Hardware AMD Launches Catalyst Omega Driver

Now let's hope they offer a "Light" version for simple systems

 

To many AMD drivers will be the "end" of your gaming experience omega jokes

In all fairness to AMD fingers crossed these bring some much needed resolution to the current state of AMD's driver support and it is good to see them addressing the issue.

Sent from my SM-T325 using Tapatalk

 

Well, I was about to install this normally, but I shall perform a set of benchmarks myself first to see how their claims of performance increases stack up against an R9 280X with an i5-4670K (both stock speed).

Also, when will they sort the AMD Gaming Evolved app out? It's still not on the same level as nVidia Experience.

 

Nice to see AMD getting their finger out. Hopefully they'll update the driver UI along with the drivers themselves; every time I've had to use AMD drivers in the past it's been an excruciating experience to get anything done.
And if you don't have an AMD card, or don't want to wait, several of the features are available from alternative tools:

SVP can also interpolate frames, and will work with most media players (so you're not stuck with the godawful PowerDVD).

The MadVR rendering filter will also do this, by processing video at a higher precision (10bit or higher depending on setting) and adding dithering to gradients.

EE enabled by default is a hideous idea, but if you really want your videos to look like smeared ass, pretty much every video playback software and/or filter will have an edge enhancement setting for masochists.

And finally some pedantry:

It's not merely scaling and then a blur, DSR is using Gaussian sampling. This means that every pixel in the output is the result of combining a 13x13 (hence 13-tap) selection of pixels from the rendered image. The 'DSR Smoothness factor' changes the weightings in this kernel.

 

So nothing of value in these drivers for my HD5770? I guess I won't be "fixing" something that's not broken then.

 

Oh thank god, they've fixed the HDMI TV sound bug. That has been doing my head in the last few weeks. I will be installing this right away.

 

Someone get me my walking stick, although i remember them from when they done modified 3DFX drivers.

 

I installed the latest drivers and observed exactly the same results in Valley Benchmark.

 

I was thinking that too. I used them for a couple of years, probably around 2007. I remember that some of them gave a noticeable performance boost.

 

Initial reports put the performance in most games on par with the 14.11.2 betas (BF4 seems to be taking a sharp drop for most people).

VSR is locked to 285s and up with no custom resolution support so only the most common configs are fully supported (users of ultra wides are out of luck).

The best thing about these drivers is the bug fixes, that's it. The bugs fixed have been around nearly a year. AMD's PR department have really overblown this. It is not a magical driver, it is a small step in the right direction after a year of standing still.

 

Interesting, I ran Valley before and after updating and saw a 30% increase in results... 3DMark saw no improvement though and I've yet to see if any games can be run at higher settings.

 

Also, I've noticed a drop in the PPD output of my R9 280X since installing this driver. Going to monitor is and if things don't improve I'm reverting back to the older version.

 

I installed my new 290 yesterday. Wondering if these drivers would actually bring improvements over the "normal" drivers?
One way to find out I guess...

 

I still remember the old Omega drivers. I used the nVidia ones, though. Good memories of my trusty FX5600.... it wasn't good by today's or even yesteryear's standards but I was happy.