AMD Catalyst 15. 2 Beta Driver - Update

[Warsam71]

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to let you know that we are working on our next driver which should be ready soon. This driver will be a Beta Driver. We are currently testing and fine-tuning it to ensure it delivers an optimal customer experience.

As always, I will make sure to inform everyone when the driver is ready by posting here as well as working with my team to announce its arrival through our official website and social channels.


Thank you for your patience

 

[csbin]

not 15.3?

 

[Warsam71]

not 15.3?

That's right, not 15.3...it's 15.2

 

[DownTheSky]

Can you give any tidbits about any new features, bug fixes or performance improvements are in store for us? It's been quite a while.

 

[mindbomb]

I have two bugs with 14.12 atm. One is the common monitor not waking up from sleep problem. The other is mantle recording doesn't work at 1680x1050, not sure if that is an issue with the raptr app though.

One feature I'd like to see is shader based hevc decoding available through dxva. Another is the ability to do cool stuff with trueaudio (equalizer, headphone surround, volume normalization).

 

[RussianSensation]

You guys need to focus on getting Crossfire profile support for some of the popular AAA titles like Far Cry 4, Lords of the Fallen, Total War Attila, etc. With R9 290/290X priced so competitively, a lot more gamers would consider going dual 290/290Xs vs. a single 980 if CF actually worked consistently.

http://gamegpu.ru/test-video-cards/igry-2014-goda-protiv-sovremennykh-videokart.html

 

[DiogoDX]

3 months to release a driver. I'm sad for the guys that play games on launch. This is bad especially for those using crossfire.

 

[Red Hawk]

That's right, not 15.3...it's 15.2

Hm. I thought the 00.x digit was supposed to represent the month the driver was released? It's not a big deal, just seems a tad confusing. In any case, looking forward to seeing what improvements the driver brings.

 

[guskline]

Thanks for the "heads up" Sam!

 

[james1701]

Can you check on the AMD driver and Aida64 compatibility. I found that was causing monitors not to wake, and TSR blue screens.

 

[Udgnim]

can try disabling ULPS

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=383104&page=4

 

[DownTheSky]

You guys need to focus on getting Crossfire profile support for some of the popular AAA titles like Far Cry 4, Lords of the Fallen, Total War Attila, etc. With R9 290/290X priced so competitively, a lot more gamers would consider going dual 290/290Xs vs. a single 980 if CF actually worked consistently.

http://gamegpu.ru/test-video-cards/igry-2014-goda-protiv-sovremennykh-videokart.html

I'm with Russian on this one. You could get this done through hotfixes.

 

[zebrax2]

Didn't they split the crossfire profiles from the main driver before? What happened to that?

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Didn't they split the crossfire profiles from the main driver before? What happened to that?

They did that and then they undid that. No idea why.

And yes, having a game ready driver weeks or months after release is not nice.

 

[Rvenger]

They need to go back to splitting profiles and adding incremental updates if they are not going to release a driver as often.

 

[tweakboy]

Well said Rvenger Also please post your sig.

 

[Yuriman]

My wake from sleep issues disappeared in the driver releases leading up to the 14.12 Omega driver, but returned in 14.12. It seems Pitcairn suffers from this issue the most; I rarely hear from 79xx and 77xx owners about this issue.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I have two bugs with 14.12 atm. One is the common monitor not waking up from sleep problem. The other is mantle recording doesn't work at 1680x1050, not sure if that is an issue with the raptr app though.

One feature I'd like to see is shader based hevc decoding available through dxva. Another is the ability to do cool stuff with trueaudio (equalizer, headphone surround, volume normalization).

How does your wake from sleep problem behave?

I have a strange issue with a 280x. Randomly - seems to be completely random so far - if I wake the computer from sleep, or just wake the monitor up from sleep or from the screen saver, I'm greeted with just a blank screen with my mouse cursor. I can move the cursor. I can hit ctrl+alt+del and the Windows lock screen will pop up. Now the funny thing is from here if I try to log out, restart the computer, nothing will happen RANDOMLY. I'd say 90% of the time I try to restart or log out nothing will happen, but strangely 10% of the time the computer actually did restart or log out.

This issue doesn't happen too often, but often enough to be annoying.

