Update: AMD Releases Catalyst 15.9 Beta Drivers
by Daniel Williams on September 29, 2015 1:30 AM EST
Today AMD has released AMD Catalyst 15.9 Beta as their latest driver update, with display driver version 15.201.1151. This driver provides optimizations for the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront Beta that we will be seeing next week and for the Fable Legends DX12 benchmark that we saw last week.
Among several of the fixes a few of note are an issue with the AMD Catalyst Control Center 'update' option failing to download the latest driver, so users should now be able to properly update their drivers from within Catalyst Control Center. Also some BenQ 144Hz monitors were having driver issues by losing the video signal while uninstalling the driver and some BenQ 144Hz Freesync monitors would crash during DiRT Rally when launched in DirectX11 mode.
A couple of noteworthy known issues remain. For those running AMD Crossfire that are looking forward to the Star Wars: Battlefront Beta there is apparently a chance of some flickering happening, which is unfortunate. Also while booting into Windows 10 there can be issues with a black screen though the system will still continue on to the login screen. Lastly a TDR error (a.k.a. a driver crash) may happen while toggling between minimized and maximized mode while viewing 4K YouTube video content.
Those interested in reading more or installing the drivers for AMD's desktop, mobile, and integrated GPUs can find them on AMD's Catalyst beta download page.
Update 09/29: Thanks go to user hansmuff for pointing this out in the comments. AMD earlier this morning announced that they were aware of a memory leak that causes all video memory to be used while resizing active browser windows. With that they are asking everyone to please roll back from the Catalyst 15.9 Beta drivers until the problem is resolved.
Those interested can read their brief update on the AMD Catalyst 15.9 Beta Memory Leak page.
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ddriver - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
"This driver provides optimizations for the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront Beta that we will be seeing next week and for the Fable Legends DX12 benchmark that we saw last week"Does this mean you will revisit the Fable Legends article, or are PR articles not subject to revisits and preferred to be ran unoptimized for the party that is meant to be smeared?
squngy - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Why not wait for both companies to do optimizations for one arbitrary benchmark and revisit then?Or you know, wait for actual games before making any decisions.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
If you read the article on Fable Legends you would have seen that they specifically noted that they did not test with the latest AMD driver (This one just coming out, which AMD had sent them), but did have the most recent nVidia drivers.Asomething - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
They only had the latest WHQL drivers from nvidia which werent put out specifically for the fable legends bench like the amd beta one was. They wanted it to be fair and unoptimized vs unoptimized.Manch - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
It was an early preview! Who was getting smeared? They ran the tests with the drivers available. Now if they re-run with the new drivers, I of course like everyone else would like to see the diff/improvements. Still its just a scenery benchmark and while it may be indicative of performance, I'll still wait till an actual game benchmark comes out to pass judgment. however it's not going to affect my buying as I've already purchase GPU's earlier this year and will not upgrade until GPU's w/ HBM2/8GB frame buffer are available. Even then it will be based on bang for the buck, not brand.ddriver - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
My assumption is that as a long time nvidia sponsored company, the engine behind that benchmark is well optimized for nvidia hardware, and the whole thing is just a PR stunt to show that "nvidia doesn't suck in DX12". Thus my inquiry whether the PR article will be revisited once amd optimize their drivers, and possibly diminish the intent of the PR article.Manch - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Your assumption? Did you read the article? The way DX12 handles draw calls will benefit both AMD and Nvidia HW. If and that's a big "IF" this benchmark was made to prop up Nvidia then it didn't do a good job. The performance gap between the respective cards is par for the course. There wasn't any kind of runaway performance gap indicative of a benchmark created soley for the benefit of Nvidia. This test was done by Anandtech and they have been pretty fair to both companies. The tests did indicate that cards from the respective companies may bottleneck in different areas and that is something to explore further. I know a lot of people want to believe that DX12 will be the savior of AMD. The only savior of AMD will be AMD. They will either put out a competitive product or they wont. If they can't match on performance, they need to match with an appropriate price. I picked up two 290X 8GB cards in early March for just under $600. For me a much better value/performance than a single 980 at the time. It was a hell of a deal and I'm happy with my choice but there's no denying, Nvidia has the faster hardware. There's no PR conspiracy here just fanboyism...ddriver - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
"There wasn't any kind of runaway performance gap"And how exactly did you figure that one out? It is not a given that a PR stunt will take two equally performing products and elevate one above the other, it may well take an inferior product and prop it up to look comparable to a superior one.
No fanboy here, I am running nvidia for graphics and radeo for compute, since under Linux radeons suck as much as nvidia sucks for DP compute, I merely asked whether the benchmark article will or will not be revisited now that AMD have optimized their driver for it, which logically implies the previous driver was not optimized for it.
Manch - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Go look at other bench marks and games that are actually out. Look at the performance delta. No change in the preview benchmark really. You said "Does this mean you will revisit the Fable Legends article, or are PR articles not subject to revisits and preferred to be ran unoptimized for the party that is meant to be smeared?" You're the one calling it a PR article in Nvidia's favor LOL. And which cards are the equal performing ones? Only a couple of the midrange cards stack up equally. For the most part AMD cards trail 5-15% compared to their Nvidia counterparts.ddriver - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Of course, the announcement that AMD released a driver optimized for it implies the previous driver was NOT, which means AT published an article, benchmarking an nvidia sponsored engine against an UNoptimized amd driver. This is as far from objective as it gets, and does sit well within the PR stunt range.I buy whatever best suits my need, and run Linux, so I couldn't care less about amd, nvidia or DX12, but I care about objectivity. And don't pretend you are not a fanboy by calling others that. It is just lame.