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No more monthly drivers for AMD

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Olikan said:
i think that amd is going to do a driver per 3 months...
....just like for the pre-dx11 cards
Click to expand...

Haha, and then a year or so from now quit writing drivers altogether? :awe:

I'm torn. I've had bad luck with both AMD's and nvidia's approaches, so I'll just continue to be jaded 😉
 
I have a noob question: Can someone explain to me why this is good?

12.4 is already over a month old. So basically, rather than sticking to a schedule, it's just going to be a "upgrade drivers as needed" sort of basis? As in, they won't bother releasing new drivers unless there's a new game or something that they need to fix for?

And in which case, they'll probably be releasing more CAPs than full Catalyst updates?

Thanks.
 
LessThanDan said:
I have a noob question: Can someone explain to me why this is good?

12.4 is already over a month old. So basically, rather than sticking to a schedule, it's just going to be a "upgrade drivers as needed" sort of basis? As in, they won't bother releasing new drivers unless there's a new game or something that they need to fix for?

And in which case, they'll probably be releasing more CAPs than full Catalyst updates?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

No, updates can/will come at any time, you just won't see WHQL drivers (as if that means anything) on a monthly basis. Pretty much exactly how Nvidia does it now.
 
Once they started pissing people off by cutting corners for performance at the cost of IQ I jumped ship, its obvious what they did, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone who bought their cards. Since then things have only gotten worse. To many new DX11 archs to quickly. Slow your roll AMD, I know you're dying to be *FIRST* to everything but at least focus some time on procuring the collective brilliance to do so.

Performance tweaked AA " 1ST!!" , DX11 " 1ST!!!! ", 28nm " 1ST !", driver quailty " who cares!, we were 1st!! ".
 
It's good they aren't wasting resources on getting out a WHQL every month, and instead focusing solely on fixes. Now I hope when a WHQL is released it's VERY solid and tested so there's no worries at all about it breaking anything. Although I've had good luck with AMD WHQL releases for the past year or so.

Magic Carpet said:
Actually, Nvidia hasn't been perfect in this area as of late. Personal experience as well 😛
Click to expand...

As of late? They started dropping the ball years ago. AMD/NV are on equal footing at this point in the driver dept, I'd give the edge to AMD personally- I switched due to running into a lot of Nvidia issues that my Radeon 5870 resolved.
 
For those that are unsure how this is going to help with the driver quality: WHQL drivers require additional testing and time spent by the driver team that could be spent on more urgent fixes.

BD231 said:
Once they started pissing people off by cutting corners for performance at the cost of IQ I jumped ship, its obvious what they did, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone who bought their cards. Since then things have only gotten worse. To many new DX11 archs to quickly. Slow your roll AMD, I know you're dying to be *FIRST* to everything but at least focus some time on procuring the collective brilliance to do so.

Performance tweaked AA " 1ST!!" , DX11 " 1ST!!!! ", 28nm " 1ST !", driver quailty " who cares!, we were 1st!! ".
Click to expand...

Which is an interesting contrast to Nvidia's megalomania. Tessellation? We have ALL THE POLYGONS. Look at all those polygons! Even those that you can't see! Physics engines? Ours is so good that it brings non-sli systems to their knees. Just look at that framerate dipping into single digits!

(For those that are not sure, yes, this is written in jest)
 
The drivers for my 7850 have been surprisingly decent, although the "sleep" issue is a complete embarrassment for AMD. To see them blame the motherboard bios is a joke.
 
Did driver auto-updating ever work? I can't remember the drivers ever actually updating themselves, even after I waited a month or so. and I knew there was a new release.
 
This news would've been good a year or 2 ago.

But the company is struggling. They probably lost some people in the driver department.
 
