Editorial It's Now Been Over 160 Days Since a Catalyst WHQL Release

[btarunr]

This is not the section to vent your opinions.

Oh but it is. It's marked "editorial" from the moment I posted it.

 

[Aquinus]

Oh but it is. It's marked "editorial" from the moment I posted it.

Fret not, @btarunr for Octopuss gets angry often and it's best to ignore that kind of attitude anyways. I wouldn't call this venting, I would call this an observation.

Another observation is that for 160 days my drivers attached to my 6870s work great.

 

[czaczi87]

Are you people blind or is AMD paying you to write this crap? "If it's not broken, don't fix it" - yeah, but you are forgetting that almost every freaking AAA game in the last half year had poorer performance on AMD cards than on Nvidia cards. Also the Crossfire support is crap. I have 2x R9 290's and can't utilize the second card in The Witcher 3 and CF in GTA 5 is also broken. I am now strongly considering selling those two Radeons and buying a GTX 980 or a 980 Ti if the price won't be murderous.

PS. Sorry for my language usage but I'm not a native speaker.

 

[Mathragh]

• News poster posts factual information regarding recent events, nothing opinionated, merely stating facts and informing readers of the present situation
• Some readers then proceed to rain down all hell upon news poster, making various angst-filled comments for no particular purpose other than to hate on the information provided

Don't shoot the messenger. The only reason people are getting all defensive is because of the lifelong feud that still (stupidly) exists between NVidia and AMD.

Asus haven't released a decent Xonar driver in years but nobody defends them for being "too busy" or "good enough".

Well, there really are two sides to the story. In graphics driver land, 160 days really is a long time and there is no denying it.
However the news then tries to extrapolate information based upon those 160(193) days in a way that doesn't necessarily make sense from an objective point of view.

He could just as well have written something in the spirit of:
"Nvidia updates their driver 3 times as much as AMD on average, we highly doubt the stability of their drivers in the long term if they need this many updates. We also are not convinced of the longevity of their architecture if every game needs a new driver, what would become of their last generation cards that don't always get as much focus in this drivers?".

Both the current story and the one (slightly dramatized) I wrote are just as wrong/right from a extrapolation point of view (both are based upon conjecture and current understanding of the workings of the current graphics ecosystem) but have totally different messages. Both imho shouldn't be published for the same reason; conjecture. I get that there needed to be some text apart from the "160 days" fact, but I feel that the current extra info is too close to a slogan some forum poster could use in his next flamewar.

Edit: I guess I missed the "editorial" part, and what am I doing here anyway, making needlessly long posts!! ohwell, just another day on a tech forum.

 

[john_]

As long as there are beta drivers that are stable as a WHQL driver, I don't really see a real problem here. AMD can't spend all it's resources running scared, every time a game developer produces a game that it is coincidentally an advertisement of Maxwell architecture. Someone posted that a simple profile and a tessellation setting in Catalyst drivers is enough to fix performance for Witcher 3. You don't need a new WHQL Catalyst driver for that.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I'm hoping for an AMD driver that brings a Crossfire profile for Killing Floor 2, but unfortunately I don't have much hope for it coming anytime soon.

 

[librin.so.1]

Oh but it is. It's marked "editorial" from the moment I posted it.

Editorial? What does that even mean?

 

[ThomasDM]

I think he makes a good point. AMD used to do monthly releases and until recently they often churned out multiple beta releases per month. The last half year has been very quiet on the driver front, perhaps the driver team fell victim to the latest round of job cuts at AMD in late 2014? It's not like there isn't anything to fix, they've already delayed multi-GPU support for FreeSync for months.

 

[Exceededgoku]

I actually don't agree with the general consensus here, but then I think it's down to the hardware people have.

I've got dual 295X2's in my build in crossfire, and if I don't get a driver update new games play like crap...

I understand it takes time to create game profiles (especially if Project Cars case of AMD ignored them pretty much until launch), but it is necessary for me to be able to play.

In fact, I think AMD pushed for GTA5 to have a launch driver, which even now still has some issues with performance.

I waited about 3-4 months for a driver for Dying Light, before they released 15.4 the game was simply unplayable. Again there are still some performance issues, but it's a lot better (read playable...).

My belief is that for an industry that is always/constantly changing you have to have a development team that can keep up with the load/requirements of your customers.

Someone mentioned Asus and the Xonar drivers, but the difference is that drivers in this instance are purely for stability. There's no requirement to add new features beyond the hardware capabilities and once installed sound will be good in every situation. With GPU's there will always be new games coming out, tweaks/optimisations, crossfire profiles, etc. that are needed otherwise things just don't work.

Put it this way, I've not once seen my GPU usage go to 100% on all GPU cores on my graphics card (okay it seems to work for benchmarks, which is hardly surprising). And all software devs keep saying the same thing, it's a driver issue. So what would I be left to believe?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Imo this matters a lot more to folks on crossfire then it does to single card users.

Think of AMD as a crossfire bridge. Without that bridge the link isn't there and the consumers depend on that link to work and keep working nevermind how bad the conditions are.

They dont need to release a whql so long as the beta they release has the necessary crossfire optimisations/updated profiles

 

[rtwjunkie]

Editorial? What does that even mean?

A term that originated in the golden days of newspapers. In an editorial, the newspaper editor would in effect write a position paper, stating his/her opinion, or the newspaper company's position on a certain subject. The content has predominately dealt with politics in the newspaper world.

