AMD Delivers the Catalyst 14.7 RC3 Driver

[Cristian_25H]

AMD has today made available an updated Release Candidate of its Catalust 14.7 graphics driver for Windows 7 and 8.1 (32 and 64-bit). This new build, RC3, features all the goodies from the previous non-WHQL driver (14.7 RC) and adds performance improvements for Xaviant's Lichdom: Battlemage, tweaks enabling 'smoother gameplay' on Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, a CrossFire profile for Carbine Studios' WildStar, and 'display interface enhancements to improve 4k monitor performance and reduce flickering'.

The Catalyst 14.7 RC3 has support for the Radeon HD 5000, HD 6000, HD 7000, HD 8000, R5 200, R7 200 and R9 200 Series graphics cards and can be downloaded from this page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[GhostRyder]

Cannot wait to try this when I get home, hopefully it will fix the issue I have been having since it lists a fix in its notes!

 

[RejZoR]

I'll try these in a hope for less shitty DisplayPort problems on my 144Hz monitor. Constant DP Link failure messages and constant falling back to 85Hz is starting to make me a mad bro.

EDIT:
Nope, after installa nd reboot, i was kindly greeted by a DP link failure message. Dafaq...

 

[Cybrnook2002]

Awesome, can't wait.

 

[Prima.Vera]

I'll try these in a hope for less shitty DisplayPort problems on my 144Hz monitor. Constant DP Link failure messages and constant falling back to 85Hz is starting to make me a mad bro.

EDIT:
Nope, after installa nd reboot, i was kindly greeted by a DP link failure message. Dafaq...

Faulty card/monitor??

 

[FrustratedGarrett]

Cannot wait to try this when I get home, hopefully it will fix the issue I have been having since it lists a fix in its notes!

Have not had any problems with my 5770 on 13.2 windows driver, and I've been using my 5770 for 4 months now since I sold my 7870, which was as stable as the 5770.

 

[Countryside]

WOW AMD how long will it take to release WHQL drivers. It's already been more than 4 months

 

[fullinfusion]

WOW AMD how long will it take to release WHQL drivers. It's already been more than 4 months

View attachment 58443

Instead of bitching why not test and post?

I love the fact AMD take there time now on releasing drivers.

At least there getting most of the problems fixe and I use Most loosly

Look at Nvidia! A new driver twice a month lol and whats that accomplish? A hit and miss...

But anyways ppl this driver IMHO is a great overall driver.

Im sure getting better frame rates in all games/benches

I cant wait for the WHQL driver

 

[Relayer]

Faulty card/monitor??

Or cable?

 

[Countryside]

Dude it was a question (WOW AMD how long will it take to release WHQL)

 

[Countryside]

Instead of bitching why not test and post?

I love the fact AMD take there time now on releasing drivers.

At least there getting most of the problems fixe and I use Most loosly

Look at Nvidia! A new driver twice a month lol and whats that accomplish? A hit and miss...

But anyways ppl this driver IMHO is a great overall driver.

Im sure getting better frame rates in all games/benches

I cant wait for the WHQL driver

Cmon man ur not a fanboy i hope.
I'm far away from bitching and i have tested for a very long time. It takes too long to release the driver and too long to fix the problems like the flickering issue with hd 7000 & R200 and many more. Yes you have to take time with WHQL drivers but then u must but something on the table if u know what i mean.

If it wasn't for Microsoft quality standards, this release would've been easily marked 'WHQL'. I understand they cannot allow themselves to publish every single AMD's attempt on creating a new software package for their hardware to be published in one and only Windows Update channel, it's just too much risk and zero profit for end-users.
By the way, do you really think that 'WHQL' means 'quality' or something?.. That's just funny.

No No dude quality for me comes with letters like KFC. And yeah WHQL is supposed to show quality but if Microsoft uses fools in their test labs thats their problem.

 

[Lopez0101]

"Catalust 14.7 graphics"

This must be their sexy driver release.

 

[RejZoR]

Faulty card/monitor??

Then a lot of people have faulty cards and monitors if you google it up. Considering i was getting 85Hz lock on a 144Hz monitor even with Dual Link DVI that came with 144Hz monitor, i'm not sure what to think anymore. I'm getting the same with DP cable, except with it, CCC is constantly bitching about it. With DVI it just silently locked refresh to 85Hz. But when i unplug it and reconnect and when it works in 144Hz it works perfectly fine. It just hangs itself on some reboots and waking up from sleep.

 

[Lopez0101]

WHQL is simply a certification you get for paying MS to look at your driver. AMD stopped doing it because it cost them money and did little to nothing for their end users and allowed them to put out drivers more frequently.

Someone who wants to have a legitimate discussion doesn't post images with their posts that are meant to/going to incite annoyance.

 

[RejZoR]

I've been using non WHQL drivers for like my entire life and they don't seem to be any diferent than WHQL ones. Apart from no nagging from OS when you install them. WHQL really only means something for system builders where they have a certified driver and they usually don't update it for ages. Like my Compaq laptop for example that on official webpage still has the driver from 2012 or so as the latest.

 

[alwayssts]

Then a lot of people have faulty cards and monitors if you google it up. Considering i was getting 85Hz lock on a 144Hz monitor even with Dual Link DVI that came with 144Hz monitor, i'm not sure what to think anymore. I'm getting the same with DP cable, except with it, CCC is constantly bitching about it. With DVI it just silently locked refresh to 85Hz. But when i unplug it and reconnect and when it works in 144Hz it works perfectly fine. It just hangs itself on some reboots and waking up from sleep.

