No More Monthly AMD Catalyst Updates?

[cadaveca]

This is why you are the leader!

W1zz is the fearless leader. I'm just a lieutenant.

 

[erocker]

Well ,as you know, I have dual 5850's here, still getting cursor corruption and crazy flicker on secondary monitors, worse tha nmy 6-series cards. For a product on the market for nearly 3 years, that's unacceptable for a high-end user like myself. To be honest, I have resigned myself to the fact that since it's been 3 years this issue has existed, there must be something wrong with the hardware itself, and there's nothing I can do about that. I wish I would have known about this long ago, and wasn't stuck waiting for a fix that will never come for a very expensive purchase i made becuase i thought AMD could deliver.

I even offered to ship the whole rig to AMD at my expense. It's not like I got a shortage of hardware.

Anyway, i thought the whole point of AMD adding the APP to the driver package was so that driver updates were no longer neccesary, and in lieu of driver updates, just a new APP was required. That, to me, is a very viable alternative, to release APPs every month, and core driver updates when needed. However, the core driver is still broken for me.



I will beleive after the driver comes out, and I get to test it. I've been waiting for such since the 5870 launch in 2009, nearly 3 years ago. This bit of info in itself validates everything I posted about above. If AMD can finally fix this issue..both on my 5850's, and 6950's, then I will be happy. But they said it woudl be fixed inteh past, and it wasn't, so I will not be so quick to trust them this time, and waiting 3 years for such a fix is just...crazy...

Looks like any multi monitor users pre 7k series that are having trouble are pretty much screwed. That being said, AMD just came out with this! http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EBB ...Well, it's no longer Catalyst Crew Feedback anyways. At least it looks like they are making changes, hopefully this time they will be for the good. Hopefully. *Looks like Bta just put up a new article on it.

 

[cadaveca]

Looks like any multi monitor users pre 7k series that are having trouble are pretty much screwed. That being said, AMD just came out with this! http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EBB ...Well, it's no longer Catalyst Crew Feedback anyways. At least it looks like they are making changes, hopefully this time they will be for the good. Hopefully. *Looks like Bta just put up a new article on it.

Yeah, it's headed in the right direction, I guess. Like I said earlier, I thought the whole point of the APP profiles was so they could move in this direction, so there no big deal with that in itself.

The issue, for me, is quite specifically the issues revolving around multi-monitor use, a thing that they use to market their cards.

If they cannot get it working on older cards, I almsot feel as though i shoudl get a refund, or free upgrade, so I can get ahrdware that DOESN'T have these issues. I did not buy 5-series and 6-series cards for single-monitor use...I bought them for Eyefinity, and that is currently stil lbroken, as admitted in the news posting.

And becuase they admit this is problem, and that it might not work for earlier cards, this is bad news for me. It's not like I'm complaining about unreal problems...these are problems, obviously, that AMD recognize exists.

The new feedback form is good..I was using the old one every month anyway.

 

[trickson]

I think this is a good thing really. Kinda sucks AMD/ATI putting out new drivers every month any way. They should be able to put out one set of kickass drivers and adress problems as they come there way. Like nVidia does. Always putting out new drivers every month seems a bit redundant and modaine. How much performance can one card give any way?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

they didnt make a comment on app profiles, so imho they have already made the mechanism for rapid support deployment , without the need to change drivers .

and shit i agree with trickson

 

[Solidstate89]

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

Not even close. I have to put up with AMD FirePros while I'm at work along with their requisite shit drivers.

Nothing drives me up the wall faster than all the crap I have to deal with that damndable user interface that Catalyst driver has. It's so unintuitive and there's at least 3 menus/options you have to memorize to get all of the settings. They're not just a centralized in a single menu or list like they were for nVidia drivers down the left hand side. You can't even adjust per application performance or settings from the Drivers themselves. Not to mention the hardware itself is complete crap for using Unigraphics NX with. FirePros excel with Solidworks but not Unigraphics. Though that last part is the company's fault for skimping on a good GPU for us to use.

 

[pjladyfox]

^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*

I've been a longtime user of AMD/ATI hardware in my systems for a long time (last Intel system was a RAMBUS P4 setup) but this year has been nothing but disappointment outside of the Fusion/APU group. The only thing I can think of is that they had to do this because all the folks that were responsible for helping to maintain the monthly driver updates are either due to be outsourced/terminated or already have been.

