Introducing the new AMD Catalyst Omega Driver @ [H]

LordEC911 said:
That's not true. Nvidia is worse, looking back at all the cases.
The lowend needs to be rebranded because neither are making 64bit GPUs anymore thanks to APUs.
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Sorry to break it to you but there are tons of rebrands for AMD too. Again most of their current line up is just rebrands. I guess I could spend an hour going through and listing every one for both companies but to act like only Nvidia does that a lot is nonsense.
 
Ticker305 said:
I'm aware of this, but that implies the HD7000 series won't be included in this update. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the gtx680 get the same features like DSR as the rebranded gtx770?

gtx680 = gtx770
R9 280x/280 = hd7970/7950

Am I offbase with my thought process here, is there some kind of hardware difference with the AMD rebrands that I'm not aware of that prevents these features to be included in the older 7000 series? are they both not the same GCN architecture.
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It's possible. GCN has had a few tweaks since the 7k line. IIRC the 7790 (r7 260) was the first tweak and the 290/x were in that rev of tweak. The 285 is the latest tweak and has the best support for VSR. It seems likely to me that given the 260 mention it may well be a GCN rev requirement. That said, we can only wait and see.
 
Well that update was garbage for me. First, uninstalling my existing driver via add/remove left me at a black screen with no indication that the uninstall completed. I waited a good half hour then hard rebooted. Installed the omega driver, rebooted. It looks as though the drivers are installed but Catalyst Control center says they aren't and fails to open... I knew this was going to be a pain in the ass :eek:
 
Ticker305 said:
I'm aware of this, but that implies the HD7000 series won't be included in this update. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the gtx680 get the same features like DSR as the rebranded gtx770?

gtx680 = gtx770
R9 280x/280 = hd7970/7950

Am I offbase with my thought process here, is there some kind of hardware difference with the AMD rebrands that I'm not aware of that prevents these features to be included in the older 7000 series? are they both not the same GCN architecture.
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tentative amd rebrand list:

r9 280x < hd 7970
r9 280 < hd 7950
r9 270/x < hd 7870
r7 265 < hd 7850
r7 260x < hd 7790
r7 250x < hd 7770
r7 250e < hd 7750
r7 250 < hd 8670
r7 240 < hd 8650

the r7 260 doesn't have an exact hd series counterpart, but it is still an r7 260x/hd 7790 with some disabled cores.

the r9 285 is silicon newer than the hawaii chips.
 
Did anybody else think of the old Omega Drivers that were custom made ages ago for the old 9800 series and such cards? I remember the old Omega drivers for the ati, NVidia, and 3DFX cards.

Talk about a name rip off.

Omega Drivers
 
MRAB54 said:
Well that update was garbage for me. First, uninstalling my existing driver via add/remove left me at a black screen with no indication that the uninstall completed. I waited a good half hour then hard rebooted. Installed the omega driver, rebooted. It looks as though the drivers are installed but Catalyst Control center says they aren't and fails to open... I knew this was going to be a pain in the ass :eek:
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Make sure you installed the right ones for your OS..
 
The drivers do some weird stuff if you install the wrong one for your OS. Oddly enough it worked fine for me. I didn't have a ton of time to test it but it seemed to work fine. Has anyone tried the VSR (I think that's what it's called). I clicked on it and I didn't notice any difference. Or maybe there was and it wasn't as noticeable.

The crew still has stuttering issues. Hope they fix this.
 
So the current high end card, the R9 280x, is the same card as the 7970 I have in my iRacing rig that I bought over a year ago?

WTF!

rennyf77 said:
tentative amd rebrand list:

r9 280x < hd 7970
r9 280 < hd 7950
r9 270/x < hd 7870
r7 265 < hd 7850
r7 260x < hd 7790
r7 250x < hd 7770
r7 250e < hd 7750
r7 250 < hd 8670
r7 240 < hd 8650

the r7 260 doesn't have an exact hd series counterpart, but it is still an r7 260x/hd 7790 with some disabled cores.

the r9 285 is silicon newer than the hawaii chips.
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TechLarry said:
So the current high end card, the R9 280x, is the same card as the 7970 I have in my iRacing rig that I bought over a year ago?

WTF!
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No, the current high end cards are:
295x2
290x
290

The 285 is kinda in between a 280(7950) and 280x(7970), but is a newer revision of GCN
than 290 and 290x.
 
