News AMD Catalyst 14.2 Beta driver brings Mantle improvements and more

New beta driver fixes issues in Battlefield 4 and Minecraft, plus many extras for Linux users.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2014/02/25/amd-catalyst-14-2-beta-driver-brings-mantle/1

 

it would be great to see bit tech get as many cards as possible and test them with the up to date drivers as they all seem to give ''performance benefits' and it would be interesting to see just how much extra performance has been gained from updated drivers

 

Yeah... I've always been a bit dubious about some of the claims a certain other graphics card company makes about increases in performance from driver updates. Maybe they tell the truth, maybe they stretch the truth? I try not to think too much about it. Besides, if there is any detectable gain, then it is good either way. Much better than being stuck with the stock drivers.

 

Only played a little BF4 with these, but they seem to have cured the short freezes experienced with the Beta 14.1.
Using an ATI 7850.

 

What I've always wondered is if benchmarking websites re-run the same tests for all other GPUs listed. For example, I just read the article for the Titan Black today, but were tests re-run for the 780Ti and the old titan? There have been several driver updates since the release of both of those, which would make a difference. Same goes for all the R9 GPUs in the same article.

AMD's drivers have always been pretty bad at release time. I think if they were benchmarked based on their drivers a year after release and people would consider them more often.

 

Haha that happened to be the one and only page I completely skipped, because in most websites it tells me stuff I already know and/or don't care about. I guess this time around it did actually contain info I care about. Sorry about that. Note that I have no intention on ever getting a GPU like this, so I'm really just curious as to what it has to offer. I tend to put more time into what I read when it's a product I'm thinking of getting.

My point remains the same about some other websites, but I think I'm going to have to take a closer look at their Test Setup pages (or their equivalent).

 

Yay!

 

Personally these Beta drivers are the best drivers that I have ever used in terms of a performance boost.

I bought a couple of 290X's (watercooled now) to mainly play BF4 on. My original experience on the 13.12 drivers was a slight disappointment to be honest. They ran much smoother than my Titans which was great, but the frame rates were slow.

The 14.1 drivers were a disaster for me. BF4 was truely awful and mantle even caused blue screens. They didn't last long on my system.

I'd been running BF4 at 1920x1080 because of the poor frame rates on previous drivers (rather than 5760x1080 as I do other games) - I want full eye candy. The best I was getting at this resolution with everything on max was around 100fps, dropping to around 60.

After installing the new beta drivers last night it was a totally different experience in BF4. With mantle on, the first scene on the single player ran at an almost constant 200fps and it was silky smooth. Once through that, in the building site, the lowest it dropped to was around 170fps.

Multiplayer was a similar experience dropping to a low of around 150fps.

If I get time tonight, I will re-enable eyefinity and see how it runs over 3 screens. Last night was the first time that I was glad I had replaced the Titans with the 290X's.

 

I will give these drivers a shot over the weekend. I gave up gaming on my 290x a month ago and went back to my 6950 which never crashes.

 

Anyone tried this in 7970's yet

 

I tried it with my 7950, still get huge frame drops at times on BF4, particularly when I ADS. Think I might have to switch back to 13.12 because I'm not that impressed.

 

Is Microsoft's new DirectX going to kill Mantle ?

 

Corky fueling the flames lol. As to your question depends if its the Xbox ones low level API they are sticking into it. If so you never know what can happen.

 

No. The GDC have published next months sessions, and three sessions from Microsoft talk about the next DirectX being more direct to metal.
I made a post in the gaming forum here with more details.

EDIT: techreport.com gives a few more details, but it seems to me Microsoft is hitting back at AMD.