I've also worked professionally with some great people over at AMD/ATI and it's news like this that really saddens me since I know they've got some amazingly brilliant people over there. Now I'm sitting here humming "Where has the old AMD/ATI gone" to the song "where have all the good guys gone" or something similar.

 

[eidairaman1]

I think this is a good thing really. Kinda sucks AMD/ATI putting out new drivers every month any way. They should be able to put out one set of kickass drivers and adress problems as they come there way. Like nVidia does. Always putting out new drivers every month seems a bit redundant and modaine. How much performance can one card give any way?

it would allow them to QA the drivers a lil better too because they are not on a time crunch to release them every month

Not even close. I have to put up with AMD FirePros while I'm at work along with their requisite shit drivers.

Nothing drives me up the wall faster than all the crap I have to deal with that damndable user interface that Catalyst driver has. It's so unintuitive and there's at least 3 menus/options you have to memorize to get all of the settings. They're not just a centralized in a single menu or list like they were for nVidia drivers down the left hand side. You can't even adjust per application performance or settings from the Drivers themselves. Not to mention the hardware itself is complete crap for using Unigraphics NX with. FirePros excel with Solidworks but not Unigraphics. Though that last part is the company's fault for skimping on a good GPU for us to use.

You ever enabled advanced options for them. I did that for the 6770 here

NVs UI i found very confusing to use

 

[Solidstate89]

You ever enabled advanced options for them. I did that for the 6770 here

NVs UI i found very confusing to use

Of course I did. If anything that complicated the user interface even more. To get to Options 1-5, click on button A. To get to Options 6 - 10, go find Menu item B-4 on the other side of the window even though those two options should be inexorably linked.

It's a horrible layout altogether, to speak nothing of the anemic hardware and poor software optimizations.

 

[The Von Matrices]

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.

NVidia drivers 301.42 screwed up my GTX 470 Surround setup as well, so at least to me it's not really clear that one driver team is better than the other when it comes to multi-monitor. The 296 driver works well, but it doesn't have all the extra features like the 301 driver did. I'm hoping this new drivers causing old multi-monitor setups to break isn't a trend for NVidia as well.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

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

 

[T4C Fantasy]

i personally love this idea, however they need to make a definitions database like that of a anti-virus program, this update practice will work flawlesssly, and they already have the perfect candidate software for this practice.... the CAPs

 

[H82LUZ73]

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.

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.

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

Well said mailman,Gee was not to long ago I said the same thing(Jan2012) Of AMD drivers..but wait the last 5 months of been a pain is the ass with crossfire breaking for no reason,My HDMI AMD sound going out when i switch from cable to game on my AV receiver...all because AMD is starting to look bad as a whole.I`m stuck with them though ,my wallet can not afford a dual jump with Intel/AMD or AMD/Nvidia...Why i like some users here they do both which makes for a good view between them.

 

[eidairaman1]

Of course I did. If anything that complicated the user interface even more. To get to Options 1-5, click on button A. To get to Options 6 - 10, go find Menu item B-4 on the other side of the window even though those two options should be inexorably linked.

It's a horrible layout altogether, to speak nothing of the anemic hardware and poor software optimizations.

well instead of ranting and crying about it here, use the suggestions at AMDs site.

 

[jigar2speed]

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyKDNHNXpNwe-mi3x9KaficklQD4CMq8hILb85q0YthC7W_jO2

Alright, i was keeping tight lip but actually, even i don't have any issues with AMD drivers, shifted from 8800GT to HD 5850 after it got fried playing Starcraft 2 due to Nvidia driver crapped the fan.

I understand some people are facing minor issues here and there, but atleast i haven't come across any AMD driver that killed my card outright.

 

[dj-electric]

killing is one thing, but some AMD users feel already dead with problems that are over 3 YEARS OLD.
Hell, why should an HD7970 user suffer from things that HD5870 users suffered from 3 years ago like cursor bugs.
As a reviewer that has worked with dozens of graphics cards i can say for a FACT that i ran into much less issues with NVIDIA's graphics cards. There, you have it.

BTW, the irony is that i bumped into this topic while helping a friend over skype swap his drivers while the current one is eating his HD6870 alive with constant 99% load. (again, a 2 year old problem).