Eyefinity mixed resolution upscaling is broken on my 6970 with these drivers. The center monitor has 3 inch black bars on each side.
It was fine on the 13.12 drivers. I'm using two 1680x1050 side monitors and a 1920x1080 center monitor.
 
PLP Eyefinity may be what finally convinces me to ditch the Titan and move to AMD.

Has anyone tested it yet? How well does it work?

I'd imagine a single 285 wouldn't be powerful enough for most gaming 4960x1600, or am I wrong?

Also, is VSR/DSR actually useful or just a gimmick?

I'd imagine the benefits would be similar to old school supersampling AA, but I'd also be concerned that some text would become small and unreadable.

In the end, you'd need a lot more GPU horsepower, while still gaming at the same resolution, no?
 
Brent_Justice said:
Question: In regards to PLP Eyefinity, which GPUs support this, is it only R9 285 and if so, will there be support on other GPUs in the future?
RH: This is a hardware-level capability, and is therefore limited to the R9 285 at this time.
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I wish they had provided more information regarding support for this in future Tonga based products.

the R9 285 may be the most modern released AMD GPU, but it isn't a particularly high end model.

PLP support is AWESOME if it works properly (would love to see a review of this!) but I would hate to have to crossfire 4 of these to get reasonable performance at 4960x1600 in PLP.

If next gen Tonga-based GPU's support PLP on higher end models, I think I know exactly what is replacing the Titan.

I have long said that whatever company comes out with PLP support, they will be my next upgrade, and I WANT to put my money where my mouth is, but going to a R9 285 from a Titan isn't exactly an upgrade :p
 
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Give them a chance to release the new cards. I'm quite sure that we will hear something around CES since that is when Nvidia is supposed to roll out the 960.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
Make sure you installed the right ones for your OS..
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It turns out the problem was due to a Windows patch Tuesday update:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=454&threadid=181956

Strangely that url is down right now. But what solved my problem was to uninstall the KB3004394 Windows update. Googling KB3004394 shows other issues related to certificate signing and other software. It sounds like Windows thought that the video driver was not properly signed so it would not use it. Poor timing but probably a lesson learned to not release a driver on patch Tuesday.
 
I've had my GA-890GPA-UD3H for almost 5 years and this is the first time the AMD AHCI drivers would install w/o blue screening Windows (both 7 and 8.1). Had to run the MS ones.

So far so good
 
The PLP Support in the R9 285 has me looking at GPU's for the first time since February 2013 when I picked up my Titan.

(it is amazing it has lasted so long. I remember being on a 6 month GPU upgrade schedule in the past)

1.) Has anyone found any tests of the PLP feature yet? I've done some googling, but come up empty.

2.) The R9 285 obviously isn't all that high end. I've been looking for R9 285 crossfire reviews to see how it stacks up in crossfire when compared to my Titan, but also come up short. Is anyone aware of any good R9 285 crossfire reviews?
 
Zarathustra[H];1041288299 said:
The PLP Support in the R9 285 has me looking at GPU's for the first time since February 2013 when I picked up my Titan.

(it is amazing it has lasted so long. I remember being on a 6 month GPU upgrade schedule in the past)

1.) Has anyone found any tests of the PLP feature yet? I've done some googling, but come up empty.

2.) The R9 285 obviously isn't all that high end. I've been looking for R9 285 crossfire reviews to see how it stacks up in crossfire when compared to my Titan, but also come up short. Is anyone aware of any good R9 285 crossfire reviews?
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there is the tweak town review
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/66...l-x-in-crossfire-video-card-review/index.html

overall 285's in crossfire is a tad faster than a Titan. Not sure if replacing your titan with two 285's is ideal for PLP.

I'd probably wait to see the 2015 AMD cards as they will also likely support PLP out of the box. There is also a chance that all (GCN) cards will support PLP soon via driver in Jan.
 
ebduncan said:
there is the tweak town review
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/66...l-x-in-crossfire-video-card-review/index.html

overall 285's in crossfire is a tad faster than a Titan. Not sure if replacing your titan with two 285's is ideal for PLP.

I'd probably wait to see the 2015 AMD cards as they will also likely support PLP out of the box.
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Yeah, I am thinking the same.

ebduncan said:
There is also a chance that all (GCN) cards will support PLP soon via driver in Jan.
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Seems unlikely since the reason the 285 supports it and the others don't is due to hardware, specifically a new scaler that is part of the Tonga architecture. If they do, it would likely have to be in software, and probably a bit slower.
 