My understanding has been (and it could be wrong) is that Tahiti has pixel clock limitations/issues. Have you tried ToastyX's fix?

http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher

Perhaps that isn't applicable to displayport (I have never used it) but I know dvi can be a PITA.

 

[RejZoR]

The fact it breaks HW acceleration is a no deal for me.

 

[alwayssts]

The fact it breaks HW acceleration is a no deal for me.

Understandable...It can be a nuisance to lose decoding (I love madvr as much as the next guy), but personally I've tried it and all the work-arounds, finding them surprisingly acceptable with other options. Somehow, it allowed me to keep 4:4:4, still be able to use lcd overdrive (which helped a ton for my setup), and occasionally I would clock my refresh up some for games. At some point lcd overdrive was removed from Cats and/or broke using the current version of the patcher (It never had appeared in the menu without it), so I uninstalled it and never checked back. Is there some particular reason it's a deal-breaker?

Fact is, that might be the reality of the situation...I would at least give it a shot and see if it works. You can always uninstall it. That, or upgrade to Tonga/Hawaii (which along with Bonaire I have heard fixed the problem by allowing a 600mhz clock or something to that effect...essentially 4k60...well...4k72 I guess. )

 

[Mussels]

YAY DRIVERS!



time for another painless update to my systems with no bugs, wondering why everyone else is having problems.

 

[Random Murderer]

YAY DRIVERS!



time for another painless update to my systems with no bugs, wondering why everyone else is having problems.

Glad I'm not the only one

 

[manofthem]

I'm not one to complain about AMD's drivers whatsoever, but I actually ran into issues installing this on my R9 270 pc, first time I've ever encountered problems; it took 3 installs and 1 system restore lol (with uninstalls and a revert back to 14.4 in between).

It seems to be working now without hiccup; everything is opening fine and adjusts fine. I haven't tested in game yet, but that's coming along.

 

[RandomSadness]

I must say that new drivers are always welcomed. I had such a great performance improvement in watch dogs, I almost reach a solid 60 fps everytime with v-sync enabled. I also noticed better frame rates in benchmarks like MSI Kombustor. That's not a lot , but still nice to have.

 

[Steevo]

WHQL is simply a certification you get for paying MS to look at your driver. AMD stopped doing it because it cost them money and did little to nothing for their end users and allowed them to put out drivers more frequently.

Someone who wants to have a legitimate discussion doesn't post images with their posts that are meant to/going to incite annoyance.

Its $250 for 7, $250 for 8.1, $250 For Vista, I doubt $750 will break AMD. But yes it didn't do much for 90% of users out there who can't spell AMD let alone know who they are.

Its more about AMD being a user feedback driven company, they want......user feedback.... since they have no way of testing every card in every board, on every operating system, with every software configuration possible, and every game, on every monitor, they take a good stable driver and tweak and tune it, test it in house and then a decision is made to release it, and see what feedback they get, correct issues from people who want to be early adopters. Then they take and fix as many bugs as they can and submit that as a WHQL driver suite. No one is forcing anyone to update or buy the hardware, the driver update is free. If I buy a car today, do I get to take it back and get free performance upgrades, then bitch as one of them caused my favorite radio station to get erased?

 

[Mussels]

only change i've seen on these drivers is it seems my text/font has changed slightly. could be slightly clearer, but its definitely different in some way.

could be related to hardware acceleration in chrome.

 

[Serpent of Darkness]

RC3 is not giving me issues as much as RC2 and 1. For some reason it was difficult to sustain CrossfireX with 3 Units especially on boot-up. RC3 seems a lot more stable for me. When RC2 and 1 became unstable, it would always reset or change my settings in the Overdrive Section of the Catalyst Control Center. Sometimes, my computer would load back up with AMD CrossfireX disabled. It's like when my desktop booted up, it couldn't boot up in CrossfireX, and so it changed back to disable to get it to work properly. Also, on the side, I enabled VT-D in my BIOS. RC2 and 1 would also lock up when opening applications like Microsoft Outlook and others. It's not been happening in RC3.

RC2 seem to choke my FPS on games like WoW and Planetside 2. RC3 seems to have fixed that issue in CrossfireX.

One thing I have noticed with RC3, and I guess it's because Artifact Reduction is enabled in the video section of CCC, when I am watching youtube videos, the stats for nerds is enabled, and it indicated that I am dropping a significant amount of frames during the footage. Whenever I install a new beta or WHQL, I check everything to see if it's working. Well, I was watching a 5 minute video, and the image quality was probably improved by a small pinch or a small amount. The frames were a lot more crisp-er. Image Quality and flow was a lot more crisper, but Youtube's "Stats for Nerds" showed I dropped over 400 frames. I thought this was somewhat ridiculous. A few months ago, with the same setting and setup, but with a different driver, I'd get maybe a total of 4 to 10 frames dropped during on the same video.

I haven't done any benchmarks. Doubt Ungine and others would make a significant percentage difference between RC1, 2, and 3.

AMD MSI R9-290x x3 in CrossfireX
Stock Clocks. All cards at PCIe 16x 3.0