AMD Catalyst 14.8 WHQL (14.201.1008 August 12)

I ll export mine as soon as I can.

Just to point out that I get that warning message and most of the time I have to install the driver again. I haven't used DDU in a while but I am still in the same windows installation.

 

Most of their problems are caused by:
1. using tools like ddu
2. mess in os - lots of useless programs, crapware working in background
3. not clearing temp and prefetch folders - these should be cleared from time to time
4. caused by horrible hardware (for example gpus from vertex3d, gainward, palit and other similar, cheap companies)
5. weak psu
6. other hardware failures or hardware being about to fail
7. intel hyperthreading with i3/i5/i7 cpus may be reason of stuttering and crashes
8. too high overclock
9. os haven't been reinstalled since long time or it is windows 8(.0)
10. they are brainless monkeys (unfortunately this comparison is disgrace to wonderful animals which monkeys definitely are)



Personally i've never had any issue with drivers or even if i had problem was fixed in next available release. With 12.11 beta.. 1 or 4, do not remember exactly, dishonored was crashing loading screen - fixed in 12.11 beta 7. Since few months i had problem with tv connected via hdmi being not detected and not installed with drivers newer than 14.3. Problem was not in drivers but in cable which i replaced and now everything works fine as before. Youtube bsods... i had ONE(!!!) and i'm not sure if it was really related to youtube/flash/amd drivers combo as i was doing also other things in background. I have bsod on starting ati tray tools, why? Because this program supports gpus only up to hd6xxx series.


Do you feel red pain? Ok, sell your radeon gpu(s), sell your wife (you will definitely need this to get enough money for nvidia gpu), buy nvidia gpu. Install geforce gpu, install geforce drivers, install geforce experience, install....etc. and enjoy your:
1. nvidia driver tricks artificially boosting performance (draw distance limit, replacing one methods of aa with others, etc)
2. your support with nvidia surround up to 3 screens (which can be limited in any moment with driver update, that's what nvidia did on linux, linux driver was supporting up to 4 screens but with some line of drivers they decided to provide the same features set on all supported os-es)
3. new problems which you didn't have on amd cards
4. wonderful txaa which tanks your fps like msaa and blures image to make it look like poo smeared on mirror but mirror's edges now have no jaggies!
5. possibility of frying your gpu by new version of driver
6. and even more such awesome features



Ok, now being serious... Overall i like both companies almost the same way, the only two things i do not like in nvidia are totally overpriced gpus and their marketing, i like amd more because they are more open with technologies.
Both gpus are fine if you keep your os and hardware in good shape, but both gpus totally suck balls if you have weirdly built pc and your os is full of crapware and temp files.

 

It’s anti DDU day it seems. :whip:

 

i dont think it is, but you cant deny the posts with most issues are like:

´´this driver is crap it bsod!!! , ima ddu and back to xx.xx driver it was fine´´

i suggest to take a look at the systems these users have to see if there is any bug that can be replicated, in the drivers or DDU.

(for the sake of misleading of a good driver release)

 

Wagnard, if you include me into this "anti-ddu day" i have to tell you that you are wrong

DDU is a very nice tool, i like it. It is simple, complex and does its job, but as with any clean up software in distanced future using it may cause problems and obviously it is not perfect. For example, 14.7 driver in ccc or msi afterburner or any other software was always recognized as 14.6 even after using ddu. By my awesome superpowers i was forced to reinstall os, freshly installed windows 8.1 x64 enterprise, installed 14.7 right after updating freshly installed os and guess what? CCC, afterburner.... etc were recognizing driver as 14.7, not 14.6. Concluding this story: even ddu was unable to clean all things to make software recognize proper driver version.

I understand, reason of this specific problem lies somewhere between amd and windows.



My point is... ddu shouldn't be used in routine as replacement for amd's regular driver uninstaller but should be used only if some regular things fail.

 

No worries I don't deny anything. If thing those who know me around know that I always been quite open to hear and fix stuff. (at least I hope )

 

The anti DDU was more a joke than anything else I wasn't pointing to anyone to be honest.

And totally agree with what you said.
While I consider DDU safe, you guys should always think of this simple rule
(if it's not broke, don't fix it).

Interesting stuff about MSI afterburner I may look at this. I havent really had this problem myself. CCC always shown correct version except for some RCx but it was clearly the driver team that forgot to add driver version to the CCC.

Gonna play a bit around with 14.6 and 14.7

Edit: done, I played with 14.6 up to .8 and I havent saw the issue you mentioned on MSI AB. I even cleaned each time in normal mode.

Could be a possible issue on some earlier DDU version before I launched it as a system process.
Thanks for reporting anyway

 

14.8 WHQL still have flickering and texture bugs in WoW 1.12.1, so goes to 14.4 again

 

Thanks. Only when you have time and feel for it.


Also, can someone share their .DMP of their bsods? I want to give a look at them just in case I find something interesting.

 

Funny thing these are not on the AMD's website yet.

I'll give them a try and post my impressions!

 

i find it strange that there's a separate apu installer, i dont remember seeing this before (been testing kaveri these days)

to those with higher temps after 14.4.... are you simply not throttling as much anymore? i saw some 290 users, we all saw the reviews, we no longer have fixed 3d clocks (wish we did)

you have firefox opened & minimized? did you put the rc3 atiumdag.dll to confirm?

2 weeks is about the earliest, look at the date of the driver packaging version (& files), it's august 12 so it took 2 weeks for certification (they were posted on amd's site august 29)

it is exactly one day newer than 14.7 RC3 (which is ok, there have been lame cases where whql is older than already released beta)

this thread is for a WHQL though, not that it makes a difference, ALL drivers have bugs, amd has said themselves that they have to prioritize which ones to fix (interview within the last few years)

 

amd overdrive target temp

Hi..
i have gigabyte r290oc 4gb, the issue i have with all 14.xx drivers is that they don't show target temp right is amd overdrive. R290 max operating temp is suppose to be 95C but these 14xx drivers show max target temperature 85C only and as card reaches 85C it slows down
i am using 13.xx which show correct target temp 95C.

