[rumor] AMD Catalyst Omega Drivers

[jackstar7]

Freesync cannot get here fast enough. Let's see some reviews!!

 

[Piroko]

What is your guys's opinion on the Gaming Evolved client? I've always avoided installing it in the past because it seems like unecessary bloatware, similar to the Geforce Experience client. But if it offers useful features like FPS measurement and footage capture I might have to give it a chance.

Won three AMD Radeon Silver Reward Weekly Sweepstakes within 40 days, guess I can't complain :whiste:

 

[mikeymikec]

Using the word 'Omega' with regard to supporting a product isn't ever a good choice from the customer's perspective.

 

[DownTheSky]

So.. any place to download these? Or can somebody put them online (mega.co.nz works ).

 

[Galatian]

Anybody else notice the "shady" wording of their performance increase claim? It says "19% more performance since launch". For me that reads like the driver only add a few more % on the already existing performance enhancements of older drivers.

 

[Jodell88]

Due out next week is a very significant update to AMD's Catalyst Linux graphics driver as they continue to work towards the unified AMD Linux driver strategy.

There hasn't been an AMD Catalyst Linux update in more than two months but it looks like the update due out next week will be worth the wait. This next AMD Catalyst Linux update due out on Tuesday, 9 December, will bring VA-API video decoding support (finally an alternative to using the ill-adopted, AMD-specific XvBA API), OpenGL ES 3.0 support, OpenCL 2.0, AMD FreeSync support on Linux, OpenMP 3.1 over HSA, and Linux packaging improvements. There's also 5K x 3K display support, frame pacing for Dual Graphics, and other enhancements for both the Windows and Linux graphics drivers. At least under Windows, there's very significant performance optimizations due out too.

This driver will presumably be marked in the fglrx 14.50 series after talking about it in September and finally now materializing.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTg1NTE

 

[KaRLiToS]

Anybody else notice the "shady" wording of their performance increase claim? It says "19% more performance since launch". For me that reads like the driver only add a few more % on the already existing performance enhancements of older drivers.

I don't think a driver will magically increase the performance by 75%. Hawai is reallyclose to leave a place to its successor. But look at all the features it is suppose to come with. I also heard about MANY bugs repairs.

We will have to wait for the release notes to learn more about it.

 

[Galatian]

I don't think a driver will magically increase the performance by 75%. Hawai is reallyclose to leave a place to its successor. But look at all the features it is suppose to come with. I also heard about MANY bugs repairs.



We will have to wait for the release notes to learn more about it.

Oh no worries. I'm happy as well! I just recently switched to two R9 290X watercooled. Couldn't resist with these prices, upcoming Freesync (I'm up for a 4K display) and Civilization Beyond Earth using Mantle. It's just that people might be thinking this is new omega driver is similar to the nVidia driver that actually increased performance a lot, while the wording of the chart actually suggest they are looking at a 19% increase from all driver since the launch of the cards together.

 

[caswow]

Oh no worries. I'm happy as well! I just recently switched to two R9 290X watercooled. Couldn't resist with these prices, upcoming Freesync (I'm up for a 4K display) and Civilization Beyond Earth using Mantle. It's just that people might be thinking this is new omega driver is similar to the nVidia driver that actually increased performance a lot, while the wording of the chart actually suggest they are looking at a 19% increase from all driver since the launch of the cards together.

could you post benchmarks of the magical nvidia driver that gave for example me a big boost in fps? this magical driver doesnt exist...

 

[KaRLiToS]

could you post benchmarks of the magical nvidia driver that gave for example me a big boost in fps? this magical driver doesnt exist...

I would like to see that too.

Nvidia never has huge improvement with their newer drivers. Their new drivers only bring bug repairs, more supported cards when new cards release, SLI supports for newer games and couple of other things. Sometime performance boost for newer broken games.

Check this chart for example:

 

[mikeymikec]

I would like to see that too.

Nvidia never has huge improvement with their newer drivers. Their new drivers only bring bug repairs, more supported cards when new cards release, SLI supports for newer games and couple of other things. Sometime performance boost for newer broken games.

Check this chart for example:

TBH I'm surprised to see that much improvement (at least in that steady a fashion). I would have expected that, from the point of a new GPU being released, that say the first six months of new drivers would be the most likely to include performance improvements. Perhaps at some later date a significant optimisation (due to a new way of handling something being devised) is put into a driver, then there would be a sudden increase in the graph, but otherwise I'd expect a flat line.

I personally cannot remember ever experiencing a performance improvement due to a video driver update. The occasions I can remember updating my video card drivers were due to problems with the driver I was using (e.g. graphics corruptions).

 

[HurleyBird]

could you post benchmarks of the magical nvidia driver that gave for example me a big boost in fps? this magical driver doesnt exist...

He might be talking about a driver in the GF3 era, released just before the Radeon 8500 launched, that boosted performance from below the 8500 to above it.

 

[Galatian]

could you post benchmarks of the magical nvidia driver that gave for example me a big boost in fps? this magical driver doesnt exist...

Huh? Everybody forgot the 337.50 driver earlier this year?

