Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AMD Offers a Performance Boost, Over 20 New Features With Catalyst Omega Drivers

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD just dropped its new Catalyst Omega driver package that is the culmination of six months of development work. AMD Catalyst Omega reportedly brings over 20 new features and a wealth of bug fixes to the table, along with performance increases both on AMD Radeon GPUs and integrated AMD APUs. Some of the new functionality includes Virtual Super Resolution, or VSR. VSR is "game- and engine-agnostic" and renders content at up to 4K resolution, then displays it at a resolution that your monitor actually supports. AMD says VSR allows for increased image quality, similar in concept to Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA). Another added perk of VSR is the ability to see more content on the screen at once. To take advantage of VSR, you'll need a Radeon R9 295X2, R9 290X, R9 290, or R9 285 discrete graphics card. Both single- and multi-GPU configurations are currently supported. VSR is essentially AMD's answer to NVIDIA's DSR, or Dynamic Super Resolution. In addition, AMD is claiming performance enhancements in a number of top titles with these these new drivers. Reportedly, as little as 6 percent improvement in performance in FIFA Online to as much as a 29 percent increase in Batman: Arkham Origins can be gained when using an AMD 7000-Series APU, for example. On discrete GPUs, an AMD Radeon R9 290X's performance increases ranged from 8 percent in Grid 2 to roughly 16 percent in Bioshock Infinity.

46 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Remember guys... by arbiter1 · · Score: 1

    You forgot i see that Mantle is still proprietary closed source software. So they couldn't use it if they wanted to. AMD claims they will make it open but when that will happen is at best a guess since any time AMD sets a time table they miss it by least 3-4 months.

  2. Compared to Catalyst 13.12? by Salamander_Pete · · Score: 2

    Why are they comparing it to 13.12, which is a year-old driver package? Is is because it isn't actually that much quicker than 14.9 or 14.11?

    1. Re:Compared to Catalyst 13.12? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Why are they comparing it to 13.12, which is a year-old driver package?

      Is is because it isn't actually that much quicker than 14.9 or 14.11?

      I think their argument is that 13.12 was the launch driver for the GPU in the figure, so they're saying "look how much we've improved since launch!".

      On the one hand yeah, that's more bang for your buck than when you bought the card, but isn't this more to do with tweaking the driver specifically for the game in question than a case of general driver improvements across the board?

    2. Re:Compared to Catalyst 13.12? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I always see it the other way 'round - "Look how rubbish our drivers were!"

      Of course, anyone but the absolute most stalwart AMD fan already knew their drivers were rubbish, so I guess this is an improvement.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  3. Babble by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    Another added perk of VSR is the ability to see more content on the screen at once.

    What is that supposed to mean?

    http://hothardware.com/gallery...

    ^ Wow, that blurry, dark, downscaled JPEG really shows off the difference, doesn't it?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Babble by Brulath · · Score: 2

      The rendering at higher resolution then down-scaling without the game being aware of it is a pretty dreadful idea, you're just going to get tiny interfaces in most games or, as apparently pictured, a massive field of view which makes it harder to see smaller details. Microsoft's DirectX12 (or was it 11?) for mobile devices allows you to render the game world at higher or lower resolution and the interface at native, then merges them when displaying it; requires hardware support, apparently, but that seems like the best approach to scaling.

      I'll this seems like the introduction of Eyefinity/Surround/Stereoscopic 3D/hardware PhysX. They'd be cool if games supported them properly, but since each implementation is different (and they have to wrestle with the Windows display system) it becomes easier to just ignore them. You're only likely to find Eyefinity/Surround in racing games, and physx where nVidia has paid to add it. The chances of many games going to the effort of supporting an upscaling hack seem pretty low.

    2. Re:Babble by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      And isn't the GPU doing WAY more work than it needs to, if it first renders everything at 4k and then scales it to some crap $120 1600x900 display?

      No thanks, I'll take the framerate increase of rendering in the resolution I'm actually displaying.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    3. Re:Babble by AJodock · · Score: 2

      I am not even remotely an expert on the matter, but I believe the point is to render at higher resolution and then reduce AA and such.

      If you can make the game engine render the content at such a high resolution then there less need to do post processing of the images to do things like smooth edges as long as you have a way to efficiently scale down the image.

