AMD's Never Settle Driver and Game Bundle

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For those of you that missed it, AMD made a couple "Never Settle" announcements over the weekend. The first being a game bundle that, depending on which card you buy, includes Far Cry 3, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman: Absolution with a bonus 20% off coupon for Medal of Honor Warfighter. The company also announced the "Never Settle" driver (Catalyst 12.11). The gang at Legit Reviews has more info. You can also see coverage at PC Perspective, techPowerUP!, Guru3D and HT4U.
 
Now that amd has reached the maximum performance with their drivers, amd they will
make the 7000 a legacy product :rolleyes:
 
Looks like AMD is getting into the desperate mode after announcing the plan of reducing 20% work force. I guess the 7000 releases may truely becomes legacy products as there is a chance of not having 8000 releases in the future. Well, I don't think AMD is failing because of its gfx department. It failed mostly due to its unprofitable CPU business and global foundry. ATI should never sold itself to the hopeless AMD and too bad the employees have to suffer from the poor executions.
 
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We are mid-way through the beginning of the end for AMD, and driver releases that only support a very limited range of cards are proof that the driver team is down to the bone in terms of manpower and resources.

I own a 6970, and it will be the last AMD card I buy. I don't like the idea of almost no driver support already, and it's never been great for the 6xxx series.

I hope owners of older cards, you know, the ones AMD said are still supported (6xxx & 5xxx series cards) will be getting some more performance sometime soon?
 
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Stimpy88 said:
I hope owners of older cards, you know, the ones AMD said are still supported (6xxx & 5xxx series cards) will be getting some more performance sometime soon?
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I have not read the release notes for the 12.11 driver, but I am pretty sure the 5xxx and 6xxx cards are still supported, they just don't gain any significant performance from the 12.11 driver.
 
Stimpy88 said:
We are mid-way through the beginning of the end for AMD, and driver releases that only support a very limited range of cards are proof that the driver team is down to the bone in terms of manpower and resources.

I own a 6970, and it will be the last AMD card I buy. I don't like the idea of almost no driver support already, and it's never been great for the 6xxx series.

I hope owners of older cards, you know, the ones AMD said are still supported (6xxx & 5xxx series cards) will be getting some more performance sometime soon?
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No offense or anything... but at a certain point, one can't play new games with old cards anyway, so what does it matter anymore?

My old PCI Geforce 4 MX will work with NVIDIA's latest driver, Great! It still can't play BF3.
 
 
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Amd is moving in the right direction and this all sounds fine and dandy, hell I would even be interested if I was shopping for a GPU however I shop for GPU's. There is no mention of crossfire and how it works. I would love to see comparisons between the 12.8 vs 12.11 Never settle drivers in the same games with crossfire setups/crossfire + eyefinity setups. The complete lack of any mention to this leads me to believe that they couldn't fix or squeeze any more juice out of multi card setups yet and if so Meh, for me at least.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Amd is moving in the right direction and this all sounds fine and dandy, hell I would even be interested if I was shopping for a GPU however I shop for GPU's. There is no mention of crossfire and how it works. I would love to see comparisons between the 12.8 vs 12.11 Never settle drivers in the same games with crossfire setups/crossfire + eyefinity setups. The complete lack of any mention to this leads me to believe that they couldn't fix or squeeze any more juice out of multi card setups yet and if so Meh, for me at least.
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do you want one?
list games/resolutions you want and ill deliver.
 
Bosom said:
No offense or anything... but at a certain point, one can't play new games with old cards anyway, so what does it matter anymore?

My old PCI Geforce 4 MX will work with NVIDIA's latest driver, Great! It still can't play BF3.
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We're not really on the same planet with our graphics cards, my 6970 is hardly the fossil your anchient Geforce 4mx is. Dont put words in my mouth, but i do actually expect more from AMD. But I certanly don't expect the earth from them either.

It was not more than 5 months ago that AMD commited to performance updates for the 5xxx, 6xxx and 7xxx series cards. This will only be the 2nd official driver release in that time, so expectations maybe running a little high.

I will not buy a $400 - $800 card from AMD if all it is going to get is 1 year worth of support, which may only be 3 or 4 driver versions. And we all know how long it seems to take AMD to fix driver issues with it's top end cards. That means that buying a new card from AMD next year may mean that problems with bugs and performance may never be fixed in 1 year. I will not spend $$$ on top end cards to get a possible fix or not.
 
risqu3 said:
do you want one?
list games/resolutions you want and ill deliver.
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That would be amazing!

