No More Monthly AMD Catalyst Updates?

btarunr · May 31, 2012

It's 31st, and Catalyst 12.5 WHQL is nowhere in sight. According to an article by Benchmarks3D, you should give up on it, for AMD is calling quits with the monthly driver update cycle. However, AMD will focus on a staggered driver update cycle that will address issues with games as they crop up. In other words, end-users could end up seeing new drivers as hotfixes more often, depending on launches of games and new Radeon hardware, but that could also mean long periods of lull when there are no major issues to address, or no new hardware to improve drivers for.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

Lionheart · May 31, 2012

I'm kinda glad in a way.....they should just do it like Nvidia release's em

but then again I can't be bothered waiting that long

TheMailMan78 · May 31, 2012

I hope consumers enjoy being beta testers.

Jurassic1024 · May 31, 2012

^GeForce drivers come much more frequently if you include the betas.

My last four graphics cards have been AMD branded, and I was on the fence regarding what camp to go with for my next card, but this news pushes me back to the side of the green team. First AMD said their would be no Catalyst updates for cards below the 5000 series for Windows 8 aside from what comes on the disc, their failure to compete with Intel x86 CPU's on the high end, failure to hold onto their price/performance crown on the CPU and GPU side, too little focus on the CPU side of their APU's, and now this.

Graphics division aside, AMD has a very hard time focusing on more than one product/division at a time post-Hector. I'm no longer impressed with AMD.

*smh*

Steevo · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
I hope consumers enjoy being beta testers.

Like with Nvidia who burns up cards and has lots of beta drivers available.

I prefer the monthly updates, recently I have only updated as needed or as performance increases are available.

reverze · May 31, 2012

good idea, release drivers when there is something worth releasing for, which was kind of already the thing with preview drivers ( so we didint have to make 3 weeks for the whql )

TheMailMan78 · May 31, 2012

Steevo said:
Like with Nvidia who burns up cards and has lots of beta drivers available.

I prefer the monthly updates, recently I have only updated as needed or as performance increases are available.

There are issues with the Catylast drivers that are over 5 years old man. 5 YEARS! Nvidia has betas sure.....they are betas. AMD doesn't have betas anymore with this news. ALL drivers are betas. AMD's driver team sucks currently. They have sucked since Dec. 2011.

BAF92 · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
There are issues with the Catylast drivers that are over 5 years old man. 5 YEARS! Nvidia has betas sure.....they are betas. AMD doesn't have betas anymore with this news. ALL drivers are betas. AMD's driver team sucks currently. They have sucked since Dec. 2011.

Now you sound like a Nvidia fanboy.Only Nvidia fanboys says that AMD drivers suck.

TheMailMan78 · May 31, 2012

BAF92 said:
Now you sound like a Nvidia fanboy.Only Nvidia fanboys says that AMD drivers suck.

lol I used AMD/ATI hardware exclusively for YEARS. This is my FIRST Intel/Nvidia rig. So sure call me a fanboy. I don't care. But I do know people who use Open GL have had major issues with AMD drivers since Dec. of last year when they updated the OpenGL and fired half the driver team. I also have seen the corrupt cursor issue fixed and then broken AGAIN since then. An issue thats YEARS old now.

They need to SLOW DOWN and do things right. Quality and quantity.

Dent1 · May 31, 2012

BAF92 said:
Now you sound like a Nvidia fanboy.Only Nvidia fanboys says that AMD drivers suck.

I 100% agree.

TheMailMan78 · May 31, 2012

Dent1 said:
I 100% agree.

Haters gonna hate......but I shoot torpedo's of truth.

the54thvoid · May 31, 2012

BAF92 said:
Now you sound like a Nvidia fanboy.Only Nvidia fanboys says that AMD drivers suck.

Congratulations, your first post and it's negative and pretty pointless. AMD drivers are generally considered by most community members and reviewers to be worse than Nvidia's. Neither are perfect though.

