AMD Catalyst 15.7 Driver is now available!

[chimaxi83]

Well, this driver has completely removed Crossfire flickering in TW3 for me. Smooth performance too, as long as I do the tessellation tweak for Hairworks. I'm just glad that damn flickering is gone.

 

[kawi6rr]

under gaming tab when you can also see the AMD overdrive mode

Yeah I'm in Game/3d applications and select my game. I can see Frame rate control but only

• Wait for vertical refresh
• Open GL buffering

show up

Do I have the correct drivers?

15.20.1046-150622a-186188C
15.7

 

[raghu78]

Farcry 4 performance has improved significantly in 15.7 according to hardocp

http://hardocp.com/article/2015/07/10/asus_strix_r9_fury_dc3_video_card_review/6#.VaCpofmqqko

"With the new Catalyst 15.7 driver we have found performance has skyrocketed in Far Cry 4 on the Fury series. When we originally tested this game on the older Fury X driver it was much slower. When we got the new Catalyst 15.7 we experienced a big increase in performance in this game. We need to re-test Fury X in this game it will surely be faster as well.

The ASUS STRIX R9 Fury played this game very well, better in fact than the GeForce GTX 980. We were able to have almost every in-game feature turned up to its highest setting. We were able to turn on Enhanced Godrays, Simulated Fur and HBAO+."

so we are seeing some slight positive signs. Hopefully AMD keeps improving on games where perf scaling over R9 390X is very poor like Dragon Age, GTA V, Dying Light etc

 

[destrekor]

The improvements show in DX11 in Futuremark's API overhead test and I have every expectation they would also show in current games where CPU overhead was/is an issue.

Edit: From this post:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5117743&postcount=955
15.6

15.7

I'm not really sure what is going on here... both of those are 15.20 series drivers. In other words, neither of those results are from 15.6, which would have a 14.x series driver.

I didn't write it down but I just removed my 15.6 installation, and I double-checked the driver package version and it was most certainly a 14.x version. 15.20 is new to the 15.7 series. Frankly I don't even know where that top version is from, because the previous Fury release was the 15.15 series, and they immediately moved to 15.20.1046 for WHQL. There was no public release of a 15.20.1023... so I suspect there was some nasty bug as opposed to a miraculous performance increase.

I'd like to see a true 15.6 v. 15.7 benchmark comparison, one that actually compares released drivers, be they beta or WHQL.

 

[Red Hawk]

Yeah I'm in Game/3d applications and select my game. I can see Frame rate control but only

• Wait for vertical refresh
• Open GL buffering

show up

Do I have the correct drivers?

15.20.1046-150622a-186188C
15.7

It's not under the "Gaming" tab, it's under the "Performance" tab.

 

[Shamrock]

I am getting hammered on rFactor 2. With Omega driver I could get mid 90s @ Barber Motorsports Park. Now max is 62 (hovers mid 50s most times).

1440p maxed 8aa/16af
4790k cpu
R9-290 Tri-x video.

 

[Devildoll]

Anyone seen this?

Claims of major CPU overhead improvements in this driver!

https://www.reddit.com/r/AdvancedMi...alyst_157_overhead_improvements_in_dx11_over/
https://i.imgur.com/iX2vZ7h.png

I ran some tests regarding this, both on windows 7 and 10.
posted my findings on Guru3D, I'll just paste it over here as well.

The drivers i tested were

14.12 ( omega )
15.3
15.4
15.5
15.6
15.7

The results of the windows 7 tests were even for the most part, apart from 15.7 having a massive edge on draw calls.

On windows 10 i tested the WDDM 2.0 driver that comes with Windows 10, against 15.7
Similar findings Here, ontop of the draw call increase, we also see a pretty substantial fps boost here.

 

[monstercameron]

I ran some tests regarding this, both on windows 7 and 10.
posted my findings on Guru3D, I'll just paste it over here as well.

The drivers i tested were

14.12 ( omega )
15.3
15.4
15.5
15.6
15.7

The results of the windows 7 tests were even for the most part, apart from 15.7 having a massive edge on draw calls.

On windows 10 i tested the WDDM 2.0 driver that comes with Windows 10, against 15.7
Similar findings Here, ontop of the draw call increase, we also see a pretty substantial fps boost here.

On mobile , can you add more details to your post?

 

[railven]

Might be something else wrong.

I take back I typed before, I notice I was running the game borderless and not full screen and that might be the problem.





Yup, when i switched to the Ti i went borderless, and i guess that kills AMD for some reason, it almost felt like i was running a single card and not Xfire. Can't tell anything about the whole freesync, i usually run fairly high frame rates.

The only time i have for sure notice tearing is the minibird chopper blades as a passenger, will report back when i get a chance to see them.

Not sure if it has changed, seems not, but when I had CF7970's you had to keep full screen mode for CFX to work, otherwise you'd get some weird stuff.

 

[Devildoll]

On mobile , can you add more details to your post?

basically a 40% increase in draw calls on dx11 windows 7.
and on dx11 windows 10 there's similar gains, as well as like 30% higher fps as well.