 

you dont have an option to change it?

 

the 2gb vram of your 7870 are to less for mantle,
and no driver will ever change that.

 

you mean for texture+resolution+msaa settings

but it sounded like dx11 is fine for him so... there is always the chance that mantle (or bf4's version) isnt fully done for an older & less powerful card like a 7870 compared to 290, 280

 

mantle consumes around 500mb more vram then dx11 (on the same settings)

and this is just to much for 2gb (even with high settings and not ultra).

try to reduce the settings so much that your vram doesnt go ahead of 2gb, and you will see that there are no more fps drops with mantle.

 

yeah, i understand that now mantle is limited by my videoRAM, but AMD positioning Mantle as API that is much better than DX11, but i can play BF4(DX11) with everything maxed out except MSAA, and mantle cant give me even that (and i hoped that with mantle i will be able to add 2xMSAA), so Mantle is much worse for me, than DX11, and AMD just cheating people =)

i have 2 mantle games (BF4 and Theif) and cant play them (with maxed out settings) using mantle because of fps drops, but i can play them (with maxed out settings) using DX11. So Mantle is crap for me for that moment =)

and as i can see - 2 different games based on different engines have the same problems - so i think its a driver problem and it will be fixed sooner or later.

 

mantles job is not to give you better graphics,
its job is it to brake cpu limits.

2gb vram is to less, and this will never change.

get a gpu with 3gb (or even more), or forget about mantle.

you can read about this 2gb problem here
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Battl...-Teeth-Benchmarks-welche-Grafikkarte-1128858/

google translated:
"Annoying it is for AMD owners who have only a 2-gigabyte model. The memory difficulties among Mantle still not a thing of the past. And while also Geforce cards with 2-gigabyte Complement with Ultra-Details and four times multisampling now and then have to suffer minimal Speicherschluckauf, runs mercilessly fully in the AMD counterparts of the memory under Mantle. The Nvidia GPUs recover quickly again, the tiny drops hit at most minimal in the benchmarks down. But with the Radeon cards is after little more than 30 seconds curfew: If the memory is full, bring down the frame rates in the basement and stay there for the rest of the benchmark sequence - clearly visible to the miserable minimum frame rate of R9 270X and R7 260X under Mantle. The min fps are even saved by the first, still halfway liquid Run something away.

Anyone who owns a 2-gigabyte model, should therefore continue to rely on DirectX. And who flirts with the new acquisition of a Radeon GPU and Mantle top, should definitely take the memory configuration in the eye, to our knowledge. The memory usage fell in all our previous Mantle benchmarks higher than under Direct X and the trend of the last time and the significantly better storage facilities of current consoles suggests at least that the built-in graphics card RAM in the future will be no less important."

 

Sounds like you are using the Silent BIOS instead of the Performance one. Check the BIOS selection switch, Performance is towards the connector bracket, Silent is towards the power connectors.

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/faq-page.aspx?fid=2767&pid=4884

 

Regarding your AMD/Nvidia points,
I understand you are an AMD fan, but alot of this is just BS and I'm using an AMD system now.
1. Both AMD and Nvidia have pretty much identical display quality provided you set both to the same level of quality/performance in their respective CP. Even if there are disparities, its usually on launch titles that have some issues, and most of the time the differences may be in gamma settings. If there is PhysX, yeah, AMD can't really run those without tanking in FPS due to CPU vs GPU acceleration but those titles are rare. However, there hasn't been any well documented "cheats" that either company employs.
2. The amount of people that use surround and eyefinity is very small, I don't either, so I won't comment on this. I do however feel like 3 adequately large screens should be enough, and probably enough to torture any 290/GK110 GPUs.
3. Yes, this is true, but those issues are usually not as serious or long term as AMD ones.
4. You do know that TXAA is an option? It offers a cross between MSAA and FXAA, it isn't like you are forced to use it over the others.
5. The general consensus is that AMDs latest drivers are also raising temperatures.
6. Like what?

Most people here are just frustrated at AMD's slow nature of fixing important bugs, particularly DX9 corruption in many 7 series cards. Its also acknowledged that DVI black screen bugs may never be fixed as well (I personally switched to DP to mitigate it because after 1.5 years of having the 7950s, it has never been fixed). Being forced to fix these issues by changing our habits (for a time I had to disable the screen standby feature and manually turn off the monitor) or by loading in dlls, are serious issues that AMD has ignored for a few months. I'm not even complaining about edge cases here as these are replicated by everyone that has a 78XX, 79XX, 280 card in a good number of titles. Nor am I really complaining about the lack of Mantle recording. One of the MMOs I play also doesn't support dll side loading and I have to uninstall and reinstall drivers every time I want to play it (I also play Watch Dogs and BF4, so I need the newer drivers). Yes, Nvidia has its issues as well but its usually not something this large or neglected.

Price wise, Nvidia is only a little more expensive, at least in the US. You are usually looking at just a 10-40$ premium on a comparable card basis (750ti/265/760, 280x/770, 290/780/290x). There is also the debate over open air vs blower cards. IMHO, I personally prefer blowers now after using open air ones, especially multiple cards. Nvidia makes better stock coolers than AMD variants. If I was to pick a card now, that small price premium is well worth the amount of time lost trying to troubleshoot or fix common errors. Knowing that either AMD's hardware or software issues are mostly there to stay from the day you get it, I'm personally steering clear of their hardware in the meantime until they get their driver team sorted.