AMD Catalyst 15.15 (Official Radeon 300 Launch Driver)

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by d2kx, Jun 16, 2015.

  1. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    Half of your post discredits the other half. Let me give you an example:
    You say here that AMD skips a driver release for some cards, to concentrate on another branch. This could have been nice and well IF THE HARDWARE ON THE NEW CARDS WASN'T EXACTLY THE SAME AND THERE WAS NO DIFFERENCE IN THE DRIVER BETWEEN HARDWARE. Even Fiji is an ambitious Tonga. There is NOTHING different architecture wise.
    You yourself later with your own words actually enforce this:
    This enforces what I say. The damn drivers are in the binary, because THE HARDWARE IS THE SAME. There is no reason to restrict the drivers to a branch other than to boost the sales of the "new" and supposedly better cards. Therefore you restrict the driver that EVERYTHING can run, and thus you inflate their performance compared to the cards they replace. Otherwise nobody would even consider buying your rebadges. To facilitate this policy, you restrict a driver that OBVIOUSLY WORKS ALREADY (by your own words), only to the GPUs you want to sell. That is scummy in my book.
     
  2. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    No need to argue about it. It's all speculation. You can only argue your own opinion and not facts.
    It's possible to use the drivers by modding them so it's not too bad.

    If the 300 series drivers aren't later combined to an all-in-one driver like before then that's fishy.
     
  3. PieEyedPiper

    PieEyedPiper Master Guru

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    Agreed.

    Do people really feel that AMD is intentionally withholding drivers to "boost the sales of the "new" and supposedly better cards"? Has anyone even observed a tangible benefit from the r300 drivers vs win10 betas and such?

    I'm with the black and white kid on this one: "porting" and other terms are being misused and the world will not end anytime soon.

    I guess I've just lost interest until win10 comes out. Seriously, there's nothing to see here as far as win8.1 driver sets go. Maybe things will change, maybe they won't but I'm going to wait and see before proclaiming that the sky is falling.
     
  4. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    You don't understand two things.

    First of all, it is no speculation. The "300 series" drivers are indeed artificially withheld from the rest of the cards, because I can't believe that AMD can't do what asder00 can do in half an hour. The driver is there in the library, it is just the parts in the inf that are removed on purpose.

    Second, yes it is fishy because these are the drivers that all reviewers are going to use when they compare the "old" 290(x) with the "new" 390(x), making the gap between the two cards much bigger than it will ever be, and YES misinforming consumers on PURPOSE. The Windows 10 drivers lack things like OpenCL sometimes, and have video playback problems for some people. Furthermore they will NEVER be used in any "proper" review site. Also, they are leaks, and nobody tells us that they were in any way sanctioned by AMD, since those leaks burned them about VSR in the first place.

    I honestly can't believe that I am the only one who really speaks about this, since it is so clearly scummy. A person who does not frequent this forum only sees that the $430 390x is 20% faster than the $320 290x, while the reality is much much different and this result completely artificial. If NVIDIA was doing this the universe would have exploded in here.
     

  5. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    Maybe the 300 series currently has it's own driver to make it clearer for people buying the new cards? Are the 300 series drivers WHQL?
     
  6. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    Why would it? Does the Titan X has its own driver? These drivers give performance improvements to all GCN chips, dot. They are artificially restrained because otherwise reviewers would condemn the existence of the new rebadges, instead of moderately praising them for reaching 980 levels. This is so wrong on so many levels.
     
  7. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    Are the 300 series WHQL? An entirely new series isn't the same as 1 GPU though...
     
  8. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    This is an entire new series name. The only "new" chip in this series is Fiji, and that's basically big Tonga with 4096 shaders. Let me give you a rundown of the chips this new "series" has:

    [​IMG]

    Even freakin' Pitcairn is in there.

    The "300 series" is literally every single GCN architecture AMD has made, rebadged. Why on Earth won't they have the same driver?

    I'll tell you why. Because (as we all know), AMD has had a second driver "fork" for a while, and they will use the extra performance they get from that for on THE SAME HARDWARE to convince people to buy THE SAME hardware rebadged, on a higher price tag. The problem with this strategy is that the only way it works is if DURING THE REVIEW PERIOD, the "older" cards don't run the same drivers, because then everybody realizes that the "new" cards are the "old" cards with better software, and that the rebadging was a way to artificially raise prices.
     
  9. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    Does the general consumer know they are rebranded 200 series unless they looked about it? It looks like the 300 series driver is WHQL so that means it's pushed through Windows Update which makes sense.
    I know releasing the driver only for the new series is a bit strange I'm not thrilled about it either but saying it's to make them look better than the 200 series without any benchmarks showing it is pure speculation. You don't need to show me they are rebrands.
    Are the 300 series drivers based on the Windows 10 branch (the lower overhead ones)?
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015
  10. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    Shouldn't they? The 200 series are cheaper than all of them, some times more than $100 cheaper.

    The 300 series driver is the "Windows 10 fork" we have been getting all along through leaks. They are a bit older than 1040 (which is expected, as they contain proper OpenCL and the rest).

    Every SIGNLE benchmark out there compares the 390x to the 290x and the 980. And every SINGLE one of them is wrong because AMD is artificially withholding drivers.

    Some examples from the Guru3D review:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    And these guys are the same people who make videos like the "Fixer", because NVIDIA's practices are supposedly unethical. :puke2:
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015

  11. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    I thought the 390x was factory overclocked higher than the 290x?
     
  12. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    From the Digital Foundry review of the MSI 390x:
    And furthermore, a bit below:

    See how I'm not suddenly crazy?
     
  13. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    I don't know If I'm reading that last part right but to me it sounds like this.

    "A 390x downclocked running 15.15 performs the same as the 290x 15.15"

    That's exactly what we expected right?
    What about the 390x downclocked with 15.15 compared to the same clocked 290x running 15.6?
     
  14. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    The end part says that "We have to have hacked 15.15 on the 290x for it to perform on par with a downclocked 390x".

    What they noticed was the downclocked 390x wasn't behaving as a 290x. They noticed that they 290x was SLOWER than the downclocked 390x, instead of being in the same speed.
    So when they used the 300 series driver on the 290x, it "magically" came on par with the downclocked 390x.











    :puke2:
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015
  15. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    That doesn't connect with what you're speculating. You are saying AMD are holding back 15.15 and keeping them only for the new cards so the 390x looks better than the 290x right?
    A good test would be the same clocked 390x vs 290x 15.15 vs 15.6

    Windows 10 drivers don't give me better FPS with GTA V. The frames are smoother but max FPS stays the same. The results you showed, the benchmarks, looks like a clock difference giving the FPS increase not the drivers.
    Would have to investigate more to speculate further :)
     

  16. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    Dude, I even quoted the part where they say EXACTLY what I say. When both cards have the SAME clocks, the 390x is FASTER unless they both use the 15.15 drivers, where they are the SAME.
     
  17. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    I don't know then :)
     
  18. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    I don't know what you don't know, but let's leave it at this. They have lost me on the ethical front with all these shenanigans though.

    Here's a picture of a dysfunctional cat, to cool things off:

    [​IMG]
     
  19. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    If the Windows 10 drivers made a massive difference to performance apart from the overhead test I would be set on believing AMD is misleading us. As it stands, there's not a difference in max FPS. I have done plenty of benchmarking with the official to modded drivers and most of the effects are smoothness not max FPS. Remember the GTA V benchmark situation?

    What a weird cat lol.
     
  20. Jtacdf

    Jtacdf Guest

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