 

[jigar2speed]

killing is one thing, but some AMD users feel already dead with problems that are over 3 YEARS OLD.

HAHAHHAA - Really ? So your prefere a direct lose of $300 hardware is better than a 10 minute issue...

Hell, why should an HD7970 user suffer from things that HD5870 users suffered from 3 years ago like cursor bugs.
As a reviewer that has worked with dozens of graphics cards i can say for a FACT that i ran into much less issues with NVIDIA's graphics cards. There, you have it.

BTW, the irony is that i bumped into this topic while helping a friend over skype swap his drivers while the current one is eating his HD6870 alive with constant 99% load. (again, a 2 year old problem).

Trust me, i never had the cursor bug that you are talking about.
My system specs are as below,
Q6600 @ 3.6 GHZ | HD 5850 @ 950 MHZ GPU - 1000 MHZ - RAM | 8 GB RAM | 650 Watts PSU | Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

I don't say that you are not facing the issue, but your argument of hardware dying is fine but small quirk aren't is way beyond my head.

EDIT: You should completely wipe the Graphic driver of your friend's HD6870 using driver sweeper and do the fresh installation, that should do the trick.

 

[pjladyfox]

Honetly in a lot of cases the old drivers end up being better for different games.. It's like making crysis run worse so metro 2033 can run better. Also I have seen drivers desroy video cards. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind.

It's funny that this is mentioned since running older PC's, especially for those PC games that used 3DFX cards, is a hobby of mine. Before I got laid off from my last job when I had spare time I used to fuss with Mechwarrior 3 in order to try and get it working on a modern video card.

After a LOT of work I found that as long as you used the Catalyst 9.12 drivers, as well as a modified DLL, that you could get the game running on an ATI card up to the HD 3870 . Why they broke this functionality, and broke Crimson Skies support at the same time, I STILL do not know. But for some reason NVIDIA cards, while they were broken for awhile, fixed the issue starting with the 258.96 drivers.

While I'm sympathetic to hardware makers regarding supporting a particular game/application I don't understand why they have to break compatibility with older software and meanwhile leave us holding the bag and trying to figure out at what point things stopped working. The least they could do would be to add in the patch notes something like "had to break x to fix y" so that users could decide if they wish to upgrade or not.

 

[cadaveca]

So your prefere a direct lose of $300 hardware is better than a 10 minute issue...

Yes. That's what warranties are for, and without an outright death, it's not likely that this issue will ever be fixed. In fact, because I have been dealing with said issue for near 3 years, I KNOW it won't get fixed, and there are literal hundreds of thousands of users out there, if not millions, with product that say that they support Eyefintiy, but actually, they do not, at all.


You know, I got these three monitors, and when launching a 3D app, one monitor goes to sleep. I have to turn off the power, then turn it back on, and hope that it works, which doesn't happen about 60% of the time. THat is NOT a working product.

Then, just normal use, move cursor from one monitor to the next, and it turns into a garbled mess.

DO i know what the problem really is? YES. Have I known for years? YES. And is this news posting the first time AMD has openly admitted that it's an issue? YES.

I literally posted years ago saying that the Display output design of the 5-series cards was broken, and that using differnt display output interfaces was the source of the issue. And here we sit years later, with AMD finally saying the same thing.


As I posted earlier, the fix, is hardware they were supposed to release, but never did. IT's a external box that provides a singular display output that prevents all these issues with timings that are occuring, and such a basic thing, to me, that it is astounding to me that AMD has decided to not fix the problem correctly.


Now to sum it all up, if this issue was killing cards, you can probably guarantee it'd be fixed by now, as the loss to AMD for dealing with such an issue would be too great. But because it doesn't kill cards, here I sit, for years, waiting for a fix for a PC I spent $5000 on like three years ago.

And my current $6000 PC? OH, yeah, it has issues as well. I coud have bought new VGAs in the past few weeks...I bought a new U2412M monitor, a i7 3820 and a i7 3770K, an OCZ Nocti mSATA drive....all that cash I would have gladly spent on a couple of HD7950 3 GB cards.


But I didn't, becuase AMD has failed me with the past 2 generation of products. I've been burnt by them so bad, I won't buy GTX670's, either, until I know 1000% for sure that multi-monitor issues are a thing of the past.

I have ZERO confidence in AMD as a company, as a result of them failing to deliver properly functioning hardware as they have promised.