This is here for comparisons
GeForce 301.42 Driver WHQL NVIDIA Recommended 301.42 May 22, 2012
GeForce 301.24 Driver BETA 301.24 April 9, 2012
GeForce 296.10 Driver WHQL 296.10 March 13, 2012
GeForce 295.73 Driver WHQL 295.73 February 21, 2012
GeForce 295.51 Driver BETA 295.51 January 31, 2012
GeForce 290.53 Driver BETA 290.53 December 21, 2011
GeForce 290.36 Driver BETA 290.36 November 28, 2011
GeForce 285.79 Driver BETA 285.79 November 10, 2011
GeForce 285.62 Driver WHQL 285.62 October 24, 2011
GeForce 285.38 Driver BETA 285.38 September 26, 2011
GeForce 285.27 Driver BETA 285.27 September 13, 2011
GeForce 280.26 Driver WHQL 280.26 August 9, 2011
GeForce 280.19 Driver BETA 280.19 July 28, 2011
GeForce 275.50 Driver BETA 275.50 June 20, 2011
GeForce 275.33 Driver WHQL 275.33 June 1, 2011
GeForce Driver v275.27 BETA 275.27 May 17, 2011
Click to expand...
In 1 year, there have been 6 WHQL drivers from Nvidia, all the rest were BETA drivers.
AMD so far has
11.4 - 12.4 WHQL (1 year's worth)
12.5 BETA (May)
12.6 BETA (May)
 
blackened23 said:
Sounds like this might be better - they're focusing more on emergency fixes and real improvements rather than releasing a WHQL every month just because. 12.6 is up at :

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst126beta.aspx

Tons of changes...
Click to expand...

Resolved issue highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.6 Beta:

AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards hang when system goes to sleep.
Click to expand...

Damn. Is THAT why my computer always hangs after idling for a while? I'm upgrading to 12.6 beta right away.
 
blckgrffn said:
Haha, and then a year or so from now quit writing drivers altogether? :awe:

I'm torn. I've had bad luck with both AMD's and nvidia's approaches, so I'll just continue to be jaded 😉
Click to expand...

There is no perfect driver for graphics. It's just tough to do perfectly everytime. It's not like a general CPU, the specs keep changing at a rapid pace.
 
SickBeast said:
I don't care how often AMD releases their drivers so long as they fix the #$%^&! sleep issue.
Click to expand...

Have you tested this at stock speeds? I recently installed the 12.6 beta drivers for my Gigabyte 7870OC and I'm able to sleep the monitors and the computer with no issues. I'm also running triple Samsung 2443BW monitors (two via mini-DP, one via DVI).
 
Zxian said:
Have you tested this at stock speeds? I recently installed the 12.6 beta drivers for my Gigabyte 7870OC and I'm able to sleep the monitors and the computer with no issues. I'm also running triple Samsung 2443BW monitors (two via mini-DP, one via DVI).
Click to expand...
Yeah I'm realizing my overclock might have been a bit unstable in 2D mode, plus I updated my motherboard BIOS as per the 12.6 release notes.

I will try again. I'm just sick and tired of hard-resetting my computer.
 
Elixer said:
This is here for comparisons

In 1 year, there have been 6 WHQL drivers from Nvidia, all the rest were BETA drivers.
AMD so far has
11.4 - 12.4 WHQL (1 year's worth)
12.5 BETA (May)
12.6 BETA (May)
Click to expand...

And how many hotfixes did AMD release? I think they topped at 6 hotfixes for 1 driver release.

Not to mention its fixed in one version got broken in the next 2 before working again.

12.4 already got 2 hotfixes with 12.4a and 12.4b.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst124ahotfix.aspx
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst124bhotfix.aspx

I dont think hotfix for a driver existed before AMD made it so...

I really do hope for AMD that they can improve their drivers when they aint forced to keep up at a silly monthly schedule. Its done when its done. Not when you hit a certain date. AMD drivers is an utter disaster as it is. BSOD on a driver install was/is also one of those "features".
 
This is a step in the right direction. The arbitrary monthly schedule was killing their quality and completely unnecessary. I would think ideally they would have two teams, a larger, longitudinal development team and a smaller hotfix team.
 
Quality is better than quantity. Except they need to improve their mutli-gpu scaling much sooner in new games.
 
ShintaiDK said:
I dont think hotfix for a driver existed before AMD made it so...
Click to expand...

You use Nvidia so I don't expect you to know this but a hotfix wasn't a patch to an existing driver install- it was an entire driver release. Just a different term for Nvidia driver version 256.12 to 256.13.
 
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