      For instance the new Final Fantasy XIII PC port has no graphics options (update to fix that is supposed to be out tomorrow). You can't even pick resolution let alone AA and other settings, so you are stuck at 720p. So the community released a tool (GeToSaTo) that forces the game to 4k resolution and then downsamples it, so that even without AA enabled everything looks as it would if it were.

      So the question is, is it harder for a GPU to render the scene at 4k with less post processing or at 2k with lots of post processing turned on to equal image quality? Apparently AMD and nVidia both have it now so at least some games must either look better or are more efficient using downsampling.

    4. Re:Babble by Kjella · · Score: 1

      I have an UHD monitor (3840x2160) and without exception the only games that change view like that are terrible games that have fixed UI elements that are x pixels wide, meaning that on a high def monitor the actual action happens with tiny ants in the 800x600 center with microbuttons and a lot of scenery. I decrease the resolution to get a "normal" gaming experience. Good games on the other hand look roughly the same on my 28" UHD screen as they looked on the 24" 1080p screen, only more detailed with the zoom level a feature of the game, not implicitly set by the resolution. So great feature I suppose if you want to feel the pains of crap HiDPI support without actually having a HiDPI monitor...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Re:Remember guys... by aliquis · · Score: 1

    I don't think I've ever seen that.

    And it's definitely not the regular scenario of Mantle vs DirectX.

    Heck. With a good processor (evil minds would say not an AMD one) I've seen Mantle benchmark LOWER.

    Lame to post as AC.

    More relevant though is that similar development are being done in DirectX 12 and new version(s?) of OpenGL.

    So it's in the future for both. But Mantle isn't necessarily the future for either.

  5. Better OpenGL compliance please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't need any of those new fancy features.
    What I need is their OpenGL driver complying with the OpenGL specification. Whenever I do anything advanced, it reliably works on my Nvidia system and reliably needs annoying and performance-degrading workarounds on my AMD/ATI system. We're talking about stuff like simple branching in shader code causing the optimizer to emit returns, or unnecessarily having to feed in vertex data when the geometry could be deduced from gl_VertexID alone, or the Uniform Buffer Object layout specified in the shader not being preserved when using the binary shader format (means I have to recompile it every time), or atan in shaders yielding results that are half a degree off under some circumstances, or the builtin attributes not working if you use your own attributes with names that would alphanumerically be sorted before gl_*.

    Through the ATI support forum back then I once got in touch with a technician who looked up these things in the driver sources and confirmed a few bugs with me, but later on I only got automated responses stating that he is leaving the company, and then the forum was trashed and a new AMD forum put in its place.

    Yes. This is driving me nuts. On Nvidia, it all just works as it should.

    1. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What I need is their OpenGL driver complying with the OpenGL specification. Whenever I do anything advanced, it reliably works on my Nvidia system and reliably needs annoying and performance-degrading workarounds on my AMD/ATI system.

      AMD do not really want great OpenGL support in their drivers, because that would mean more competition for Mantle, most notably if/when it gets ported to non-Windows platforms where Direct3D is not natively available, and OpenGL is the de facto standard. It would be more beneficial for AMD if OpenGL dies because of the bad driver situation, and gets replaced by Mantle.

    2. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by Shinobi · · Score: 2

      And there's nothing new there. Back in the days of Radeon 9700 Pro etc, ATI were deliberately doing their best to sink OpenGL, including working against everyone else on the ARB(thanks Eskil for the gossip back then :p )

      Their focus on DirectX and some of their own specific stuff back then was so extreme that the gaming cards could not run even SpecViewPerf without crashing(if it even managed to start...), and even their pro cards had abysmall performance and, well, we could politely call it "erratic" functionality.

      They made a lot of noise about the 9800 Pro managing to run SpecViewPerf... And the scores were horrible, with even some GeForce 3 based cards beating it, never mind what the GeForce 4 and 5 series performed in OpenGL.

    3. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      The FireGL brand took a HUGE step back when it was purchased by AMD / ATI. I remember when they were the best OpenGL performers you could buy...

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    4. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      Yes, Nvidia is always better, but what about Intel then? How does Intel OpenGL support stack up against AMD?