 

[RaulF]

Not sure if it has changed, seems not, but when I had CF7970's you had to keep full screen mode for CFX to work, otherwise you'd get some weird stuff.

Yeah looks like it was that, almost felt like crossfire was disable.

 

[Red Hawk]

I went ahead and installed the driver on my brother's system. He has a 260X and uses a 1440x900 monitor. I was a bit concerned if VSR would work at all, since AMD does not list 1440x900 as a supported resolution in the release notes. But it does work, up to 1920x1200, which is in line with how native monitor resolutions like 1366x768 and 1600x900 are noted to only support up to 1920x1080 VSR resolutions.

basically a 40% increase in draw calls on dx11 windows 7.
and on dx11 windows 10 there's similar gains, as well as like 30% higher fps as well.

Huh. You'd think they'd brag about it more in the release notes if this was actually the case.

 

[tential]

I went ahead and installed the driver on my brother's system. He has a 260X and uses a 1440x900 monitor. I was a bit concerned if VSR would work at all, since AMD does not list 1440x900 as a supported resolution in the release notes. But it does work, up to 1920x1200, which is in line with how native monitor resolutions like 1366x768 and 1600x900 are noted to only support up to 1920x1080 VSR resolutions.



Huh. You'd think they'd brag about it more in the release notes if this was actually the case.

We just need a #AmdMarketing at this point....

 

[Devildoll]

I went ahead and installed the driver on my brother's system. He has a 260X and uses a 1440x900 monitor. I was a bit concerned if VSR would work at all, since AMD does not list 1440x900 as a supported resolution in the release notes. But it does work, up to 1920x1200, which is in line with how native monitor resolutions like 1366x768 and 1600x900 are noted to only support up to 1920x1080 VSR resolutions.



Huh. You'd think they'd brag about it more in the release notes if this was actually the case.

The thing is, all these tests are on 3DMark api overhead test, not actual game improvements.

 

[Artorias]

Anybody having their Anisotropic Filter setting reset to "application managed" from 16X occasionally?

I cant pin down the cause and its been doing this since 15.6, its a fresh install and the setting does not seem to reset on restart, I keep checking periodically and notice after 2-3 days it goes back to default which is really annoying.

No other setting is going back to default.

 

[kawi6rr]

It's not under the "Gaming" tab, it's under the "Performance" tab.

Got it, thanks!! I wish I could set it for specific games and not a global limiter.

 

[RaulF]

Still see screen tearing with "freesync".

 

[96Firebird]

I bet the clock for clock performance is identical now. I have a suspicion they withheld 290/x from the driver updates to paint the 390x in a better light. Sounds like funny business and I hope I am wrong.

I'm also curious about the same thing, would be interesting to see the results.

 

[Rvenger]

I'm also curious about the same thing, would be interesting to see the results.

I am not a fan of dirty driver tricks but the 390/390x still does have efficiency gains and better OC potential. I no longer have a 290 to test this anymore but I did run the hacked driver over at G3D and had the draw call improvements on my 290x. No doubt I had gains.

 

[SPBHM]

15.7 is WDDM 1.3 or 2.0?

 

[waffleironhead]

15.7 is WDDM 1.3 or 2.0?

OP says 2.0.

 

[guskline]

Revenger, I moved 2 of My Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290s into my 3770k rig to make room for the new GTX980TI under water in my main rig below.

No doubt the 15.7 drivers help the performance. BTW had to re-install them to get all the features including capping the fps which works on the 290s!

As for dirty tricks, I'm beyond that. I think AMD improved the yield and internal workings of the 290/290x and released it as an improved chip without starting from the ground up as a new design. It isn't a huge jump from the 290s but it is an improvement.

Fiji is clearly a new design.

I'm sure AMD wanted the 390s to look better than the 290s but the 290 stock is most likely gone so the incentive to do this is gone. If I can benefit with my 290s from the 390 driver improvement I'm thrilled. More icing on the cake!:biggrin:

 

[cantholdanymore]

Does anyone knows if there are improvements with project cars?
Edit:
Checked release notes, yes there are. How much?

 

[Rvenger]

AMD Catalyst 15.7 drivers secretly unlocked CrossFire support between R300 and R200 Radeon GPUs

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2947...upport-between-r300-and-r200-radeon-gpus.html



Suspicions confirmed. Great for current R9 290/x owners but Huddy was incorrect when he said it was not possible, also another bad marketing move to lock out the driver for the reviews to make older hawaii look worse. Kind of the same way Nvidia did with Kepler. Both of these companies need to stop playing illusion games.

Source where Huddy said it is not crossfire compatible - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuA3T9MzNic 2 mins in.

 

[james1701]

Is there any reason why these cards disable one DP on 7970's? Every driver since Omega has done this. I have 2 DP and one DVI port running 3 monitors with extended desktop. I can disable the active DP port, and it will activate the second one. I can't get both to function at the same time.