Another observation is that sometimes when I wake the computer from sleep, everything will be displayed properly and then the screen will flicker black with just the mouse cursor for a fraction of the second, scaring me into thinking it will stay black.

My best guess is that for some reason the video driver isn't reinitializing properly.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm fairly certain it has to do with "zerocore power", which is a low power state the GPU goes into when the screen is off. My solution is to unplug and replug my DVI cable to wake it if the screen stays black.

I've had the issue from day one with my 7850, and I even exchanged it for another of the same model, and the issue persisted. I have another HIS 7850 in my wife's computer that has never had this issue though, so I suspect it might be tied to specific models too.

 

[mindbomb]

How does your wake from sleep problem behave?

I have a strange issue with a 280x. Randomly - seems to be completely random so far - if I wake the computer from sleep, or just wake the monitor up from sleep or from the screen saver, I'm greeted with just a blank screen with my mouse cursor. I can move the cursor. I can hit ctrl+alt+del and the Windows lock screen will pop up. Now the funny thing is from here if I try to log out, restart the computer, nothing will happen RANDOMLY. I'd say 90% of the time I try to restart or log out nothing will happen, but strangely 10% of the time the computer actually did restart or log out.

This issue doesn't happen too often, but often enough to be annoying.

Another observation is that sometimes when I wake the computer from sleep, everything will be displayed properly and then the screen will flicker black with just the mouse cursor for a fraction of the second, scaring me into thinking it will stay black.

My best guess is that for some reason the video driver isn't reinitializing properly.

For me, the monitor turns off due to inactivity, and I move the mouse and get a black screen, completely black with no cursor. I've always been able to ctrl+alt+delete to get out of it, so it's not too annoying.

 

[Warsam71]

Hm. I thought the 00.x digit was supposed to represent the month the driver was released? It's not a big deal, just seems a tad confusing. In any case, looking forward to seeing what improvements the driver brings.

You are right Red Hawk. I didn't mean to confuse you or anyone else here.

It will probably be 15.3 now that we're in March. I'm waiting for confirmation on this front (and other details) from the Driver Team. I'll update you (and everyone else) as soon as I hear back.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You are right Red Hawk. I didn't mean to confuse you or anyone else here.

It will probably be 15.3 now that we're in March. I'm waiting for confirmation on this front (and other details) from the Driver Team. I'll update you (and everyone else) as soon as I hear back.

Will this be a Windows-only release? Adopters of the Linux 3.19 kernel would like to have some drivers that work out-of-the-box with 3.19 so that we can avoid funky 3rd-party patches that don't always work properly. You guys did a great job of releasing the Omega drivers in a mostly-usable form (minus the stupid Wine conflict problem, but that's easy enough to get around) for many Linux users. Or are you holding off for the AMDGPU driver structure that is supposed to replace Catalyst on Linux?

 

[loccothan]

THX AMD/ATI Radeon team
The CAT Omega 14.12 are Great drivers !

-> We are all happy insane Gamers family ;-)

 

[DrMrLordX]

I think people will probably like 15.3 once it's out. I have 15.2 running in Win10 and it boosted my Icestorm score by nearly 7000 points:

14.12

15.2 Ice Storm

15.2 Cloud Gate

15.2 Skydiver

Cloud Gate improved by 261 points, while Skydiver only improved by 99 points.

All runs were 4.7 ghz CPU, 2100 mhz NB, DDR3-2400 10-12-13-32-2T, 1028 mhz iGPU.

Sadly, Fire Strike only improved by 13 points, which may just have been a lucky run. I re-ran Fire Strike and got lower than my 14.12 score. So I'm pretty sure Fire Strike isn't much improved on my system.

 

[monstercameron]

I think people will probably like 15.3 once it's out. I have 15.2 running in Win10 and it boosted my Icestorm score by nearly 7000 points:

14.12

15.2

Both runs were 4.7 ghz CPU, 2100 mhz NB, DDR3-2400 10-12-13-32-2T, 1028 mhz iGPU.

Sadly, Fire Strike only improved by 13 points. I haven't tried Cloud Gate or Skydiver yet.

I also received a boost on my fx-7500 laptop [read came config as your a10-7700]
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37218733&postcount=53