I just noticed something after update to this driver. When in gpuz, I no longer have vrm1&2 temps. Did this setting go away with the driver?
 
Zarathustra[H];1041288299 said:
The PLP Support in the R9 285 has me looking at GPU's for the first time since February 2013 when I picked up my Titan.

(it is amazing it has lasted so long. I remember being on a 6 month GPU upgrade schedule in the past)

1.) Has anyone found any tests of the PLP feature yet? I've done some googling, but come up empty.

2.) The R9 285 obviously isn't all that high end. I've been looking for R9 285 crossfire reviews to see how it stacks up in crossfire when compared to my Titan, but also come up short. Is anyone aware of any good R9 285 crossfire reviews?
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Wait wait wait wait

WAIT

AMD supports PLP?

Edit: eyefinity I mean.
 
I wish they'd come up with a chart to show what GPU series support what features. Due to what I'm sure is marketing continuity: they never specifically mention the HD7 series anymore. I have a 7870 and am often left cold, wondering if they just aren't supporting it anymore or if the 270/270x have meaningful hardware revisions and not just clock speed changes.

Zarathustra[H];1041288299 said:
The PLP Support in the R9 285 has me looking at GPU's for the first time since February 2013 when I picked up my Titan.

(it is amazing it has lasted so long. I remember being on a 6 month GPU upgrade schedule in the past)
Click to expand...

I would certainly expect a $900 GPU to last at least two years ;)
 
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chameleoneel said:
I wish they'd come up with a chart to show what GPU series support what features. Due to what I'm sure is marketing continuity: they never specifically mention the HD7 series anymore. I have a 7870 and am often left cold, wondering if they just aren't supporting it anymore or if the 270/270 have meaningful hardware revisions and not just clock speed changes.



I would certainly expect a $900 GPU to last at least two years ;)
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I totally agree with you. I also have 'last-gen' and never know what to expect anymore.
 
Wow, Just have to come here and say, thank you amd. You got me almost (EDIT) 3k early. I was planing on getting a 4k tv to game on next year when gta 5 comes out. But now my 60 inch plasma is now (EDIT) 3k. Looking damn good I might say, my blu ray movie collection looks spectacular. Just preview galaxy guardians I was shocked, blown even. Talk about desktop real estate, looking for a program so I can browse 4 or 5 pages side by side. Web browsing is great text could be sharper, but messing with settings. Gaming is a brand new experience. I sit about 1.5 feet away from my 60in monitor. (EDIT) 3k immersion is amazing, next up 4k come jan/ feb with another driver update. Then hopefully 5k with those 390x.

But, hopefully they keep it updated. so crossfire support and game support. Because I might end up upgrading to a 4k tv anyway, unless they stop me with 5k support. (WE AS HUMANS ARE GREEDY)

Thanks again AMD and this Front page post from HardOCP
 
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Swift_OwL said:
Wow, Just have to come here and say, thank you amd. You got me 4k early. I was planing on getting a 4k tv to game on next year when gta 5 comes out. But now my 60 inch plasma is now 4k. Looking damn good I might say, my blu ray movie collection looks spectacular. Just preview galaxy guardians I was shocked, blown even. Talk about desktop real estate, looking for a program so I can browse 4 or 5 pages side by side. Web browsing is great text could be sharper, but messing with settings. Gaming is a brand new experience. I sit about 1.5 feet away from my 60in monitor. 4k immersion is amazing, next up 5k.

But, hopefully they keep it updated. so crossfire support and game support. Because I might end up upgrading to a 4k tv anyway, unless they stop me with 5k support. (WE AS HUMANS ARE GREEDY)

Thanks again AMD and this Front page post from HardOCP
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overreacting?:confused:

DSR/VSR can't be really compared to a native 4K display..
 
Nope no over reaction. I think because I sit as close to my 60 inch plasma as most people would their 21 inch monitor. You notice a huge difference sitting this close. Still I'm getting a 4k because most likely their tech will be able to make it do 8k when the 390x comes out. Wishful thinking on my part.

Loving this free tech I got in the form of a driver update. Tested 5 games so far. Borderlands looked amazing. Even a old game like dawn of war 2 looked alot better.

Let me screenshot.


