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

erek

erek

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As of today (20/05/2015), it has been over 160 days since AMD released a WHQL-signed Catalyst driver update, in what is a clear sign of decay in the company's after-sales support for the consumer graphics market. Once tuned to a near-monthly release of its Catalyst Software suite, which added optimzations for new games, improved upon support for existing ones; CrossFire multi-GPU support profiles; even if not adding support for new GPUs; AMD slipped into quarterly WHQL release cycle in 2013-14. It now seems to have deviated from even that.


http://www.techpowerup.com/212724/its-now-been-over-160-days-since-a-catalyst-whql-release.html
 
Rizen said:
Who cares about WHQL drivers?
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People who like to complain about things. It's not about how much it actually matters but it just throws more fuel onto the fire.
I saw in another thread about Witcher 3 that Nvidia's frequent driver updates are mostly just for PR, they're placebos and do nothing. But people see the driver updates and feel like they're getting something useful.

This also includes people buying video cards. If I were shopping for a video card, would I go with the Nvidia card that has released 10+ driver updates so far this year, or AMD who has released 3 betas?

I don't care about WHQL, but I do care about AMD's slow schedule. They could never release a WHQL driver for the rest of eternity but as long as they release their beta drivers early and often then I'm satisfied.
Meanwhile AMD plans to release their own Titan series this summer, oh please. Luxury products deserve luxury support.

And, finally, there's this:
And on the flipside, AMD users are repeatedly stating drivers lately have been more stable than they've ever been, while it seems to be the reverse for Nvidia users (anecdotally, as is tradition with these claims)
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Rizen said:
That article is from 12 years ago. Please tell me how that's relevant here?

NVIDIA issued a WHQL driver that literally broke video cards from a bug that caused the fan to shut off. WHQL doesn't really mean a whole lot.
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Hmm, isn't WHQL certification to ensure there's no funny business going on in terms of possible cheats, or is it's mission statement and purpose much broader than that?


"Windows hardware certification (aka Windows Logo Program for Hardware or WHQL) helps you build products that customers trust and want to buy. If you have new or updated drivers, systems, or peripheral hardware that you want available for Windows, then you must certify them. When you certify your products for Windows, you help create high-quality, end-to-end hardware experiences. To learn more about the benefits of certification and see what’s new with the Windows Hardware Certification Kit (HCK), check out the video section below."




(not able to determine much about the specifics of the Automated Tests themselves) ... seems you are relatively right
 
PRIME1 said:
Makes you wonder if AMD is hiding something.
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It would, if there were any existing reasons to be suspicious of AMD.
The only thing they could be hiding is how terribly optimized their drivers are... But we already know that, so they're not very secretive about it.
 
The problem with them not releasing WHQL is it seems very unprofessional looking on the part of AMD. It is a marketing thing that they can no longer even compete against Nvidia with. Remember WHQL doesn't mean much for users that actually frequent these types of forums, but it does mean more to the "regular" non tech users. This is a minor thing that won't even really cost them much, but it gives off a bad impression as to their driver quality (beta all the time and won't even pass WHQL). Then you go over to the Nvidia camp and they release a new WHQL for nearly every AAA game. You see how that might give people this perception that AMD has crap support? They can't even claim they released any drivers in 2015 yet and we are almost half way through. They only have beta (most people see this tag as buggy and won't get tech support help with) drivers. So yes you should care AMD isn't releasing WHQL certified drivers not for the people that frequent forums like these, but for the general users who AMD should want to buy their products.
 
LurkerLito said:
The problem with them not releasing WHQL is it seems very unprofessional looking on the part of AMD. It is a marketing thing that they can no longer even compete against Nvidia with.
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Agreed, I naturally feel disinclined to use Beta drivers in general because I am hoping for some sort of warranty of stability and quality to some degree ... The price for WHQL is only $250 per Operating System family, so maybe the drivers literally aren't passing the WHQL Kit Automated Tests and literally are Beta quality
 
dr.stevil said:
x2

I haven't used an official GPU driver in a long long time. This isn't oftOCP

Beta or bust y0
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After being continuously burned by ati/amd drivers and switching to nvidia to get away, I would be very hesitant to use beta drivers long term. I ran amd/ati from x800xl to 6850 and finally had enough of little issues and switched. Maybe amd's beta drivers now are better than their non beta drivers from back then, I don't know but I'm not eager to find out.
 
dr.stevil said:
x2

I haven't used an official GPU driver in a long long time. This isn't oftOCP

Beta or bust y0
Click to expand...


