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AMD Ending monthly Catalyst WHQL updates

T

Teenyman45

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Nov 29, 2010
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I saw this bit of news on techreport, who pulled it from http://benchmark3d.com/no-more-monthly-amd-catalyst-whql-drivers.

About every other month the releases would generally be quite useful. But, considering that AMD is already active in posting hotfixes (rather than having it set up properly prior to release, or fixing crossfire, or fixing eyefinity, or especially crossfired eyefinity), it seems like the company is actively trying to shove people into buying Nvidia gpus.

EDIT:
Steve posted about the end monthlies two minutes before me in the AMD sub-forum, so this thread can die.
 
This doesn't mean drivers are going to be released less often, it just means they won't be WHQL certified. Maybe you should actually read the articles that you link to.

WHQL certification is a waste of time these days, causing unnecessary delays. By the time a driver is actually certified, there will always 3 or 4 new hotfix/beta/preview drivers that people should be using instead anyway.
 
Yeah, it actually sounds like there will be more releases in the form of hotfixes.
 
Since people insist on keeping this thread active...

GotNoRice said:
This doesn't mean drivers are going to be released less often, it just means they won't be WHQL certified. Maybe you should actually read the articles that you link to.

WHQL certification is a waste of time these days, causing unnecessary delays. By the time a driver is actually certified, there will always 3 or 4 new hotfix/beta/preview drivers that people should be using instead anyway.
Click to expand...

I did read the article. The third sentence in my initial post began "But, considering that AMD is already active in posting hotfixes" shows I am aware yet still approve of slacking off on certified driver packages to rely more on hotfixes without providing any sort of guarantee about turnaround time in this new hotfix centric focus. Piled on hotfixes are not as good, and in my experience, not as stable as certified drivers. Hotfixes are good for little unexpected issues or serious emergencies to a single game/program/situation that was somehow missed.

This looks to me like a precursor to cutting back on driver staff as there will no longer be any pressure to have something new and better each month. AMD is just now getting around to trifire eyefinity and the vanishing overdrive panel in 12.6 beta.

I have been stuck with release drivers because updating to 12.3 or 12.4 on the rare times that it worked and recognized crossfire would kill the overdrive tab if not the entire ability to access CCC. No overdrive/ CCC meant no powertune slider which meant no overclocking. Yes, I can now finally access powertune through Trixx or Afterburner and that is part of why I will be doing a clean install following a drive reformatting.

Having no formal release schedule will make AMD even more lazy about fixing core functionality provided some random hotfixes are churned out.

As to the usefulness of certification itself, WHQL is as useful as XMP. The certification engenders an expectation that whatever is certified will work at the listed specs or, in this case, that the drivers will run. Less frequent certification certainly seems like less attention is going to be paid to the matter.
 
hopefully this will mean amd can get its act together and start releasing fixes as their needed rather than taking forever
 
cthulhuiscool said:
hopefully this will mean amd can get its act together and start releasing fixes as their needed rather than taking forever
Click to expand...

One can always hope, but I still take it as a sign that AMD is going to cutback on driver support because they will no longer need to have to show some effort each month. Part of the reason some teachers assign homework is to have concrete proof the students are regularly studying, and implementing that learning, outside of class. No monthly WHQL's, to me, means less proof that AMD is working on making their otherwise stellar hardware actually usable.
 
Teenyman45 said:
One can always hope, but I still take it as a sign that AMD is going to cutback on driver support because they will no longer need to have to show some effort each month.
Click to expand...
You make it sound like the driver staff is just sitting around, and once a month an alarm goes off and they groan, "ugh, time to release a new driver". In reality, they already release multiple stable driver releases per month - just not WHQL certified.

Teenyman45 said:
As to the usefulness of certification itself, WHQL is as useful as XMP. The certification engenders an expectation that whatever is certified will work at the listed specs or, in this case, that the drivers will run. Less frequent certification certainly seems like less attention is going to be paid to the matter.
Click to expand...

If you want to wait 2-3 weeks for the WHQL team to rubber-stamp the same beta driver everyone else is already using, then feel free. I for one am glad that we will be getting relevant driver releases promptly that make sure new games run as expected.
 
I hope this isn't true. I've been having a lot of problems with my secondary rig and rigs of a couple friends of mine that I built using a 7870 and a 7970. The GTX670 wasn't out yet or I would of used that instead, and the GTX680 was nowhere in stock.
 