 

[rak526]

Imo this matters a lot more to folks on crossfire then it does to single card users.

Think of AMD as a crossfire bridge. Without that bridge the link isn't there and the consumers depend on that link to work and keep working nevermind how bad the conditions are.

They dont need to release a whql so long as the beta they release has the necessary crossfire optimisations/updated profiles

Completely agree. IF the beta has the necessary crossfire optimizations. I'm still waiting for that to work on Shadow of Mordor with my 2 x 280X.

 

[ensabrenoir]

.......this can go either way. The power users running crossfire.....( wasn't cross fired injection on cars a mess too) or top tier graphics cards wants every ounce of performance they can get for their investment so yeah I'd want a driver to make full use of it for darn near everything....especially AAA games. The mid range gamer will be happy with whatever they get so its no big deal to them..... Personally I'd want better. If im paying money for a dedicated gpu i'd want optimal support for it too....otherwise whats the point....might as well be on integrated graphics and using the preschool re-sizing driver that built into windows .

 

[Nosada]

I don't like the fact that AMD lags so far behind when it comes to fixing glitches with newer games.

I also don't like the fact that nVidia needs to "tweak" their drivers for every new game that is released, and even then the game in question has notable issues (cfr: crashes to desktop are mentioned in every Witcher 3 review I've read, and all of them explicitly mention using the driver nVidia released for this exact game)

Both companies are currently providing sub-par service to their clients, and where I used to weigh the pros of both before purchasing a card, I currently find myself more often weighing the cons.

A lot of this has obviously to do with the fact that many devs are apparently filled with great artists and crappy coders, and even among them, the ones doing the port to PC are second choice.

I hope DX12 brings a solid standard to PC-gaming and devs learn to abide by that standard.

 

[Yorgos]

Aren't you supposed to write news articles? This is not the section to vent your opinions.
Also, stop repeating the same stupid mantra about the WHQL stuff. AMD repeatedly stated the "betas" were just as stable as the WHQL version, and the ONLY difference is the four letters.

I wouldn't have expected such stupid and useless thread from a staff member.

Some people like having frequent driver update like :
- New Driver release. Features : GPU overcloking off
- New Driver release. Features : GPU overclocking on (after people whining about it)
- New Driver release. Features : Hide, in a better way, 970's flaw
- New Driver release. Features : Cripple old h/w and force people to buy our newest and shiniest product.

 

[ensabrenoir]

I don't like the fact that AMD lags so far behind when it comes to fixing glitches with newer games.

SNIP

A lot of this has obviously to do with the fact that many devs are apparently filled with great artists and crappy coders, and even among them, the ones doing the port to PC are second choice.

I hope DX12 brings a solid standard to PC-gaming and devs learn to abide by that standard.

BOOM........truth has been spoken...

 

[claylomax]

Editorial? What does that even mean?

Have you ever read a newspaper?

 

[m1dg3t]

So it's FUD spreading time now? I never had a problem with any ATi/AMD drivers that wasn't easily/quickly resolved, this is over the course of my PC exposure lifetime. Granted i never ran anything fancy, single monitor with 1080p my highest resolution. How are are those Kepler cards fairing against their Tahiti counterparts now?

Keep that spin machine a wheelin'! Gotta keep those review samples a comin' in

 

[librin.so.1]

Have you ever read a newspaper?

Yes. Back in the olden days I used to read those a lot.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Are you people blind or is AMD paying you to write this crap? "If it's not broken, don't fix it" - yeah, but you are forgetting that almost every freaking AAA game in the last half year had poorer performance on AMD cards than on Nvidia cards. Also the Crossfire support is crap. I have 2x R9 290's and can't utilize the second card in The Witcher 3 and CF in GTA 5 is also broken. I am now strongly considering selling those two Radeons and buying a GTX 980 or a 980 Ti if the price won't be murderous.

PS. Sorry for my language usage but I'm not a native speaker.

With this many apologists supporting them, I'm amazed AMD are in such dire straits.

 

[Easy Rhino]

The idea that video card drivers need to be updated monthly is a relatively new phenomenon. It used to be that the driver would only need to be updated to support new video features or fix bugs with displays. Never for video games...

 

[mandis]

Such a slow driver update cycle would do little to inspire confidence in buying the next-generation Radeon product, even if it establishes a performance lead over GeForce.

It seems like you're just trying to scare people into buying nvidia products instead of AMD...

 

[v12dock]

I have been using the 15.4 beta and have experienced zero issues. I'd imagine they are working a proper driver release for the 390X.

 

[qubit]

AMD are fucked. I couldn't possibly recommend any of their products now with such lack of support for premium products. Well, premiumly priced products, anyway.

If this new senior management don't turn the company around asap, we'll probably look at the death of the company within a year. I'm beginning to suspect it's too late already.

Oh but it is. It's marked "editorial" from the moment I posted it.

Indeed, I don't know why people sometimes have such a problem with editorials. They actually take more effort to write as you're not just repeating someone else's news, but are analyzing something. I know from experience.

 

[midnightoil]

Well, another site falls to the NVIDIA PR machine. Previously I'd viewed TP as pretty impartial ... however the rhetoric has changed in btarunr's posts lately. Now we get outright FUD like this.

Pretty sad.