800 was not possible with GCN 1.1 based card.

 

[alidan]

Just installed with my 290x. 4k is not selectable, the highest it goes is 3200x1800.

It is buggy. I tried changing the DPI to make text more readable and it bugs out. With VSR enabled, after changing the DPI, the resolution resets itself to 640x480 with no other options.

The only way I could get DPI settings to change and actually work, was to change the DPI settings BEFORE you enable VSR, reboot the computer, then enable VSR and change the resolution.

This works fine for the desktop, however, I briefly tested NBA 2k15 with it, and the resolution was so jacked up, it looked horribly worse than 640x480 and the resolution was set to 1920x1080. The highest selectable resolution was 1920x1200. I did not try that 1920x1200, I just closed it and will have to mess around with it later on.

I really hope, when it comes to games, that it is not this big of a hassle to get to work right.

AMD already mention that only R9 285 can select resolution above 3200x1800. they attribute that to hardware limitation in their GPU making go higher than 3200x1800 was not possible with GCN 1.1 based card.

the max resolution for a 290X is 4096 x 2160, so them saying its a hardware limitation is most likely bs.

 

[mystilez]

this doesnt even work for my 7970....

 

[Rouxenator]

Lets hope they fixed the buf that causes amdocl64.dll to crash windows 8.1 thumbnail previews

 

[GhostintheZoid]

This omega update is crap, my computer can't detect that i have a graphics card anymore after i installed it.

I did a clean uninstall with DDU and then used the auto detect software off the AMD website it found that i have a HD 7800 series graphics card, & I downloaded the recommended software. but that didn't fix it.

I disabled a digital signature as well, to no avail.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what i can do?

UPDATE
I figured out my problem wasn't to do with amd's new omega update it was to do with the windows update KB300439 basically uninstalled it and blocked it and clean uninstalled the omega update with DDU and then reinstalled it and now it works.

 

[SessouXFX]

If only they'd focus like this more on their CPUs...

 

[renz496]

If only they'd focus like this more on their CPUs...

i think they want to refocus on that with their upcoming Zen architecture. but just don't have overly high expectation for it. just look at what happen with bulldozer. one of the reason why it looks so underwhelming was because AMD own fault for over hyping the processor.

 

[InvalidError]

look at what happen with bulldozer. one of the reason why it looks so underwhelming was because AMD own fault for over hyping the processor.

If you watch AMD's SVP's video about Carrizo on Youtube, he sounds like he wants to turn up the hype quite a bit about that one too... it is hard to hold back on over-hyping when you desperately need the sales.

 

[cmi86]

I am only running a single GCN 1.0 GPU and a single display so I am not going to see the bulk of the perks in this new driver. However I can say that stability wise this driver is the best thing I have seen from AMD in a long time. I tried 14.9 and it was a disaster.

 

[Lutfij]

14.9 was a disaster for everyone in AMD's camp. They even accepted that the driver did more bad than good.