I have a ton of room now. Ever since I left my 800 dollar 28 inch monitor back in 2006, dont ever see myself going back to anything close to that size as a pc monitor. Id take a big crappy 1080p tv over a 1440p monitor anyday.
 
Swift_OwL said:
Wow, Just have to come here and say, thank you amd. You got me 4k early. I was planing on getting a 4k tv to game on next year when gta 5 comes out. But now my 60 inch plasma is now 4k. Looking damn good I might say, my blu ray movie collection looks spectacular. Just preview galaxy guardians I was shocked, blown even. Talk about desktop real estate, looking for a program so I can browse 4 or 5 pages side by side. Web browsing is great text could be sharper, but messing with settings. Gaming is a brand new experience. I sit about 1.5 feet away from my 60in monitor. 4k immersion is amazing, next up 5k.

But, hopefully they keep it updated. so crossfire support and game support. Because I might end up upgrading to a 4k tv anyway, unless they stop me with 5k support. (WE AS HUMANS ARE GREEDY)

Thanks again AMD and this Front page post from HardOCP
Click to expand...


hate to bust your bubble, but the drivers don't support 4k vsr yet unless you have a 285. The computer in your sig with the 290's can only do up to 3200x1800 which isn't 4k. 4k is 3840 x 2160.

and stay away from 4k tv's they only have a refresh rate of 30hz.
 
Swift_OwL said:
Nope no over reaction. I think because I sit as close to my 60 inch plasma as most people would their 21 inch monitor. You notice a huge difference sitting this close. Still I'm getting a 4k because most likely their tech will be able to make it do 8k when the 390x comes out. Wishful thinking on my part.

Loving this free tech I got in the form of a driver update. Tested 5 games so far. Borderlands looked amazing. Even a old game like dawn of war 2 looked alot better.

Let me screenshot.


I have a ton of room now. Ever since I left my 800 dollar 28 inch monitor back in 2006, dont ever see myself going back to anything close to that size as a pc monitor. Id take a big crappy 1080p tv over a 1440p monitor anyday.
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You may have more "space" and you may get a slightly better image...but the driver's can't add physical pixels or divide the pixels into smaller units of pixels. The added resolution of a monitor that supports 4k natively is going to look better than what you have, especially if your sitting THAT close to your monitor.

The placebo effect is strong in this one.
 
USMCGrunt said:
You may have more "space" and you may get a slightly better image...but the driver's can't add physical pixels or divide the pixels into smaller units of pixels. The added resolution of a monitor that supports 4k natively is going to look better than what you have, especially if your sitting THAT close to your monitor.

The placebo effect is strong in this one.
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Yeah, I've been wondering about that one.

VSR can't do magic. It's possible they have improved the downscaling beyond what previously was used, but I still can't imagine it looks that great.

Imagine taking a screenshot at 2560x1600, (or 2560x1440) and then scaling it down to 1920x1200 (or 1920x1080) and viewing it on the lower res monitor.

Text is going to be less clear, and I can't imagine graphics would look any better either.

This whole VSR thing just doesn't make much sense to me. It just seem slike a great way to require much more GPU power to render on a lower res monitor without much benefit...

The only area I see it helping is with AA. It would be much like old school supersampling AA.

Unless -that is - I am missing something.
 
KazeoHin said:
Wait wait wait wait

WAIT

AMD supports PLP?

Edit: eyefinity I mean.
Click to expand...


Yes. Read thread.

The Omega drivers introduce mixed resolution Eyefinity and (thus far on the R9 285 only) mixed orientation Eyefinity.

So, if you have a R9 285 (or presumably multiple in crossfire, as it isn't fast enough for most Eyefinity resolutions on its own) you can now do PLP Eyefinity natively.

That being said, it has been mentioned time and time again that it works on the R9 285, but I haven't seen anyone test it yet, probably because most of us with PLP setups have other GPU's, as the 285 isn't fast enough for our resolutions.

We are all (at least all of us PLP fans) hoping that the native PLP ability of the R9 285 carries over to the next gen 3xx video cards.

If it does, my Titan is going on eBay and I am buying one (or more) Radeon 3xx cards on launch day, and never looking back.
 
Can anyone get the advanced video options to work? I'm using Media Player Classic and don't notice a difference, wondering if it's working or not.
 
New drivers feel smoother on R9 270X in FPS like BF4 and is solid without any quirks. Getting better k/d ratio as a result. Upgrading the others next.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041294283 said:
Yeah, I've been wondering about that one.