:p heh, good point... I still like the "idea" or "notion" of a warranty or guarantee for stability and quality since I'm interested in content creation, color grading, and rendering
 
munkle said:
After being continuously burned by ati/amd drivers and switching to nvidia to get away, I would be very hesitant to use beta drivers long term. I ran amd/ati from x800xl to 6850 and finally had enough of little issues and switched. Maybe amd's beta drivers now are better than their non beta drivers from back then, I don't know but I'm not eager to find out.
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There are people who refuse to use beta drivers and as a result they're missing out on significant performance gains across the board.
I've been flat-out telling these people to sell their AMD card immediately and switch to Nvidia.

If anyone out there is still running 14.12: Upgrade your drivers to beta right now, or sell your card. Ebay. Pull it out of your PC, take some pictures, and put it on Ebay.
I hear the GTX 960 has some nice sales this week.
 
Meh, as long as the beta drivers are working fine, which they are in all my latest games on both my 7950 and 295x2, I don't have a problem.
 
LurkerLito said:
The problem with them not releasing WHQL is it seems very unprofessional looking on the part of AMD. It is a marketing thing that they can no longer even compete against Nvidia with. Remember WHQL doesn't mean much for users that actually frequent these types of forums, but it does mean more to the "regular" non tech users. This is a minor thing that won't even really cost them much, but it gives off a bad impression as to their driver quality (beta all the time and won't even pass WHQL). Then you go over to the Nvidia camp and they release a new WHQL for nearly every AAA game. You see how that might give people this perception that AMD has crap support? They can't even claim they released any drivers in 2015 yet and we are almost half way through. They only have beta (most people see this tag as buggy and won't get tech support help with) drivers. So yes you should care AMD isn't releasing WHQL certified drivers not for the people that frequent forums like these, but for the general users who AMD should want to buy their products.
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The counter point to this is how often do non-technical users upgrade their drivers?

As an example we have my brother. He is a big PC gamer, but he doesn't know anything about computers. I help him build his systems and choose his parts. Every time I come home and visit him I take a look at his PC and he frequently hasn't updated drivers in 6+ months.

I highly doubt the average consumer even knows how frequently drivers should be updated. I can understand why some people might find this concerning, and AMD did have a 2.5 month period there without any new drivers after the Catalyst Omega release, but overall they are pretty consistent with beta drivers and the current ones - 15.4.1, released May 8 - are stable.
 
I thought when AMD switched over to their Catalyst OMEGA driver package, that they stated that drivers (WHQL?) would be released once a year, excluding beta drivers. But maybe I am remembering the details wrong.

edit: I was incorrect, this is what [H]ardOCP had said:

Today's announcement introduces the new AMD Catalyst Omega driver. This is a way to bundle up a bunch of features, bug fixes, and performance updates into one package. This will be a once a year release that contains tons of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements on a large scale. Note however, all features implemented in Catalyst Omega will be carried forward with each Beta driver release or WHQL release throughout the year.
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I guess they are going the BETA approach more so than the WHQL route.
 
erek said:
Hmm, isn't WHQL certification to ensure there's no funny business going on in terms of possible cheats, or is it's mission statement and purpose much broader than that?


"Windows hardware certification (aka Windows Logo Program for Hardware or WHQL) helps you build products that customers trust and want to buy. If you have new or updated drivers, systems, or peripheral hardware that you want available for Windows, then you must certify them. When you certify your products for Windows, you help create high-quality, end-to-end hardware experiences. To learn more about the benefits of certification and see what’s new with the Windows Hardware Certification Kit (HCK), check out the video section below."




(not able to determine much about the specifics of the Automated Tests themselves) ... seems you are relatively right
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I believe it's simply a series of tests that certifies the drivers are stable with Windows, I don't think they test for any driver performance hacks or anything like that.
 
munkle said:
After being continuously burned by ati/amd drivers and switching to nvidia to get away, I would be very hesitant to use beta drivers long term. I ran amd/ati from x800xl to 6850 and finally had enough of little issues and switched. Maybe amd's beta drivers now are better than their non beta drivers from back then, I don't know but I'm not eager to find out.
Click to expand...