I will say though, that an AMD rep took the time to call me after so many bug reports, and ask me exactly what the issue was. I'm not sure how they got my phone number, but call they did.

 

[T4C Fantasy]

killing is one thing, but some AMD users feel already dead with problems that are over 3 YEARS OLD.
Hell, why should an HD7970 user suffer from things that HD5870 users suffered from 3 years ago like cursor bugs.
As a reviewer that has worked with dozens of graphics cards i can say for a FACT that i ran into much less issues with NVIDIA's graphics cards. There, you have it.

BTW, the irony is that i bumped into this topic while helping a friend over skype swap his drivers while the current one is eating his HD6870 alive with constant 99% load. (again, a 2 year old problem).

i have a hd6870 AND an HD7970, ive never even known about these issues nor have i ever had them.... ive also had low end cards like the HD2400PRO X1900 and the HD4450

and i use both my hd7970 and 6870 on the same motherboard to fold.... so they are at 100% 24/7 and no problems

edit: i also do alot of gaming... either youve had bad cards or you dont know how to take care of your things

 

[TheMailMan78]

i have a hd6870 AND an HD7970, ive never even known about these issues nor have i ever had them.... ive also had low end cards like the HD2400PRO X1900 and the HD4450

and i use both my hd7970 and 6870 on the same motherboardto fold.... so they are at 100% 24/7 and no problems

You have about 6 members on this forum (two staff) that are telling you the same issues with AMD cards. Now you have AMD admitting these SAME ISSUES yet your situation is the norm? Come on man.

 

[cadaveca]

You have about 6 members on this forum (two staff) that are telling you the same issues with AMD cards. Now you have AMD admitting these SAME ISSUES yet your situation is the norm? Come on man.

Dude, the AMD rep that posted this info said that they knew of the issue, and had a driver to fix it? saying there's no issue with AMD's hardware when AMD admits there is, and has even developed a driver to try to fix it...uh...yeah...oh, and that driver should be out in a week or so?


I WANT IT NAOW!!! It has been three bloody years!!!!

 

[TheMailMan78]

Dude, the AMD rep that posted this info said that they knew of the issue, and had a driver to fix it? saying there's no issue with AMD's hardware when AMD admits there is...uh...yeah...

I know, I know. Yet people are still in denial on AMD driver support.

 

[T4C Fantasy]

You have about 6 members on this forum (two staff) that are telling you the same issues with AMD cards. Now you have AMD admitting these SAME ISSUES yet your situation is the norm? Come on man.

im a programmer myself... i troubleshoot things easy if problems ever come up however i have had zero issues with my hd7970 or any of my previous cards, except for the HD4450 driver making youtube a green screen

 

[cadaveca]

im a programmer myself... i troubleshoot things easy if problems ever come up however i have had zero issues with my hd7970 or any of my previous cards, except for the HD4450 driver making youtube a green screen

I'm actually very glad you have no issues, but here's a list from AMD itself on some issues they have JUST fixed with 7-series cards, even though the cards have been out for near 6 months:

•AMD Radeon™ HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Tri-CrossFire™ configurations + Eyefinity BSOD when launching a DirectX application.
•AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Eyefinity/Multiple Display configurations BSOD when using desktop applications.
•AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards hang when system goes to sleep.
•Tearing on Eyefinity configurations when different display connector types are used.
•Poor Elder Scrolls: Skyrim CrossFire scaling seen in AMD Catalyst 12.4 (back to CrossFire scaling found in AMD Catalyst 12.3).
•AMD Catalyst Control Center – intermittently missing Overdrive page.
•AMD Catalyst Control Center – missing GPU Activity gauge.
•AMD Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Configuration – system hang after cinematic in Call of Duty: Black Ops.
•Crysis 2 -random system hangs when run in DirectX 9 mode.
•Heroes and Generals: Blocky corruption in scenes with smoke effects when run in DirectX 11 mode.
•Disabled HDMI audio when the connected HDTV is powered Off/On.

nope, there have been no problems..none.

I mean, it's no big deal, really. Just some users have spent thousands on Eyefinity configs, only to have them BSOD. NO big deal at all!

Those are some big issues, and it's nice to see they are fixed. But here they are working on new cards, when they haven't fixed issues with cards two generations old. As far as I am concerned, this is why they fired so many people in that department