AMD Catalyst 15. 2 Beta Driver - Update

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah, I noticed that. It is interesting to note that Ice Storm enjoyed the lion's share of improvement from the driver. I should probably try Unigine tests to see what happened there too.

 

[.vodka]

Isn't ice storm the most CPU limited benchmark in the latest 3dmark suite, considering how graphics light it is?

Nice.

 

[DrMrLordX]

An interesting observation, though I'm not sure if that's indicative of AMD improving the CPU-utilization side of their driver or what.

I ran the Unigine tests and the results were inconclusive. Tropics was the only test that showed up faster with a small non-trivial increase in score, while Sanctuary actually reported a lower score by a small non-trivial amount. Valley showed no appreciable change. Heaven crashed a lot. Not sure if the crashes were due to CPU degradation from all the overclocking I've done, or if they were driver-related. But they were hard-locks so I'm guessing the former (sigh).

I also ran 3DMark11 and 3DMarkVantage. I dropped maybe ~200 points in Vantage (went from 9590 to ~9370) and gained maybe 60 points in 11 (went from 2877 to ~2940).

Overall, I'm not seeing a consistent trend outside of the latest 3DMark tests. Vantage should have had an increase in performance somewhat in line with Cloud Gate if the driver is indeed doing a better job of spreading draw call overhead between CPU cores, but I saw minor performance regression. Sanctuary should have seen an even bigger boost than Cloud Gate since it's much closer to being CPU-bound (average FPS in Sanctuary is around 77-78 on my A10-7700k), and yet I saw regression there. Running in DX11 mode (instead of DX9 default) changed nothing.

The skeptic in me thinks that what we may be seeing are some driver optimizations, particularly for APUs in preparation for the Carrizo launch. Ice Storm will be one of the more popular graphics benchmarks for Carrizo systems given its power envelope. If those optimizations carry over to titles that are more likely to run on Carrizo laptops then hey, all the better. Older benchmarks don't seem to be benefiting much from it, though.

 

[loccothan]

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.

No Problem with CF with RadeonPRO (please AMD continue this Project cuz we Need RadeonPro Infinite )

-> Here -> http://www.radeonpro.info/download/

Also on My Cloud some Mods and Usefull stuff (not Only 4 AMD ;-)
-> http://loccothan.blogspot.com/

Latest is Dying Light Performance Patch and a lot more 4U There :biggrin:

 

[Techhog]

Isn't ice storm the most CPU limited benchmark in the latest 3dmark suite, considering how graphics light it is?

Nice.

That's actually important if true. They may finally be working on the CPU optimization issue. (And the Nvidia fanboys who praised Nvidia's CPU optimization driver will call this proof that AMD drivers are terrible because logic...)

 

[DrMrLordX]

That's actually important if true. They may finally be working on the CPU optimization issue. (And the Nvidia fanboys who praised Nvidia's CPU optimization driver will call this proof that AMD drivers are terrible because logic...)

It's possible AMD has improved the driver's overall performance, though I'd like to see some other people show results (preferably with something that isn't an APU) on older stuff like Vantage and the weaker Unigine tests. Too bad 15.2 is Win10-only. The release of 15.3 should prove to be more informative.

 

[Elixer]

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.

Only 10 business days left in march... better make them 15.4 instead.

 

[DiogoDX]

Only 10 business days left in march... better make them 15.4 instead.

Anand already used the 15.3 in the TitanX review.

 

[Elixer]

Anand already used the 15.3 in the TitanX review.

You mean Ryan?
That really don't help end-users, so, inquiring minds want to know what the delay is, and why Sam never got back to this thread...

 

[DrMrLordX]

Those of us on Linux 3.19 would really like a new official driver release, *cough cough*. No pressure or anything. Nope.

 

[dacostafilipe]

Those of us on Linux 3.19 would really like a new official driver release, *cough cough*. No pressure or anything. Nope.

Ubuntu 15.04 Receives Early Release Of Catalyst 15.3 Linux Driver

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-15.04-15.3-Beta

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well that's great. A beta graphics driver for a pre-release of 15.04. That answers my question as to whether or not the next major driver release will be in the form of AMDGPU (it won't).

