AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega WHQL (14.501.1003.0 November 20)

So, with this insanely gigantic wait, we're not even getting 280/280X VSR? Well, there goes all of my enthusiasm.

 

Yeah this is just bad. We wait all this time for nothing. I can just shake my head at AMD right now

 

Yep, they said we will get VSR with next catalyst and now they're not sure

 

Doing the bare minimum and settling for very little shouldn't be used as an excuse as to why the competition is doing things better than you.

We're talking about dudes who, when confronted on twitter a year or so ago, didn't even know what downsampling was. Their standard drivers don't even let you add custom resolutions.

This is crap Nvidia had for probably a whole freaking decade. It's depressing that going with the budget option (AMD), has, quite literally, felt like going with the budget option, instead of just going for a different option. They seem to do the bare minimum to make things work, and work nicely, but after that, they can't be arsed to bother doing much else until Nvidia does it, and ties a Buzzword to it (like DSR/VSR), then they drag ass to make their own half-hearted attempt to compete with it.

AMD is fine if you just want a base level of things working. It's a miserable experience when you want to do anything else, and once my 280X becomes obsolete, or a way good Nvidia deal comes, I'm not coming back. The hardware is good. Great, even. The drivers are lousy. The support is lousy. Basically, everything that isn't just loading up a game and playing it is a lousy, pitiful experience that at best is close to par with the competition, coming way later than the competition, and in a worst case, embarrassingly, pathetically behind the competition. Worst, we're left to deal with people who clearly don't care, won't care, and can't care, because, clearly, as you said, they can't even afford to.

 

Hi Matt.
First time i reply something from you.
Its a pleasure to meet you, through internet though

I think the choices of keeping the bar high in quality on the catalyst drivers is a good thing.

But, surely your team needs to do it faster, especially for the CFX users.
CFX users usually are the guys that invest more and trust more on AMD, so AMD should had something like the ancient Cat profiles updates or something like Nvidia does with their gamexperience profile updates.

A more faster release of the drivers would be great too.
Maybe most new AAA titles don't need new drivers, but altough nvidia releases their drivers more and less by the time of the release of the games.

AMD releases on your own schedules, and if a problem exists, only is fixed when that driver is released.
Thats a little bad for people that buy games on release.

Its not a problem to me, i usually only buy on sale, 6-18 months later.
Altough i am still worried with your company.

Lets see those release notes then

 

hey, anyone who unofficial job description is "Professional Boob-Haver" has my vote.

 

I can see what you want to express,but I still do not think (or hope not ) that's what AMD is going.

Omega +Perfect Picture+ VSR(or Downsampling) is really a big step for them in my opinion if we look after those past days.Other than VSR (I doubt if a middle level card can really handle it),Perfect Picture feature is really a good thing.

I totally agree with you that more performance and rich features for users not just basic things,and omega is the message they showed to us(in my opinion).

Back to the topic,the slowdown releasing after omega.What I am really worry about is not the slowdown itself,but if it is caused in the base architecture level.Let's hope it is not the real reason of the slowdown(compare to NVIDIA's faster releasing step).Although Man-Month (or so call works harder faster) is still a myth in my opinion.

EDIT:
The other thing that I worry about is the quality of the card in now days.I had a brand new but faulty card caused random crash and make my PC and me crazy.

I lived with it for almost 2 years so I know that.It is almost unrepeatable at first time, so no way to report to AMD's report site.

People will blame the driver first and starting to feel he/she need a new driver,then the game's patch , finally they see even light loading web browsing or flash movies or idle also causing crash.So he/she starting to disable the features that card provided like Hardware acceleration and power saving.And still no help so go to buy a new PSU or new PC stuff and still get the issue.So he/she want a new driver again.

That's what I really experienced.

These is not only AMD but also NVIDA, according to the google results/PC forums that people are talking about they have oddly issue when gaming.This part may make the driver debugging more difficult.

 

VSR is a good step. It's just a shame that only the top end/new cards get it, and AMD is flat out drag assing on it for anyone else. Nvidia's DSR is a new thing, but they've had manual downsampling (and custom resolutions) built in the actual driver level for ages. Besides, it's not even a power thing. DSR/VSR is mainly aimed at older titles (and other such things) as a way to get some very basic anti-aliasing for games that have no other options for it.


Things that came with Omega were nice, it's just a shame that it appears that it's going to be probably 6 months before anyone that's not a 290/295/285 or whatever owner gets ahold of anything of benefit from it. (Not to mention how the general treatment of anything GCN 1.0 has been so far in general. It's clear where AMD's priorities lie.)

 

I agree this with you and the GCN 1.0 part.Hope more features will be supported for the middle/older 1.0 card in the future.

But anyway my 7850 has Perfect Picture,let's look what will it be with next releasing.

 

Another update from Warsam71 (Friday 630pm PST - AMD Community Manager at HardOCP):

AMD Catalyst 15. 2 Beta Driver - Update

February is out, unless they release it tomorrow, so strange to see him still calling it 15.2.

 

i dont see him calling it 15.2

 

The name of the thread?

 

Wow nice AMD. I will wait. you even worse than GTA V on the delays now...lol I'm starting to understand why Nvidia cards are so expensive cause they want to give you the best experience they can while AMD tries to do that but fails.

 

AMD is going to release the most revolutionary drivers of all time which will redefine your gaming experience forever, on the next 30th February!!! :banana:

 

Maybe they forgot that this month is only 28 days and not 29 days. Guess what guys? I remember when mantle was supposed to come out AMD said they have to delay driver and guess what still faulty and even up till now mantle is not working 100% for some people.

AMD will say they need some more time to make sure we getting the best experience. Talk is cheap. We will still have issues with the next driver that will disappoint people. Same with GTA V delay. Will still have issues like most games these days and then we will have to wait months if not years for crossfire profile. So the point is delays aren't always what it's meant to be.

I feel there needs to be a lot better communication between devs and GPU companies to make it work from day 1 or at least very good. We need crossfire profiles from day 1 or at least a week after launch not a few months after launch or sometimes never. I don't care if it's going to cost a lot of money cause this is the reason I don't really buy any games these days. I feel if I don't get the max performance I can get from my cards i will not buy the game.

 

AMD Catalyst "Omega" 15.2 Beta & 15.3 WHQL driver confirmed?

 

No, its just a Beta driver thats coming.



Hope its better than it was the other week

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=397114

 

Has AMD been dissolved? Is their staff comprised of only volunteers? For a company trying to stay relevant, they're really doing a ****ing terrible job.

 

why amd still doesn't have adaptive vsync option in CCC. Is it really so hard to code such feature? I went from nvidia to amd and this is the biggest downside for me.

 

RadeonPro has Dynamic V-sync