Jesus you people bitch about everything. Let me repost what I wrote in the other thread discussing this.

I like how people are complaining about this, yet this is exactly what NVIDIA does. They release a WHQL certified driver every few months, with betas released in between. Why would you fault AMD for doing the same thing? If anything, it means you will be getting more stable releases, rather than AMD trying to rush out a driver every month to meet an arbitrary schedule that they imposed on themselves.

This is a good thing by all accounts.
Click to expand...
 
GotNoRice said:
You make it sound like the driver staff is just sitting around, and once a month an alarm goes off and they groan, "ugh, time to release a new driver". In reality, they already release multiple stable driver releases per month - just not WHQL certified.
Click to expand...

I have already typed several times an acknowledgment that the driver team is working and I rapidly edited the initial post to reference Steve's thread... which is about the 12.6 beta. But otherwise, yeah, the constant need to have something certifiable and released each month does encourage a bit more effort to hold off some bad press. My experience with 10.X betas and 11.X betas has shown the certified drivers tended to be more stable than the beta drivers and more likely to install without corruption (12.3 and 12.4 being notable exceptions).
 
Teenyman45 said:
One can always hope, but I still take it as a sign that AMD is going to cutback on driver support because they will no longer need to have to show some effort each month. Part of the reason some teachers assign homework is to have concrete proof the students are regularly studying, and implementing that learning, outside of class. No monthly WHQL's, to me, means less proof that AMD is working on making their otherwise stellar hardware actually usable.
Click to expand...

didn't NVIDIA go ages with out certified drivers some years back, but always had some new ones out, they didnt stop making drivers....

I think your completely wrong, AMD now doesnt need to waste time with something that isnt useful anymore , thus less hoop's to go through thus more releases.
 
Teenyman45 said:
I have already typed several times an acknowledgment that the driver team is working and I rapidly edited the initial post to reference Steve's thread... which is about the 12.6 beta. But otherwise, yeah, the constant need to have something certifiable and released each month does encourage a bit more effort to hold off some bad press. My experience with 10.X betas and 11.X betas has shown the certified drivers tended to be more stable than the beta drivers and more likely to install without corruption (12.3 and 12.4 being notable exceptions).
Click to expand...

Theres a 12.6 beta??
NM found it.
Gonna try it out, sure hope its stable.
 
I think having the 2 teams merge as 1 focussed team could be a good idea since they aren't getting the job done as effectively as they should with the current method. It'll be interesting to see how things turn out in the next few months.
 
So the red team is going to end their monthly cycle and release drivers over a longer period. Hopefully this new flow will ease the cramping of its users and reduce the bloat in the drivers.
 
Dave Baumann said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5880/amd-discontinues-monthly-driver-updates-releases-catalyst-126-beta

It is actually worthwhile reading the AnandTech article regarding this as he hits all he salient points regarding why this has happened. Personally I have long since been a proponent to dropping the monthly WHQL's because with their qual cycles the releases get too muddled with the Beta drops that are required.

Doing this speaks nothing of lack of resource (far from it in fact, software continues to expand) or anything like that, it is about improving quality overall whilst still being as dynamic as we can with releases for important updates (i.e. game updates, new GPU's, etc., etc).

With regards to the form, that is just the public face of personnel and process changes that have gone in to ensuring that we hear correct feedback for issues such that we can reproduce them and get them resolved. Not many people knew about the feedback form before and we are actively publishings it now in order to encourage issue reporting so that we stand a better chance of resolving them.
Click to expand...
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost.php?p=1336939866&postcount=15
 
i still think they are going to come out with patches quite often
 
I hope this makes their drivers better. The only reason I sold my 6850 and got a gtx570 was that I always had one problem or another with ati drivers, and each update fixed a problem but introduced another.
 
PRIME1 said:
So the red team is going to end their monthly cycle and release drivers over a longer period. Hopefully this new flow will ease the cramping of its users and reduce the bloat in the drivers.
Click to expand...

Oh hey, a menstruation joke. Now do one for nvidia!
 
PRIME1 said:
So the red team is going to end their monthly cycle and release drivers over a longer period. Hopefully this new flow will ease the cramping of its users and reduce the bloat in the drivers.
Click to expand...

Very witty man. :)
 
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