 

[dacostafilipe]

AMDGPU is planed for Kernel 4.1

The merge windows should open around mid April i think.

 

[monstercameron]

Well that's great. A beta graphics driver for a pre-release of 15.04. That answers my question as to whether or not the next major driver release will be in the form of AMDGPU (it won't).

Why let loose amdgpu when Fiji hasn't been released.

Do the updates come through the kernel or client side?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Catalyst drivers come through client-side at the moment. AMDGPU has been hinted-at for awhile, so I'm not aware that it has anything to do with Fiji per se.

Kernel 4.1 eh . . . well no rush on that, it would just be nice to have a driver that works with 3.19. It's funny that they got kfd integrated into a mainline kernel for which they have no official driver support (just the open source radeon drivers).

 

[Warsam71]

Hello Everyone,

We want the Catalyst 15.3 Beta driver with AMD FreeSync technology to be the highest quality as possible and are working hard to release it as soon as possible. I’ll make sure to update everyone here when the driver is ready for download.

Thank you for your patience.

 

[monstercameron]

Catalyst drivers come through client-side at the moment. AMDGPU has been hinted-at for awhile, so I'm not aware that it has anything to do with Fiji per se.

Kernel 4.1 eh . . . well no rush on that, it would just be nice to have a driver that works with 3.19. It's funny that they got kfd integrated into a mainline kernel for which they have no official driver support (just the open source radeon drivers).

Unless you are a gamer or need max performance, you might as well stick to the foss driver. The proprietary drivers just introduce too many headaches on newer distros and games.

 

[guskline]

I just installed the newest build of Windows 10 on my one rig and my R9 290 is using catalyst driver 15.02

 

[DiogoDX]

Hello Everyone,

We want the Catalyst 15.3 Beta driver with AMD FreeSync technology to be the highest quality as possible and are working hard to release it as soon as possible. I’ll make sure to update everyone here when the driver is ready for download.

Thank you for your patience.

So AMD can't release a single driver in almost 4 months. Freesync reviews are up, freesync monitors already been sold and the buyers can't use the tecnology that is been hyped for the company for a year.

Patetic show as aways.

 

[james1701]

Honestly, I would rather wait that long than getting a bug infested crap mess of a beta driver.

 

[Elixer]

Honestly, I would rather wait that long than getting a bug infested crap mess of a beta driver.

We don't know what the hold up is, so it could be they want to move in the freesync stuff forward, or they might have found a critical bug, or these are WHQL instead of beta, or ...

The wording is confusing here...

We want the Catalyst 15.3 Beta driver with AMD FreeSync technology to be the highest quality as possible and are working hard to release it as soon as possible

Saying we want the "highest quality as possible" would mean that these aren't beta drivers, but WHQL.

How about some clarification Sam?

 

[james1701]

Honestly, I just want new cards so I can run PLP eyefinity lol.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Unless you are a gamer or need max performance, you might as well stick to the foss driver. The proprietary drivers just introduce too many headaches on newer distros and games.

I've used both. The radeon drivers have all kinds of flaws, like making lots of Steam titles not work (it's really a Steam client problem, but it's one you won't have with Catalyst). I've honestly seen more games bug out under the radeon drivers than Catalyst 14.12 also.

I just installed the newest build of Windows 10 on my one rig and my R9 290 is using catalyst driver 15.02

Yeah, Win10 has had 15.2 for awhile now. It uh, has some interesting issues of its own, though it is mostly stable.

 

[Techhog]

So AMD can't release a single driver in almost 4 months. Freesync reviews are up, freesync monitors already been sold and the buyers can't use the tecnology that is been hyped for the company for a year.

Patetic show as aways.

And then if the driver came out buggy, you'd complain about that even after it's fixed. They can't win. If they need extra time, they should take extra time.

 

[james1701]

This driver did not like my PLP U3011 and 2007FP setup on my crossfired 7970's. Using an extended desktop, it locked up my flanking monitors. I reinstalled 4 or 5 times with no luck. I tried hot plugging the DP, and one of them would eventually come on, but I could never get all three monitors to function correctly. I had to roll back to Omega.