VSR can't do magic. It's possible they have improved the downscaling beyond what previously was used, but I still can't imagine it looks that great.

Imagine taking a screenshot at 2560x1600, (or 2560x1440) and then scaling it down to 1920x1200 (or 1920x1080) and viewing it on the lower res monitor.

Text is going to be less clear, and I can't imagine graphics would look any better either.

This whole VSR thing just doesn't make much sense to me. It just seem slike a great way to require much more GPU power to render on a lower res monitor without much benefit...

The only area I see it helping is with AA. It would be much like old school supersampling AA.

Unless -that is - I am missing something.
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Didn't want to post the full res pic, maybe ill link it.

But, yes magic it did create.. Maybe not full 4k, but amd said drive updates in jan/feb will come in the future to support full 4k and maybe 5k for 290x driver for 1080p.
I went from 1920 x 1080 = 2073600 pix to 3200 x 1800 = 5760000 pix. That's huge.

Played my Skyrim at almost 4k, cant believe how great everything looked was re exploring everything. Wish it worked for state of decay, no luck their. Payday 2 was like if they added a renewed high res text pack.. Payday 2 is one of my fav games, almost 4k payday 2, i was super happy with the experience. Dynasty warrior 8 was a no go to. Played total wars, and almost 4k total war is great, Got a lot more games to re explore, the difference is intense for me.

To sum it up, I came to the H, read the article, was surprised that nvidia had this tech already and amd is now releasing it. If I knew nvidia had this tech I would of ordered a nv card to try it out. I stay up on tech and didn't know it existed.
So wasn't exactly sure what to expect from it. Then I read incompalitbility issues, I'm like oh that's the down side its going to crash. But, no nothing crashes, if a game doesn't support it it doesn't support it.

Once I was able to change my desktop res, I was a giggly school girl, yelling for my wife. She didnt care, but I sure did. Desktop res alone, it gets a 10. Then when I started a movie, a movie I just finish watching. I said how did it improve the video that much. Am I watching 4k video, looking at the screen confused. Impressed. Moved onto games, at almost 4k gaming you can really tell which game textures are low res and high res. Like in my skyrim with texture mods, i found my self really looking at each item, examining it almost.



Didn't link the high res, but hopefully this is a better representation of what im looking at.
Want people to be informed of this driver, I downloaded the driver 3 days ago, because i kept saying it cant be that big of an improvement, YES it is.
 
Swift_OwL said:
Didn't want to post the full res pic, maybe ill link it.

But, yes magic it did create.. Maybe not full 4k, but amd said drive updates in jan/feb will come in the future to support full 4k and maybe 5k for 290x driver for 1080p.
I went from 1920 x 1080 = 2073600 pix to 3200 x 1800 = 5760000 pix. That's huge.

Played my Skyrim at almost 4k, cant believe how great everything looked was re exploring everything. Wish it worked for state of decay, no luck their. Payday 2 was like if they added a renewed high res text pack.. Payday 2 is one of my fav games, almost 4k payday 2, i was super happy with the experience. Dynasty warrior 8 was a no go to. Played total wars, and almost 4k total war is great, Got a lot more games to re explore, the difference is intense for me.

To sum it up, I came to the H, read the article, was surprised that nvidia had this tech already and amd is now releasing it. If I knew nvidia had this tech I would of ordered a nv card to try it out. I stay up on tech and didn't know it existed.
So wasn't exactly sure what to expect from it. Then I read incompalitbility issues, I'm like oh that's the down side its going to crash. But, no nothing crashes, if a game doesn't support it it doesn't support it.

Once I was able to change my desktop res, I was a giggly school girl, yelling for my wife. She didnt care, but I sure did. Desktop res alone, it gets a 10. Then when I started a movie, a movie I just finish watching. I said how did it improve the video that much. Am I watching 4k video, looking at the screen confused. Impressed. Moved onto games, at almost 4k gaming you can really tell which game textures are low res and high res. Like in my skyrim with texture mods, i found my self really looking at each item, examining it almost.

Didn't link the high res, but hopefully this is a better representation of what im looking at.
Want people to be informed of this driver, I downloaded the driver 3 days ago, because i kept saying it cant be that big of an improvement, YES it is.
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lol, your inability to see this for what it is, is evident in you trying to show us with screenshots. It's great that you have more space to see additional stuff at once, but your not getting 4k quality.
 
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