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AMD unveils major GPU driver update, Catalyst Omega

Ivory Samoan

Gold Member
What method/filter is used to AMD downsampling via VSR option?
Why is VSR only supported across R9 SKU's?
Why an extra resolution only on R9 285?

Pretty weird the 285 getting VSR, when the 7970 blows it's doors in terms of performance...
 
wait...i cant use VSR on my 7970??? Thats crap

It might come in the next driver, if I remember correctly, on the Nvidia-side Downsampling was also initially only available to a very limited amount of GPUs.

As for the driver itself it installed without a hitch with my 7970 and the Pixel Clock Patcher for 75hz works too still :)
 

BPoole

Member
It might come in the next driver, if I remember correctly, on the Nvidia-side Downsampling was also initially only available to a very limited amount of GPUs.

As for the driver itself it installed without a hitch with my 7970 and the Pixel Clock Patcher for 75hz works too still :)
What exactly is a Pixel Clock Patcher? Does it increase your monitor's refresh rate? If so, is it easy to install and is there any risk of installing it? I have a Yamakasi Catleap monitor fyi
 

BPoole

Member
Lol not even 4K for 290X — VSR is useless for me since I'm on a 1440p monitor. Baby steps I guess.

I welcome the performance improvements though.
You can still downsample from 1800p. That should still give you a pretty crisp IQ at a playable frame rate for most games
 
What exactly is a Pixel Clock Patcher? Does it increase your monitor's refresh rate? If so, is it easy to install and is there any risk of installing it? I have a Yamakasi Catleap monitor fyi

Hmm well I will just quote the creator:

AMD/ATI Pixel Clock Patcher modifies the AMD/ATI video driver to allow higher resolutions and refresh rates by removing the 165 MHz pixel clock limit for single-link DVI and HDMI, the 330 MHz limit for dual-link DVI, and the 400 MHz limit for VGA.

It allows me to get my monitor running at 1920x1080@75hz along with Custom Resolution Utility. Without the Pixel Clock patcher I only manage 70hz before my GPU clock gets stuck on high values even while idle.

The only downside is the patcher completely breaks hardware acceleration for any kind of video content :/ But since I don't watch that many videos I'm fine with Flash and Youtube in CPU mode.

And you can read more about it here if you want :) http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher?page=1
 

oxidax

Member
Too bad I wont be downsampling with my 280X. GeDoSaTo will do I guess.

Now I want to see new bench charts between Crossfired 290x's and SLI 980. Specially with the downsampling feature.
 
Is there any optimization for troublesome games in this driver? (specially AC Unity, which runs like crap on my 7950, and CoD AW, which has lots of stuttering for my friend's 290x!)
 

derFeef

Member
From the release notes:

  • Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™ performance optimizations
    Mantle API activated for ultimate performance in Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™
  • Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare performance optimizations
    Up to 30% performance increases with FXAA and lower game resolutions
    Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
  • Assassin's Creed® Unity performance optimizations
    Single GPU performance improvements
    Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition performance optimizations
    Up to 15% performance increase in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.
    Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
  • Far Cry 4 performance optimizations
    Up to 50% performance increase in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.

Frame pacing improvements for:
Metro 2033
World of Warcraft
3DMark 11
Sniper Elite V2
Tomb Raider
Hitman: Absolution
GRID 2
Alien: Isolation
Batman: Arkham Origins
BioShock: Infinite
Unigine Valley Benchmark
Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Metro 2033 Redux
Sniper Elite 3
Assassin's Creed Unity
Metro: Last Light
 

derFeef

Member
It's not 100% necessary but I always recommend uninstalling your current ones with Display Driver Uninstaller in Safe Mode and then installing the new ones.

Last time I did that was 2003 or something. Unless you run into troubles, it's not worth the hassle. It's basically a myth that you need/should do it.
 

metalhead79

Neo Member
Any chance this driver improves VCE so Steam In Home Streaming doesn't suck with AMD cards?

I'm using a work around now to force Quicksync for the encoder. I'd rather use my R9 290 for the encoding. But it's considerably slower than Quicksync.
 

Lime

Member
How does VSR compare to GeDoSato in terms of quality? Are they equivalent? Bicubic in GeDoSato vs. VSR's bilinear must put the former on top, right?
 
Available resolutions across GPUs as of now:

EMHLyl8.png

Has AMD said they can fix this with future updates? I got a 290.
 

Durante

Member
Computerbase did an article on VSR.
Most surprising to me are the severe limitations in terms of supported resolutions:
[Edit: removed image, already posted]

Apparently they are using a hardware scaler instead of simply scaling in software, which also limits them to a fixed filtering type.

How does VSR compare to GeDoSato in terms of quality? Are they equivalent? Bicubic in GeDoSato vs. VSR's bilinear must put the former on top, right?
Compared to the current implementation of VSR, and talking only about downsampling (GeDoSaTo does more than that), GeDoSaTo gives you both a lot more flexibility in terms of rendering resolution, and higher quality filtering options.

Basically, in terms of options/flexibility GeDoSaTo > DSR > VSR, and in terms of compatiblity DSR = VSR > GeDoSaTo.
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
Has AMD said they can fix this with future updates? I got a 290.

They said they are going to be releasing "phase 2" of the Omega driver early next year. AMD also suggested support for more cards here.