You swapped around the time they began their turnaround. The beta drivers are indeed leagues better than what you experienced, no doubt about it.
 
Rizen said:
The counter point to this is how often do non-technical users upgrade their drivers?

As an example we have my brother. He is a big PC gamer, but he doesn't know anything about computers. I help him build his systems and choose his parts. Every time I come home and visit him I take a look at his PC and he frequently hasn't updated drivers in 6+ months.

I highly doubt the average consumer even knows how frequently drivers should be updated. I can understand why some people might find this concerning, and AMD did have a 2.5 month period there without any new drivers after the Catalyst Omega release, but overall they are pretty consistent with beta drivers and the current ones - 15.4.1, released May 8 - are stable.
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Yes you are right, the regular users don't upgrade drivers much, but when a regular user does go to download the latest driver and are greeted with this as part of the description:
Download our latest beta driver and get a preview of what we're currently working on.
Note! This driver is provided "AS IS" and under the terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement provided therewithin.
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You can understand how that no matter how stable the drivers may be, would not sit well with them?

Remember this isn't just about them not giving WHQL drivers, this is about them giving an impression they give a dam about their products enough to convince these non-technical users that they want their hardware in their system. TaintedSquirrel kind of sums it up well, you can't really use the last WHQL drivers anymore you have to move to beta. So if the code is stable why not just put one out quarterly. It looks better than nothing in 5 months as it is right now. That would be $500 for just Win 7 + Win 8 certification if that figure WHQL figure is right. If AMD can't generate $500 per quarter for driver certification costs then I am much more worried about them going under than I was just a minute ago.
 
erek said:
simple and cheap, I am wondering if the drivers just aren't passing the WHQL Automated Tests and are literally Beta quality anyhow
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Well there are thousands of people using them without any problems, including myself.
I like to think I put the drivers through the proper paces considering the games I play.

The drivers are TSQL certified. (Stop for a second and appreciate my pun -- it works in so many ways.)
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Well there are thousands of people using them without any problems, including myself.
I like to think I put the drivers through the proper paces considering the games I play.

The drivers are TSQL certified. (Stop for a second and appreciate my pun -- it works in so many ways.)
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:p






(in all honesty I am very much speculating since I don't have any real idea of what is involved with these WHQL Graphics Card Automated Tests ... I thought the whole push for WHQL and Graphics Cards erupted out of the massive amount of cheating scandals 12 or so years ago ... really have no idea why there aren't more AMD WHQL drivers lately)
 
WHQl = microsoft tested, nothing more really, and people have also had issues with whql drivers so im not sure why people are making an issue of this.
 
At this point they might as well wait until the new cards are out to release new certified drivers.
 
erek said:
As of today (20/05/2015), it has been over 160 days since AMD released a WHQL-signed Catalyst driver update, in what is a clear sign of decay in the company's after-sales support for the consumer graphics market. Once tuned to a near-monthly release of its Catalyst Software suite, which added optimzations for new games, improved upon support for existing ones; CrossFire multi-GPU support profiles; even if not adding support for new GPUs; AMD slipped into quarterly WHQL release cycle in 2013-14. It now seems to have deviated from even that.


http://www.techpowerup.com/212724/its-now-been-over-160-days-since-a-catalyst-whql-release.html
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Yeah every night I cry myself to sleep because there are no WHQL drivers. If it goes on any longer I'm sure that people will report this on TV and ask for donations and help because all of us poor AMD videocard users are deprived of this basic human right.....
 
WHQL drivers are very important to hardware vendors aka OEMs and AMD is failing hard. Many notebook and desktop makers do not allow anything but verified WHQL drivers so the poor schmucks who buy AMD based notebooks and desktops will likely be stuck with the drivers that come with their systems for an eternity.
 
Chris_B said:
Ignore the troll. :)
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How is he trolling? Everyone should be concerned when they consider an AMD purchase if there is not regular software updates to back up that hardware. This is amplified even more when you consider they may try to position their new 390XT as some kind of premium product priced at $750+. As a high end video card customer, there's no way in hell I'd pay a premium for AMD products w/out proper software support that has regular cadence. AMD also fails miserably with developer relations and has a track record of failed technologies.
 
Anyone who conciders WHQL important versus frequent beta releases doesnt have enough technical knowledge to offer a rational opinion and should be marginalized on the spot.
 
