AMD Catalyst 14.8 WHQL (14.201.1008 August 12)

That's BF4 july 8 patch that broke it, it's fixed on CTE though

It broke Mantle crossfire in the July 8 patch in the vanila BF4 game, If I run one 290x it runs perfect, on CTE I can run crossfire like before!

 

Just to chime in, it's not so here in Southeastern Europe. When I was looking for a new laptop 2 years ago, the Nvidia 610M cost the same price as the AMD 7670M, while the AMD card performs two times better. Guess what I chose. I have never had problems with it. In fact, my problems came from my intel I3 processor, they had to replace it 7 days after I bought the laptopt and it's been giving me problems this whole time nevertheless.

 

he is not using crossfire,
and bf4 with latest patch running just fine on my 7950 with mantle.

 

It is not a driver problem, it is a hardware limitation problem.

Mantle works by taking load off the CPU (no high level DX 11 API to process) and leverages more work from the GPU (through the low level Mantle API) to give you a higher graphical output. So CPU works less, GPU works more. Just that in getting that higher performance from the GPU, Mantle may use more than 2 times as much vram as DX 11 using the same video settings.

Maybe there could be some future vram memory management tweaks for Mantle, but still expect that greater vram usage compared to DX 11 is here to stay. It is what it is.

Note - be interesting to see if the DX12 API also likes more vram just like Mantle. If I was in the market to upgrade GPUs, I would definitely make sure I got a 4Gb card minimum, just in case.

 

Only 14.8s i could find on there were these.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/embedded?os=Windows+7+-+32

 

I was referring to desktop cards in my post.
Laptops are hard to compare unless everything else is the same (material, display, hard drive, etc). I do feel that Optimus may be a bit more mature than AMD's Enduro, and is a little easier to update drivers for. I'm not too sure if AMD got better since I don't have a newer platform to use, but the 6630 + Intel i5 (SB) solution was always a little finicky compared to the 640M + i5 (IVB). Both solutions however, are sometimes quite annoying due to the switching problem for media players and some lighter/older games where the detection wasn't perfect.

I'm purely speculating, but with the emphasis on more low level optimization, I believe the newer APIs (Mantle, DX12, and the next OpenGL) place much more of the burden on the studios to tweak and make sure performance is good across a large spectrum of hardware. As we know that studios are generally quite pressed for time (putting it nicely), optimization will be terrible on PCs due to consoles having unified memory.

 

This is the only AMD page I can find for 14.8.

Last Updates: 8/29/2014
Article Number: RN-WINLIN-14.201.1008

AMD Catalyst™ Software for AMD Desktop APUs

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/desktop-apu-catalyst-software.aspx

Maybe AMD is waiting for after the long weekend in the States before they release 14.8 for desktop graphic cards?

FYI: I just checked the download files from the AMD URL with the download files from GURU3D and found that the files are identical.

 

i can set target temp of 95C in 13.xx drivers but in any of 14.xx drivers slider on target temp is limited to 85C max, now in 14xx drivers gpu reaches 85C and drops clock to stay at 85C so it slows down where as in 13xx it doesnt drop clocks because 95C target temp is set in overdrive.
i use DDU as standard removal tool

 

Just curious, have anyone tried this driver in an APU yet? You know, like these drivers were actually targeted towards?
Just because they can run on most systems doesn't mean they should and I think the title of the thread is misleading people into thinking they are official desktop drivers similar to 14.4 and expecting too much from them.
I personally haven't tried these drivers as I'm waiting for newer drivers targeted for the desktop.

 

Isn't 95c a bit too high for a gpu? I wonder if this isn't intentional from AMD.

 

95°c is max temp for the 290s, not that I like to see it get anywhere near that, but have seen 93°c from mine

 

With a CF of 7970 using Mantle in BF4 give me in 5/10 min an error : not enough memory and game lookup returning to windows. PC have 8 Gb of RAM.

Is this fixe in CTE ?

 

The Gigabyte Windforce r9 290 is set to throttle at 84 degrees from the factory. This is normal.

 

The GV-R929OC-4GD (factory OC model) has a 84 degrees target when using the "Silent" BIOS and a 95 degrees target using the "Performance" BIOS.

 

Id have thought there would have been a release this week, as the 285s are released, so they may put up a newer driver for those, than the one supplied on the disc, and/or a WHQL.

 

Some one already test this drivers on a Clevo P150em + amd7970M ??

Im looking for a nice drivers with nice temps!

 

Running these drivers from a 7660G (APU) + 7670M (dGPU) laptop right now, on Linux. They work fine.

 

I tested the driver yesterday, I thought it was working great until I had an error said something with DirectX and the latest driver not working properly with my R9 290X cards. So I uninstalled it using DDU and now back to 14.4 which works great with my 4K display.

 

So is mine with one 290x, it's the crossfire that they broke, apparently SLI is having issues as well.

In the last patch they messed with mantle multi GPU settings. Below is a snippet from the July 8 patch notes.

-Fix for an issue where Mantle users would receive a low frame rate when running the default Mantle multi-GPU settings

It has been fixed in the CTE version and will be fixed this month in the big BF4 patch, then I can finally go back to using crossfire in the retail game.

 

I recommend to stick with DX11, to get all the benefits of Mantle you need a GCN 2.0 card. The 290x was designed just for Mantle, it had a brand new Architecture.

Your card is optimised and will always run better on DX11, it was designed to run on that like the 280x and 7970 as it isn't GCN 2.0.

Your card has a few years DX11 optimisation as well. I upgraded from the 2x 280x to 2x 290x's so I could take full advantage of Mantle and play BF4 at 135% resolution and easily get 120fps running 1080p Ultra at 120Hz, basically rendering 1440p details on a 1080p screen making the it just pop with detail averaging 135 -160 fps.

I can run 150% resolution easily too but it gets to sharp and I loose the depth of field (far items are no longer slightly out of focus) therefore I keep it at 135% as it perfect for picking out enemies and looks amazing.