Omega driver 2.0 from AMD coming in November – Will Include Significant Updates to Catalyst

[Mr_Troll]

AMD preparing another iteration of Special Edition drivers – landing in Novmeber

 

This year’s ‘special edition’ drivers are expected to launch at the same time as last year, according to the report. Which means that we are probably looking at AMD making this a regular thing with significant improvements to the catalyst driver build, delivered yearly. Although it does beg the question whether AMD would specifically delay significant updates just to cash in on the PR resulting from a yearly event. While we do not yet have details on what exactly the update will deliver this time, we do have previous year’s iteration to form a benchmark.

Omega Drivers 2014 had a very wide variety of new features, from support 4K Virtual Super Resolution, to 5K Support, to Multi Monitor and FreeSync updates. The driver also included updates for Tress FX 3.0, HSA 1.0, CUDA 2.0 and CodeXL 1.6 as well as Mantle. It is worth noting that the primary purpose of the drivers was to eliminate the disparity (that existed at the time) between GeForce and Catalyst drivers. Since there is pretty much no disparity between the GeForce and Catlayst drivers currently, it’s pretty difficult to ascertain just what AMD will be introducing this time around; and since the driver is being specifically packaged as a ‘special edition’ driver, I have to assume that it’s worth the hype.

 

The official agenda for the last special edition update was quality improvements, performance improvements and new features. Assuming the new special edition drivers are similar to the Omega drivers released in 2014 (in terms of agenda) the only thing that really comes to mind (caution: speculation) is improvements and features based on DX12. The new API is pretty much the next frontier when it comes to drivers. The rules of the games are changing and whoever wins this one will get an edge for the next few years. Since titles with DX12 support are pretty few and most of it is uncharted territory, this is the perfect point in time to optimize drivers.

 

keep it up amd. your are doing a fine job with your drivers.

 

Source: http://wccftech.com/second-special-edition-drivers-amd-november-catalyst/

http://www.hwbattle.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=news&wr_id=10759&ckattempt=1

 

[Jerakl]

>inb4 "I hope they finally fix their crap drivers"

[SPG]

thank god
maya keeps crashing my display drivers...though I'm sure thats more maya's fault instead of amd

[TechGod]

I wonder what they'll bring to the table...

[Mew]

It'd be neat if nVidia did something similar because their plan to bundle game ready drivers into GFE is dumb and also good at the same time. I could use the hype and better quality drivers from a Forceware Omega driver or something similar. Are nvidia drivers still called forceware? 

[TechGod]

Now that I think about...better drivers for Linux perhaps?

[Albatross]

I hope that means drivers for Linux, too (will need all the best to play Alien: Isolation at the highest quality and fps possible). Anyways, can't wait to see what it includes.

[Humbug]

They may include Vulkan support as well if the rumoured timing works out... If vulkan releases in December then they will probably do another minor release to support it.

[Humbug]

I hope that means drivers for Linux, too (will need all the best to play Alien: Isolation at the highest quality and fps possible). Anyways, can't wait to see what it includes.

Omega normally includes Linux too if I remember.

Also yes Alien isolation is out on Linux but if you have an AMD GPU it will probably be low framerate since it has to go through AMD's openGL driver. It seem after all these years the chances of AMD fixing their openGL performance are minimal, like 98% of PC game sales use directX so they put their driver engineers to work on that. Barring a miracle they will not catch up onto Nvidia on Linux until Vulkan. Their openGL can be playable after a driver update to support newer games; my R9 290 can play any Linux game. But it's still stupid because you don't buy high end GPUs to play at 30-45fps unless the graphics are really astonishing.

[soaringchicken]

Yes, fix me plz AMD, drivers are awful.

[don_svetlio]

Yes, fix me plz AMD, drivers are awful.

What issues are you having? Maybe we can help?

[soaringchicken]

What issues are you having? Maybe we can help?

I've..tried before but I can't really seem to fix them, so I'm just tolerating it at least for now.

[don_svetlio]

I've..tried before but I can't really seem to fix them, so I'm just tolerating it at least for now.