Dent1 · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
Haters gonna hate......but I shoot torpedo's of truth.

Your truth isn't my truth.

I've been using ATI consistantly since 2009. I haven't had any issues with AMD drivers what so ever.

I update my drivers and then say to myself "what is the point, performance was great before and its still great. Did I need this driver?".

the54thvoid said:
Congratulations, your first post and it's negative and pretty pointless. AMD drivers are generally considered by most community members and reviewers to be worse than Nvidia's. Neither are perfect though.

And TheMailMan78 behaving like a kid wasn't pointless?

avatar_raq · May 31, 2012

I am no nvidia fan, but drivers later to 12.3 screwed my 5870 + eyefinity and killed internet video playback. And now no regular updates? pfffffff.

TheMailMan78 · May 31, 2012

the54thvoid said:
Congratulations, your first post and it's negative and pretty pointless. AMD drivers are generally considered by most community members and reviewers to be worse than Nvidia's. Neither are perfect though.

Meh hes new man. He has no idea the massive debates that have been had on here about this. No one thinks Nvidias drivers are perfect. I damn sure don't. But as of LATELY they are leaps and bounds better then AMD.

Anyway BAF92 welcome to the forums man.

Dent1 said:
Your truth isn't my truth.

I've been using ATI consistantly since 2009. I haven't had any issues with AMD drivers what so ever.

I update my drivers and then say to myself "what is the point, performance was great before and its still great. Did I need this driver?".

And TheMailMan78 behaving like a kid wasn't pointless?

If you do nothing but game on a single monitor you have been lucky. For those of us who work and or have more then a generation old card AMD drivers have sucked since they laid off the driver team. This is a fact MANY on here will attest to. As for me behaving like a kid......what because I don't share the same opinion as you I'm a child? How mature.

avatar_raq said:
I am no nvidia fan, but drivers later to 12.3 screwed my 5870 + eyefinity and killed internet video playback. And now no regular updates? pfffffff.

How can you have issues? According to Dent1 AMD drivers are perfect.

Goodman · May 31, 2012

Never had any real/serious problems with AMD or Nvidia drivers so far but i never had to deal with SLI or xFire either...

Anyhow i don't blame AMD not to do monthly drivers anymore as it must be lots of works
I think a new driver every ~2 months (4-7 a year) should be good enough & it should give them more time to "fix it" good & have something solid to update to... IMO

radrok · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
Meh hes new man. He has no idea the massive debates that have been had on here about this. No one thinks Nvidias drivers are perfect. I damn sure don't. But as of LATELY they are leaps and bounds better then AMD.

They both suck for surround gaming but the real problem and deal breaker is that AMD screws up so bad with OpenGL that makes me(us?) rage.

Gaming wise Catalysts are ALMOST fine but damn OpenGL support is meh, I brought up OpenGL because I remember we talked about it on another thread TMM, so who is new can understand why we bash Catalysts, atleast we can say why they suck, differently from fanboy who they just say "OH LOL <insert random GPU manufacturer> SUCKS"

de.das.dude · May 31, 2012

About time they stoped doing this. it consumes time and money and resource as well!

TheMailMan78 · May 31, 2012

radrok said:
They both suck for surround gaming but the real problem and deal breaker is that AMD screws up so bad with OpenGL that makes me(us?) rage.

Gaming wise Catalysts are ALMOST fine but damn OpenGL support is meh, I brought up OpenGL because I remember we talked about it on another thread TMM, so who is new can understand why we bash Catalysts, atleast we can say why they suck, differently from fanboy who they just say "OH LOL <insert random GPU manufacturer> SUCKS"

Thank you. The OpenGL crap made me go Nvidia. Now AMD does this?! It will be a long time before I go back red.

BAF92 · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
Meh hes new man. He has no idea the massive debates that have been had on here about this. No one thinks Nvidias drivers are perfect. I damn sure don't. But as of LATELY they are leaps and bounds better then AMD.