LurkerLito said:
Remember WHQL doesn't mean much for users that actually frequent these types of forums, but it does mean more to the "regular" non tech users.
Click to expand...

Umm... No. I really doubt WHQL means much to anyone that doesn't know what WHQL is. And I really doubt "regular" non tech users know or care about what it is. Probably the ones it matters to are... well, I can think of two crowds:
1. As noted in the post above by 5150Joker, the people that preinstall drivers on prebuilt machines.
2. IT departments at corporations/businesses.

Which, I don't know how many of number 2 would actually use gaming cards in their machines. Even if they do, then (if my corporation is anything of a benchmark, which considering how large it is it should be) it's kind of a moot point considering that most corporations are very conservative about software updates anyway.

WHQL doesn't mean much in the commercial world by itself, but if the difference between WHQL and non-WHQL is the difference between non-beta and beta, then that means a lot more. Many people don't want beta drivers on their machine. It's easy to be fine with beta when you've never been burned by a beta, but it's harder afterwards.
 
5150Joker said:
How is he trolling? Everyone should be concerned when they consider an AMD purchase if there is not regular software updates to back up that hardware. This is amplified even more when you consider they may try to position their new 390XT as some kind of premium product priced at $750+. As a high end video card customer, there's no way in hell I'd pay a premium for AMD products w/out proper software support that has regular cadence. AMD also fails miserably with developer relations and has a track record of failed technologies.
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You've been around here 9 years, would have thought by now his extremely anti amd agenda would have been spotted by most people.

I agree that amd need to get the thumb out when it comes to support and drivers, they went from putting out a qualified driver every month plus betas and hotfixes to just doing occasional releases and the "when its done" attitude, funny enough that used to be id softwares attitude and they've not been relevant in a decade or more.

Im not sure exactly whats going on at amd but lately its been pathetic, hyping freesync for the best part of 15 months then when it eventually arrives there's no crossfire support, its something that needs addressed badly.
 
AMD releases WHQL Drivers every month, people complain that not enough QA goes into it... they release 2-3 times a year, people complain not enough WHQL Drivers are being released..

There really is no winning.

I personally don't care about WHQL, I ran beta drivers for 7 months without issues, until the next beta driver that I wanted for a new game was needed, and that was already a 1 month old beta driver at the time.

:p
 
Rizen said:
I believe it's simply a series of tests that certifies the drivers are stable with Windows, I don't think they test for any driver performance hacks or anything like that.
Click to expand...

I worked for WHQL many years ago doing modem/NIC certification testing. It doesn't mean a whole lot really. Yes, it does provide a series of tests that will more or less "certify" that basic functionality and stability have been checked. Then MS provides a logo for the IHV's box that says either Compatible With, or Designed For some version of Windows. With subsequent drivers, it's just telling the user that the new version has been re-checked.

It's by no means a completely comprehensive verification of all new features, performance increases, etc. so I wouldn't really see it as a guarantee of much more than "yes, this driver has passed our standard suite of tests".

My personal opinion is it's a way for MS to make a little extra $ off of IHVs, and pressure on the IHVs to not look bad by not having a Windows logo on their box. (while providing at least some small amount of value to the user at the same time as a side effect)

All of this said, I would still prefer to buy a product that had the logo, and use drivers that passed the certs purely as others have stated earlier in this thread because it at least shows some base level of professionalism on the IHV's part, and that at least someone has ensured that basic functions still work. (Except maybe in the case mentioned above about the drivers that got certified that broke the fans.) :D In that case, I can almost guarantee that there was no WHQL test case that outlined whether the fan spun up at the right time. Maybe there is now though. :D
 
One thing i've noticed is that the Windows apps for Hulu and Netflix don't work with non-whql drivers (I presume it assumes you're using a modified driver that would allow dumping the decrypted video stream). Of course they still work in the browser mode, but it is at least a reason for wanting WHQL drivers.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
There really is no winning.
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There's tons of whining, if that makes up for it.

I suspect AMD is more focused on getting the new cards to market to care overly much about year old cards drivers. I'm sure in the next month or two we'll see updates.
 
CrazyRob said:
One thing i've noticed is that the Windows apps for Hulu and Netflix don't work with non-whql drivers (I presume it assumes you're using a modified driver that would allow dumping the decrypted video stream). Of course they still work in the browser mode, but it is at least a reason for wanting WHQL drivers.
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My Netflix app works just fine using beta drivers...
 
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