What's the particular issue and dirvers you're using?

[Gunjob]

More frame pacing improvements are always welcome, things are damn smooth on my dual FuryX's but the only way is up when it comes to frame times and smoothness.

[Khvarrioiren]

Most likely just something to further leverage DX12 features. Most of the major fuck-ups were ironed out with Omega months back, so I think there's not much to gain performance wise. Most likely just some QoL-stuff coming up.

[Humbug]

More frame pacing improvements are always welcome, things are damn smooth on my dual FuryX's but the only way is up when it comes to frame times and smoothness.

I have never had a dual GPU setup. Based on my experience with R9 290 I can say that AMD is silky smooth in single GPU.

From what I've read though in dual GPU there is still room for improvement, even though scaling is great frametime consistency can get better (hopefully soon as good as single GPU).

I also wonder how much of it is drivers and how much of it is game developer spending less time on optimizing for such setups. Cause crossfire/SLI is probably like 2% of PC gamers.

[soaringchicken]

What's the particular issue and dirvers you're using?

My antialiasing just plain and simple doesn't work right and I'm using latest drivers.

[Derangel]

It'd be neat if nVidia did something similar because their plan to bundle game ready drivers into GFE is dumb and also good at the same time. I could use the hype and better quality drivers from a Forceware Omega driver or something similar. Are nvidia drivers still called forceware? 

 

It's not really necessary for Nvidia to do a yearly "Omega" driver. Nvidia's driver team is better funded (and likely a heck of a lot bigger) so they can just roll out new features as they're finished and work on them as they go. For AMD it's probably easier to do it this way. If you've noticed, the last year of drivers have mostly been about game specific things, smaller changes, bug fixes and whatever was needed for the launch of the Fury cards.

[Gunjob]

I have never had a dual GPU setup. Based on my experience with R9 290 I can say that AMD is silky smooth in single GPU.

From what I've read though in dual GPU there is still room for improvement, even though scaling is great frametime consistency can get better (hopefully soon as good as single GPU).

I also wonder how much of it is drivers and how much of it is game developer spending less time on optimizing for such setups. Cause crossfire/SLI is probably like 2% of PC gamers.

Depends on the title really, some games are silky smooth. For example GTAV  is smoooooth as it comes, were as the witcher3 has room for improvement.

[Albatross]

Omega normally includes Linux too if I remember.

Also yes Alien isolation is out on Linux but if you have an AMD GPU it will probably be low framerate since it has to go through AMD's openGL driver. It seem after all these years the chances of AMD fixing their openGL performance are minimal, like 98% of PC game sales use directX so they put their driver engineers to work on that. Barring a miracle they will not catch up onto Nvidia on Linux until Vulkan. Their openGL can be playable after a driver update to support newer games; my R9 290 can play any Linux game. But it's still stupid because you don't buy high end GPUs to play at 30-45fps unless the graphics are really astonishing.

 

I didn't know about special drivers before now, so I wasn't sure if it would include Linux.

 

I was actually surprised by their last driver update though, had pretty decent quality. It gave me nearly the same performance in Witcher 2 as I get in Win7, and I got the same performance in my other Linux games on Steam as I did on Windows. Still, the missing frames would help a lot in games like Witcher 2.

 

I wish Vulkan would get here sooner.

[xAcid9]

Fake slide 2014. 

[Khvarrioiren]

Fake slide 2014. 

 

It's the Omega launch slide, it's not fake,rather just there for good measure.

[Misanthrope]

>inb4 "I hope they finally fix their crap drivers"

 

Not really justified anymore unless you end the phrase with "...for Linux" in which case yes: they're still crap.

[don_svetlio]

Not really justified anymore unless you end the phrase with "...for Linux" in which case yes: they're still crap.

It's remarkable how long the 2009-2010 horror stories persisted for. 5 years

[Guest]

Omega 14.12 are very good in my opinion. I tried newer releases and keep rolling back to 14.12. I have hopes with these new Omegas !