5760x1080 or 3240x1920 -Eyefinity Res
2560x1600

Games;

Skyrim
Battlefield 3
Crysis 2
Mass Effect 3

Any one (hardware taxing) racing game you may have would be nice too
 
So broke they have to name drivers to make the performance increase appealing... what is the world coming to?
 
Stimpy88 said:
I will not spend $$$ on top end cards to get a possible fix or not.
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You seem to imply that there is some other manufacturer you could go to to get your requirements filled. There is not.
 
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It was hyperbole.. I did have a geforce 4 mx probably 10 years ago.

So you have a 6970. When they stop supporting 6970, the 9XXX series will likely be out. You won't be playing any new games on a 6970 then.. because it would not run them well. I would take a wild guess that it will be more than 2 years before the 6xxx series is a legacy product...

6970 released Dec 2010. It's been almost 2 years. I doubt you are going to get driver releases on any card that measurably increase performance on a last generation card. Just because they are still supporting it with driver releases does not mean they can wring more performance out of an old architecture, and if they could, it would be an unexpected bonus....

I would also like to see where AMD promised performance increases with 5xxx and 6xxx series cards.... can you point me to that press release? I guess I must have missed it..

Also, how would you consider what I said putting words in your mouth?

Stimpy88 said:
We're not really on the same planet with our graphics cards, my 6970 is hardly the fossil your anchient Geforce 4mx is. Dont put words in my mouth, but i do actually expect more from AMD. But I certanly don't expect the earth from them either.

It was not more than 5 months ago that AMD commited to performance updates for the 5xxx, 6xxx and 7xxx series cards. This will only be the 2nd official driver release in that time, so expectations maybe running a little high.

I will not buy a $400 - $800 card from AMD if all it is going to get is 1 year worth of support, which may only be 3 or 4 driver versions. And we all know how long it seems to take AMD to fix driver issues with it's top end cards. That means that buying a new card from AMD next year may mean that problems with bugs and performance may never be fixed in 1 year. I will not spend $$$ on top end cards to get a possible fix or not.
Click to expand...
 
I think all the doomsday trolls are seeing connections where there aren't any. They couldn't get these results with 'generic optimizations', so the only choice is something architecture specific. Of course they're not going to spend time and money optimizing the PREVIOUS architecture.

"Why now?" is a more interesting question. It could be anything from 'someone just recently got an idea' to 'our GCN stuff is going into the next gen consoles, guess who's paying for this'.
 
All the video cards have dropped in price for both AMD and Nvidia as much as 40%. It makes me come to one conclusion and that is the next gen cards are on the way and from what I have heard they should arrive before Christmas of this year. They should provide us with a performance jump that we have not seen since the 9700 was released. I am happy that I skipped the current generation of video cards but I will be buying what is coming.
 
My interpretation of the story is that AMD is now placing a higher priority on the gpu drivers. They already have great hardware, so the better opportunity for them is on the software side. It would be great to see AMD match and surpass Nvidia in terms of driver quality going forward (though that might be wishful thinking).
 
jmilcher said:
So broke they have to name drivers to make the performance increase appealing... what is the world coming to?
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Butthurt much?

biggles said:
It would be great to see AMD match and surpass Nvidia in terms of driver quality going forward (though that might be wishful thinking)
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Performance wise, they already did with 12.7, till now, let alone 12.11...

But the stability is still in favor of Nvidia.
 
psyside said:
Butthurt much?



Performance wise, they already did with 12.7, till now, let alone 12.11...

But the stability is still in favor of Nvidia.
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Right, I meant software stability, lack of bugs, games not crashing, etc. As an AMD fan I would like to see them improve in this regard.
 
Any gamer wants amd to succeed. Otherwise we will have a monopoly. Not a good thing.
 
I just bought a 7870 locally, at Frys, and I was wondering if there is a way to get this bundle or is it just through the list of retailers they have posted online ?
 
the 12.11 drivers rock.

I don't have any issues with stability. in Battlefield 3, or Supreme commander 2, civilzation V, Skyrim, only games i have played thus far under them.

7870 crossfire, loving the performance boost. 5760x1080 i gained 15-20% in battlefield 3.

One another note i bought a xfx 7950 from new egg to replace the girl friends old 6870, and got the 4 game promo. Thanks Amd.
 