Anyway BAF92 welcome to the forums man.

I respect your opinion but i have AMD HD 5770 and i have no problem with the drivers.They may not be perfect but they dont suck as you said

ChristTheGreat · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
lol I used AMD/ATI hardware exclusively for YEARS. This is my FIRST Intel/Nvidia rig. So sure call me a fanboy. I don't care. But I do know people who use Open GL have had major issues with AMD drivers since Dec. of last year when they updated the OpenGL and fired half the driver team. I also have seen the corrupt cursor issue fixed and then broken AGAIN since then. An issue thats YEARS old now.

They need to SLOW DOWN and do things right. Quality and quantity.

Be more specific

, on a standar usage, gaming, AMD driver are quite good. I have some AMD/ATI card since 2007, and I never had any issue with driver, except On Crysis when it was realase, a part of the game it was artefacting (on my old x1950xt)

It all depends on what you do. I could tell ya that my 8800GT, was running all fine ,but over the driver 16*.**, I was dropping from 80 to 15 FPS in Oblivion.. People will say ya but it's old game. So what?

AMD drivers are generally considered by most community members and reviewers to be worse than Nvidia's.

yeah that's right. In community, there are haters, and like you said, haters gonna hate, that's it :laugh:

If everybody thinks AMD drivers sucks, why do they buy one? Canyou answer me on this? If people thinks it sucks, well do not buy and go buy something else lol.

Anyway, you have problem with OpenGL, fine you can go on green if it works for ya. I do not think driver are perfect, I,ve just waited soo long for that update for profile

. Something will be better on AMD, some other on nVidia, there is nothing more to say.

Dent1 · May 31, 2012

TheMailMan78 said:
. As for me behaving like a kid......what because I don't share the same opinion as you I'm a child? How mature.

Having diverse opinion is great. I say you were behaving like a kid because you started bashing AMD straight off.

A mature response would have been "ATI drivers have known issues, Nvidia has it right. Hopefully this new way of deploying drivers is a step in the right direction".

TheMailMan78 said:
How can you have issues? According to Dent1 AMD drivers are perfect.

I never said that. To paraphrase, I believe AMD drivers are perfect for me.

From a business person's point of view this is better. More frequent hotfixes, so customers are happy. Full brown drivers when it's needed. Why expend money on constant development if nothing major needs fixing?

de.das.dude said:
About time they stoped doing this. it consumes time and money and resource as well!

Thank you. A response from a business perspective.

faramir · May 31, 2012

BAF92 said:
Now you sound like a Nvidia fanboy.Only Nvidia fanboys says that AMD drivers suck.

Meh, haven't had a single Nvidia card in my life, I currently use HD5770 and yet I consider AMD's drivers to be by far the weakest part of the package. The .Net dependence is just the cherry on top of their lameness.

Xzibit · May 31, 2012

Monthly update schedule was a dream.

A more reasonable one would be Quarterly up-dates 4 a year is okay. Still says you give a crap about your customers and gives you time to soart out issues in testing. Instead of just releasing random betas fixing then breaking features every time a new game comes out.

With all this driver talk from both sides. I'm still waiting for a web-site with the balls to do a driver review. Remember the old days when both companies were being called out on cheap tricks. Texture compressing, Down scaling APIs, not rendering full screens and now its just seams its an accepted thing.

You have to wonder if the community doesnt care enough to cover it. Why AMD/Nvidia would bother fixing their drivers. They already made you buy the hardware.

Lionheart · May 31, 2012

BAF92 said:
I respect your opinion but i have AMD HD 5770 and i have no problem with the drivers.They may not be perfect but they dont suck as you said

Everyone get's different experience's bro :toast:

I know alot of ppl who have had really shit experience's with AMD's drivers, I fortunately am not one of them which I cannot complain about

....but yeah, not everyone is going to get the same experience as everyone else

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No More Monthly AMD Catalyst Updates?

btarunr

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