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Improvements on CPU overhead according to the slides. Just like the nvidia driver wont show in tests with overclocked Intel 6 or 8 Cores

 

[guskline]

Oh no worries. I'm happy as well! I just recently switched to two R9 290X watercooled. Couldn't resist with these prices, upcoming Freesync (I'm up for a 4K display) and Civilization Beyond Earth using Mantle. It's just that people might be thinking this is new omega driver is similar to the nVidia driver that actually increased performance a lot, while the wording of the chart actually suggest they are looking at a 19% increase from all driver since the launch of the cards together.

Nice to have watercooled R9 290Xs in CF! My 2 R9 290s in CF work well water cooled. Which waterblocks did you use?

 

[DiogoDX]

Huh? Everybody forgot the 337.50 driver earlier this year?

Marketing:

Reality:

The use of worlds like "up to" generally indicates "best one case" like SLI performance was just a profile for Rome 2 that din't have a SLI profile prior this driver.

 

[Galatian]

Nice to have watercooled R9 290Xs in CF! My 2 R9 290s in CF work well water cooled. Which waterblocks did you use?

The one from Aquacomputer with the active backplate.

 

[Galatian]

Marketing:

Reality:

The use of worlds like "up to" generally indicates "best one case" like SLI performance was just a profile for Rome 2 that din't have a SLI profile prior this driver.

Sorry I wanted to point out the exact same thing when the AMD slides state: up to 19% more performance since launch.

 

[caswow]

Sorry I wanted to point out the exact same thing when the AMD slides state: up to 19% more performance since launch.

no you didnt.

Oh no worries. I'm happy as well! I just recently switched to two R9 290X watercooled. Couldn't resist with these prices, upcoming Freesync (I'm up for a 4K display) and Civilization Beyond Earth using Mantle. It's just that people might be thinking this is new omega driver is similar to the nVidia driver that actually increased performance a lot, while the wording of the chart actually suggest they are looking at a 19% increase from all driver since the launch of the cards together.

 

[Galatian]

Marketing:

Reality:

The use of worlds like "up to" generally indicates "best one case" like SLI performance was just a profile for Rome 2 that din't have a SLI profile prior this driver.

no you didnt.

Well there are games that gain 10% and even more. Of course it is completely dependent on the game. Such will probably be the case with the AMD Omega driver. This is all I'm saying. Not sure why I am being put in a corner right now. I just don't think anybody should get too excited.

Besides nobody really answered my first question to begin with: how do you interpret/feel about that marketing slide?

 

[el etro]

Besides nobody really answered my first question to begin with: how do you interpret/feel about that marketing slide?

DX11 Driver overhead improvement: is exactly the same thing Nvidia did on R337.

I tell where i get this info via PM.

 

[Galatian]

DX11 Driver overhead improvement: is exactly the same thing Nvidia did on R337.

I tell where i get this info via PM.

This is actually what I am talking about. They are claiming up to 19% increase in performance. But compared to what? Launch drivers. I'm sorry but I believe this to be even worse marketing than what nvidia did.

 

[tential]

Well there are games that gain 10% and even more. Of course it is completely dependent on the game. Such will probably be the case with the AMD Omega driver. This is all I'm saying. Not sure why I am being put in a corner right now. I just don't think anybody should get too excited.

Besides nobody really answered my first question to begin with: how do you interpret/feel about that marketing slide?

Adding SLI to a game that had broken SLI, Total War Rome II, is now a massive performance gain?

I didn't realize fixing something that didn't work equaled a performance gain. Nvidia, the company that can do no wrong...

 

[tential]

This is actually what I am talking about. They are claiming up to 19% increase in performance. But compared to what? Launch drivers. I'm sorry but I believe this to be even worse marketing than what nvidia did.

You're kidding right? Nvidia said 64% performance increase on a single card. Which game had a 64% increase? NONE, not even above 15%.

AMD gave you the exact points in time they are referring to with their performance increase. Nvidia? They just said "64% take my word".

 

[Galatian]

You're kidding right? Nvidia said 64% performance increase on a single card. Which game had a 64% increase? NONE, not even above 15%.



AMD gave you the exact points in time they are referring to with their performance increase. Nvidia? They just said "64% take my word".

At least they had some improvement. For all we know the wording of the AMD marketing slide can be interpreted in a way that Omega drives will net 0 performance gain, since the slide takes all other driver updates since the launch into account.

But I get: I said something unpopular and I leave it at that. I really don't want to escalate this discussion and derail the topic any further. I noticed the shenanigans on the marketing slide, called it out and every body so far has actually failed to respond to that and is instead trying to paint me like I am some nvidia fanboy.

Yeah I got it: the nvidia driver was not the next best thing since sliced bread. Nonetheless it did boost performance on a number of titles. Was the marketing bad? Yeah! But so is this one from AMD. Personally I think it is even worse, because with the nvidia driver I actually did see increased performance. Perhaps not to the levels nvidia advertised, but still. All I can gather from the AMD slides is that since the launch like over a year ago they managed to get 19% more performance out of their cards in Bioshock Infinite. It has actually no relevance to the Omega driver when you really think about it.