~ever~ said:
I just bought a 7870 locally, at Frys, and I was wondering if there is a way to get this bundle or is it just through the list of retailers they have posted online ?
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I ordered a xfx 7870 from new egg which had the promo so i will let ya know when it gets here monday.
 
~ever~ said:
I just bought a 7870 locally, at Frys, and I was wondering if there is a way to get this bundle or is it just through the list of retailers they have posted online ?
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It's only available through participating retailers. The ASUS 7970 Matrix i received from Newegg came with a large voucher card with the code to redeem on the front.
 
well i got my card and checked the xfxforce site and its listed i should have gotten the farcry 3 based on whats on the site.
 
Anyone knows the list of European retailers that will have this great offer?
 
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Ok just finished a chat with the newegg rep and they can't find the bundle. if you dig into the site under the video cards there is a listing there but its only for the 7900 cards.
http://promotions.newegg.com/VGA/12-4173/index.html
the xfx site lists the 7800 series cards and bundles farcry 3 with it.
http://xfxforce.com/en-us/NewsAndReviews/News.aspx?ID=119969
and finally on amd's page for the never settle program newegg is now greyed out. http://blogs.amd.com/play/this-holiday-never-settle/
seem a bit shady to me! hope it gets straightened out soon.
 
Ok just finished a chat with the newegg rep and they can't find the bundle. if you dig into the site under the video cards there is a listing there but its only for the 7900 cards.
http://promotions.newegg.com/VGA/12-4173/index.html
the xfx site lists the 7800 series cards and bundles farcry 3 with it.
http://xfxforce.com/en-us/NewsAndRev...aspx?ID=119969
and finally on amd's page for the never settle program newegg is now greyed out. http://blogs.amd.com/play/this-holiday-never-settle/
seem a bit shady to me! hope it gets straightened out soon.
__________________
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for what it is worth i ordered at xfx 7950 from newegg like 4 days ago, it came in the mail. It had the coupon. Its a 4:1 coupon, and its 3 free games, 2 of which are not released yet. The 4 in 1 part applies to medal of honor which gives you like 20% from the limited edition. So its not a free game. Its is like a 14$ saving on that game.
 
cobaltdog said:
Ok just finished a chat with the newegg rep and they can't find the bundle. if you dig into the site under the video cards there is a listing there but its only for the 7900 cards.
http://promotions.newegg.com/VGA/12-4173/index.html
the xfx site lists the 7800 series cards and bundles farcry 3 with it.
http://xfxforce.com/en-us/NewsAndReviews/News.aspx?ID=119969
and finally on amd's page for the never settle program newegg is now greyed out. http://blogs.amd.com/play/this-holiday-never-settle/
seem a bit shady to me! hope it gets straightened out soon.
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The 3 free games plus 20% off MoH is 7900 series specific. See the AMD blog post - there is a big table highlighting the matrix of what deals are applicable to what card. Newegg are only running the 7900 series deal at the moment and its not greyed out - as it is a hyperlink it will appear in the browser as a different colour if you have been to the page already. The blog also separately lists who is running the 7770/7800 deals separately.

Also note that it is the first deal highlight banner on the Newegg Video Cards landing page - "Free Games!".
 
Who should I contact about this..I tried to peel off the sticker and it just ripped off over half the code. AMD hasn't responded in a week, should I maybe email newegg?
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New Egg cannot help you I don't think. Did you try calling Amd support? They will probably ask you for the upc code # and provide you the code seeing as your is unreadable. My coupon wasn't a sticker, it was a grey scratch off. I used my trusty penny and all is good.

Playing sleeping dogs now, while i wait for the other 2 games to be released. Don't think i am going to use the coupon for Medal of Honor warfighter, its rather similar to Battlefield 3 which i already own.
 
ebduncan said:
New Egg cannot help you I don't think. Did you try calling Amd support? They will probably ask you for the upc code # and provide you the code seeing as your is unreadable. My coupon wasn't a sticker, it was a grey scratch off. I used my trusty penny and all is good.

Playing sleeping dogs now, while i wait for the other 2 games to be released. Don't think i am going to use the coupon for Medal of Honor warfighter, its rather similar to Battlefield 3 which i already own.
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Yeah so was mine, but I tried it with my nail and it wouldn't come off..and of course I ripped the last letter off now so I can't see it. Damnit!
 
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