    5. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html

    6. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by bigmo · · Score: 2

      A lot of it depends on what you consider correct. I work almost exclusively on amd platforms with opengl and am pretty happy over all with what I get. I have the reverse problem as you because supporting nVidia requires a lot of adjustment where amd and intel opengl work pretty much as is in my code. You can say that's because I'm doing it wrong and that nVidia has the proper implementation, but I think it's more that you get used to working with your own solutions and anything that requires additional work feels wrong headed in its design.

    7. Re:Better OpenGL compliance please by Shinobi · · Score: 1

      I remember that the card me and some others in my 3D class were drooling over was the DP Oxygen 402.

  6. Re:New AMD driver by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 1

    Legged in just to bitch about how depressing it is for AMD when "newer (but still not the most recent) kernel support" is the highlight of their much-touted special edition OMEGA driver. I'd like to know if performance for Linux users of older cards is better, though I think performance improvements are being the focus only for the SI cards and above. If that's indeed the case, I think the open Radeon driver will surpass Fglrx very soon, at least for the 5000-6000 series.

  7. Re:Super Resolution by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    No, they do mean Super Resolution, because that's the basically meaningless but cool-sounding name they've decided to give it. What you mean is super resolution.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  8. Re:Remember guys... by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    Strange that AMD offered Nvidia to be a part of development and Nvidia said no. How does that work in terms of "they couldn't use it if they wanted to." Right it doesn't, they had their chance and their choice currently was to tell them to piss off because they threw their lot in with DX12. Interestingly enough, I have a feeling that as more devs grab mantle, nvidia is going to buckle on it especially with the performance gains vs DX. Unlike physx which has ened up being for naught.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  9. Drop? by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 4, Informative

    AMD just dropped its new Catalyst Omega driver package

    Is this a new meaning of the word drop, that I was until now unaware of? To my ears it sounds like they're not releasing anything.

    --
    -- Make America hate again!
    1. Re:Drop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >> AMD just dropped its new Catalyst Omega driver package

      > Is this a new meaning of the word drop, that I was until now unaware of? To my ears it sounds like they're not releasing anything.

      An instance of dropping supplies or making a delivery, sometimes associated with delivery of supplies by parachute.

      (transitive, slang) To impart. "I drop knowledge wherever I go. Yo, I drop rhymes like nobody's business."

      (transitive, music, African American Vernacular) To release to the public.

      (intransitive, music, African American Vernacular) To enter public distribution.

      Source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drop

    2. Re:Drop? by PPalmgren · · Score: 1

      Its common slang, at lest in the US. I'm guessing it has roots from either the past newspaper industry 'dropping' their new edition or military supply drops.

    3. Re:Drop? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      I've not heard it used for a production release, but in QA-speak, a "code drop" is whenever a new build comes into the lab for it's shakedown from development.

      I think I may have heard it used in this way in the hip hop circles, and it should remain there.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    4. Re:Drop? by guyniraxn · · Score: 1

      I noticed it about ten+ years ago when rappers/hip-hop artists used it to mean that they released a new album. It didn't take long before hip-hop slang became just American slang and artists of every genre started using it as if saying "release" was too effete. Now everyone says drop. I thought it sounded odd when it was just a hip-hop thing and even more odd now that it has been thoroughly appropriated by those quite far removed from that culture.

    5. Re:Drop? by Arykor · · Score: 1

      It is released. The last line in TFA pointed right to the driver download page, from which you just have to pick your platform. For example http://support.amd.com/en-us/d... shows Revision Number Omega (14.12)

    6. Re:Drop? by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Among the meanings of the verb "to drop" are both "to discontinue" and "to offload goods". This lead to the use of the word at both start of provision and end of provision.

    7. Re:Drop? by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Also from your link:

      (transitive) To cancel or end a scheduled event, project or course

  10. Re: New AMD driver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Funny how this article immediately follows the "Nethack is still the best game ever" article.

  11. Re:Remember guys... by Wootery · · Score: 2

    it is understandable if Nvidia backs independent standards like OpenGL and Direct3D, rather than a vendor specific API that would always put them at a competitive disadvantage, because it is developed and controlled by a rival manufacturer.

    I agree. From what I've seen, we're expecting Direct3D 12, and future OpenGL versions, to be such that they offer many of the benefits that Mantle and Metal offer now. Mantle seems to have been very effective in spurring innovation, but, as you say, there are legitimate reasons nVidia might not want to jump aboard.