Here is a quote from the article:

AMD is cooking up a "phase 2" driver that will add VSR capabilities (with 4K downscaling) to additional cards, including everything from the Radeon R7 260 up. That driver is expected in the January-February time frame.
 
Last time I did that was 2003 or something. Unless you run into troubles, it's not worth the hassle. It's basically a myth that you need/should do it.

I thought this way. When I went to install the 14.11.2 Beta in November, I checked the driver version for some reason. It hadn't actually updated the drivers in months. I was still on 14.9 even though I (thought I had) installed every beta driver. After uninstalling the driver and installing the 14.11.2 beta again, it displayed the proper driver version.

Yes, this is still a problem.
 

Akronis

Member
Nvidia is in desperate need of that solution as well. It's mind boggling we need to use Riva Tuner. Insane, absolutely. It's basically like you get a sports car but you need to get sepearte tires from another place.

What is this magical Riva Tuner frame pacing solution here?
 

pestul

Member
They said they are going to be releasing "phase 2" of the Omega driver early next year. AMD also suggested support for more cards here.

Here is a quote from the article:

Which usually means that they'll have a beta out pretty soon for it and then the WHQL in that time frame.

Very happy that AMD users are getting this support, even though I left team red this fall (for now).

Guys, I want to hear about the performance improvements. The Far Cry 4 one sounds amazing.. report back!
 
Nvidia is in desperate need of that solution as well. It's mind boggling we need to use Riva Tuner. Insane, absolutely. It's basically like you get a sports car but you need to get sepearte tires from another place.

What are you talking about?

Limiting the framerate with Riva Tuner Statistics Server?
 
VSR or not, the Omega drivers are epic. Playing AC Unity at 1080p, Ultra High Quality, Textures High, Shadows High, SSAO On, Bloom On and FXAA applied, FPS is way better. Never drops below 27-28 and remains mostly above 30, and on rooftops around 40. Game looks great and is finally playable. Earlier FPS used to drop to 15-16 in heavily crowded areas.

R9 280 user here.
 
Last time I did that was 2003 or something. Unless you run into troubles, it's not worth the hassle. It's basically a myth that you need/should do it.

You are right and I used to simply install new drivers over the old ones before too but ever since Mantle released this gave me some oddities. Whenever I would update more often then not my Mantle version would stay on the old version and a clean install gives me a peace of mind in that regard. I agree it's a hassle though as this way I have to reboot three times but with how rarely I install new drivers I can live with the 5-10 minutes extra.
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
Which usually means that they'll have a beta out pretty soon for it and then the WHQL in that time frame.

Very happy that AMD users are getting this support, even though I left team red this fall (for now).

Guys, I want to hear about the performance improvements. The Far Cry 4 one sounds amazing.. report back!

I'm downloading the FC 4 patch right now. I'll report back when I can.

Also, the fluid video setting is amazing! Apparently it can be used in conjunction with Smooth Video Project to eliminate artifacts while playing interpolated video, it looks awesome, so smooth!
 

Lime

Member
Computerbase did an article on VSR.
Most surprising to me are the severe limitations in terms of supported resolutions:
[Edit: removed image, already posted]

Apparently they are using a hardware scaler instead of simply scaling in software, which also limits them to a fixed filtering type.

Compared to the current implementation of VSR, and talking only about downsampling (GeDoSaTo does more than that), GeDoSaTo gives you both a lot more flexibility in terms of rendering resolution, and higher quality filtering options.

Basically, in terms of options/flexibility GeDoSaTo > DSR > VSR, and in terms of compatiblity DSR = VSR > GeDoSaTo.

Thanks for the reply, but I know about flexibility and all the options in GeDoSaTo (which are all unmatched). But what I meant with my question was in terms of quality of the downsampling - since Gedosato allows for bicubic and VSR only bilinear, how much better is Gedosato assuming one is using the same resolution?

Kinda crap that my 290 isn't supported (yet), but I'll take the improvements for now.

290 is supported. Mine certainly is working.
 
I think the performance improvements were made on the cpu overhead, that's why you see improvements only in some games, and unity is supposedly a very cpu intensive game.

There is some cpu efficiency benchmarks on the article durante linked.
 

ryushe

Member
290 is supported. Mine certainly is working.
Just read - thought it was 285x AND 290x. Didn't read it was through those cards.

Awesome. Thanks!

Question: sorry for the silly question, but can I use this in conjunction with GeDoSaTo? Hell, can I even use GeDoSaTo at all? I remember trying a few months ago, couldn't get it to work and gave up.
 

Locuza

Member
I think the performance improvements were made on the cpu overhead, that's why you see improvements only in some games, and unity is supposedly a very cpu intensive game.

There is some cpu efficiency benchmarks on the article durante linked.
Ehm yeah...

acurfkd6.jpg


It looks like BF4 is the only cpu-optimized Game.
 

BPoole

Member
Hmm well I will just quote the creator:



It allows me to get my monitor running at 1920x1080@75hz along with Custom Resolution Utility. Without the Pixel Clock patcher I only manage 70hz before my GPU clock gets stuck on high values even while idle.

The only downside is the patcher completely breaks hardware acceleration for any kind of video content :/ But since I don't watch that many videos I'm fine with Flash and Youtube in CPU mode.

And you can read more about it here if you want :) http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher?page=1
Interesting, thanks for that. I'm surprised I have not heard of this program before. I'll play around with it this weekend. I don't use hardware acceleration for videos anyway because I get screen tearing in them for some reason if I do.
 
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