    If the tables were turned and nVidia were to make Physx available to AMD, AMD would always be playing catch-up: there's a conflict of interest if one party has total control. The frameworks from Khronos and Microsoft seem a better bet.

    On top of all that, it's probably not great to have yet another graphics API, from either the driver-devs' perspective or the game-devs' perspective: devs already have to worry about Direct3D, OpenGL, OpenGL-ES, and console-specific APIs, without adding Metal and Mantle.

    the difference rarely exceeds 10%, and is often just 5% or less. For developers that are not AMD "business partners", it might not be worth spending time on porting their engine to a 3D graphics API that makes only a minor improvement on the products of a single GPU vendor that has a market share of 29-30%.

    Also good points. I don't know the numbers for the Metal API.

  12. News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Driver updates are worth /. articles now? Really...? But they used a Greek letter...

  13. Re:Remember guys... by Mashiki · · Score: 2

    http://www.dsogaming.com/news/...

    http://www.overclock3d.net/art...

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  14. Omega by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Funny

    So it's their last driver release ever?

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    1. Re:Omega by hort_wort · · Score: 1

      I'm wondering if it's a nod to a guy who used to make lots of custom drivers for graphics cards. It was the only way to upgrade my old Mobility card at the time, so I used them quite often. He still has a site up here:

      http://www.omegadrivers.net/

  15. Infinity? by lexman098 · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure they've released Bioshock Infinity yet.

    1. Re:Infinity? by Wootery · · Score: 1

      Indeed, I noticed that too. And strictly, the 's' should be an 'S'.

      (The correct name is BioShock Infinite.)

  16. Re:Remember guys... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Except that it doesn't. Ever heard of G-Sync? Physx? AC/U debacle? They are perfectly happy with proprietary stuff as long as is theirs. As for you are second point, you are even wronger that you think. Both the XBONE and the PS4 are using AMD hardware and can potentially benefit from MANTLE, so for developers it actually simplifies the process of porting of a title between platforms.

  17. Re:AMD Hot by AqD · · Score: 1

    Yes. No new chip design since like 2 years ago.

  18. Re: New AMD driver by djdanlib · · Score: 1

    NetHack is pretty great, in that it doesn't engender video card manufacturer fanboy wars!

  19. Re:Does it work at all under Linux? by Skvate · · Score: 1

    No problem with Kaveri and Kabini at least. Just remember to properly remove the old drivers first. On my *buntu system i do this: sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*, reboot, sudo ./amd-driver-installer-14.501.1003-x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/trusty, sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb, sudo amdconfig --initial, reboot. That seems to work every time. Dunno if its necessary with all the reboots.

  20. Are the drivers still written by AMD? NO THANKS! by Chas · · Score: 1

    Sorry. AMD's main problem is not their hardware. Their hardware ROCKS.

    The problem is, their driver packages are flaky, buggy, unstable pieces of shit. And, after being burned so many times by their crap, I won't trust them ever again.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  21. Re:Remember guys... by DrXym · · Score: 1

    NOBODY should want Mantle until it becomes an open standard or something analogous to it appears in the likes of OpenGL. It's great that it offers performance improvements but proprietary APIs still stink. I expect most of the improvements it offers largely boil down to minimize the amount of memory being copied around between CPU and GPU rather than anything inherent to the chipset.

  22. Also released for Linux by CyDharttha · · Score: 1

    Thankfully this also included a new Linux driver. The current one was many months old. Hopefully there are some good improvements! http://support.amd.com/en-us/k...

  23. Re:Remember guys... by exomondo · · Score: 1

    Strange that AMD offered Nvidia to be a part of development and Nvidia said no.

    Why support a vendor-specific API when you can improve the existing vendor-agnostic ones? DirectX 12 introduces many of the types of improvements that Mantle does and OpenGL 4.5 has also moved in that direction too. The typical performance improvement we are seeing with Mantle is in the 5-10% range and squeezing 5-10% extra out of OpenGL using the new direct state access to avoid binding overhead is pretty straightforward.

  24. Who buys an R290 by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    and cares about 16% better performance from Bioshock Infinite? I've got a GTX 660 in a 6 year old Athlon XP 6000 and it kicks that game in the fanny.

    What I want is stable drivers. I bought an nVidia because I still don't trust AMD after my last experience (admittedly from 3 years ago).

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/