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AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 Driver

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Anyone else notice a performance drop going from 14.7 beta to this one?

I ran fire strike just before I did the upgrade and just after. For some reason it didn't save the former score to my account, but I'm 99% sure it was 2-300 points higher on 14.7.
 
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And now my games are freezing up. Ugh.

EDIT:

Cleaned out 14.9 (I also cleaned in between my upgrade) and reinstalled it. Games (BF4 and Watch Dogs) are still freezing up in 5 minutes or less.

Cleaned 14.9 again and installed 14.7 beta. Played for an hour, no issues. I guess I'll be skipping this driver release...
 
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Nebulous said:
Crap. Don't tell me these are buggy :-/ I'm still on 14.7 beta and was about to switch.
Click to expand...

What he said. Fortunately (?) my rig is temporarily down for a move and I haven't had a chance to install 14.9. Looks like I can save the time and trouble when I get it back up. Kinda sucks , though. I'm still looking to use my R7 260X without having to use Afterburner. Maybe next time. :/
 
Nebulous said:
Crap. Don't tell me these are buggy :-/ I'm still on 14.7 beta and was about to switch.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's something else on my system? All I know is I tried everything I could think of.

Cleaned, reinstalled, as mentioned above.
Ran without Trixx and fan profiles.
Cleaned out all of my monitor overclocking registry changes and ran it at stock.

They were strange crashes. No error message, the games just froze up. Had to Ctrl+Alt+Del and kill them in Task Manager (stranger still, in task manager, they looked like they were still running?). One of the freeze ups (maybe BF4?) made it so I couldn't even Ctrl+Alt+Del. Had to hard reboot.

I've never had an issue with AMD drivers, TBH. Have always used whichever was the latest (beta or standard). Easy enough to go back to 14.7, I suppose, though some of the R9 290 improvements they talked about seemed interesting. :shrug:
 
Well, most of the improvements are in 14.7 anyway. Thats why when they listed all those performance changes it was compared to the 14.4 wqhl. Still, I should have my new mobo/cpu/windows set up some time this weekend and I will test them on a clean install and see if I have any issues.
 
I think im to lazy to upgrade, 14.4 is still fine for me because no gain for users of 7000 series. Some drivers are known to create compatibility issues with older games, but 14.4 should work fine now. Compatibility always comes first and AMD is not comparable to Nvidia regarding compatibility it seems, Nvidia simply got more love for the classic games. Its not a matter a dev have to fix... in term AMD is making drivers incompatible they should take responsibility and fix that self created issue.
 
I ran firestrike and several other benchmarcks and had small performance increases with 14.9 over 14.7. I also had cooler load temps with 14.9, go figure.
 
Played some borderlands 2 over the weekend, a lot of stress testing with tomb raider, planetside 2, and metro last light. A bit of firestrike and firestrike extreme. So far for me they work pretty much identical to the 14.7 betas. Same temps, same clock limits etc.
 
The name is just marketing: For example im a user of 14.4 and then someone is boasting the new 14.9 at this forum, i will rip my hair off and moan in fear because my driver is already critically outdated, such a huge number gape. Ultimately i notice "oh its just one more jump in the line of drivers and im not the most outdated thing on earth".

Next year MS will be coming, providing a clear aversion against a WIN 9 because the new WIN is sooooooo much more supreme than the old one that it can not be considered the next step in line, its several steps at once. The black sheep is saying: No matter the number, trash will stay trash and superiority will stay superiority, but the 7 is always true.
 
Actually Ivy, the name means something. Specifically the first number is the year, and the second is the month it was released. So workign backwards, the 14.4 was released in April while this one was released at the end of September. There were A LOT of beta drivers in between working out kinks and improving performance. So while you may not be "critically outdated" as you so curiously describe it, there are some performance and other tweaks that one can miss out on from a few month gap like this.

Here are the release notes that show what improvements, tweaks, and fixes have gone into this WHQL release:
Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 Windows Driver
Support for the AMD Radeon R9 285
Performance improvements (comparing AMD Catalyst 14.9 vs. AMD Catalyst 14.4)
3DMark Sky Diver improvements
AMD A4 6300 – improves up to 4%
Enables AMD Dual Graphics / AMD CrossFire support
3DMark Fire Strike
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series - improves up to 5% in Performance Preset
3DMark11
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series / R9 270 Series - improves up to 4% in Entry and Performance Preset
BioShock Infinite
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series – 1920x1080 - improves up to 5%
Company of Heroes 2
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series - improves up to 8%
Crysis 3
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series / R9 270 Series – improves up to 10%
Grid Auto Sport
AMD CrossFire profile
Murdered Soul Suspect
AMD Radeon R9 290X (2560x1440, 4x MSAA, 16x AF) – improves up to 50%
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series / R9 270 Series – improves up to 6%
CrossFire configurations improve scaling up to 75%
Plants vs. Zombies (Direct3D performance improvements)
AMD Radeon R9 290X - 1920x1080 Ultra – improves up to 11%
AMD Radeon R9290X - 2560x1600 Ultra – improves up to 15%
AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra) - 92% scaling
Batman Arkham Origins:
AMD Radeon R9 290X (4x MSAA) – improves up to 20%
CrossFire configurations see up to a 70% gain in scaling
Wildstar
Power Xpress profile
Performance improvements to improve smoothness of application
Performance improves up to 30% on the AMD Radeon R9 and R7 Series of products for both single GPU and Multi-GPU configurations
Tomb Raider
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series – improves up to 5%
Watch Dogs
AMD Radeon R9 290 Series / R9 270 Series – improves up to 9%
AMD CrossFire – Frame pacing improvement
Improved CrossFire performance – up to 20%
Assassin's Creed IV
Improves CrossFire scaling (3840x2160 High Settings) up to 93% (CrossFire scaling improvement of 25% compared to AMD Catalyst 14.4)
Lichdom
Improves performance for single GPU and Multi-GPU configurations
Star Craft II
AMD Radeon R9 290X (2560x1440, AA, 16x AF) – improves up to 20%
AMD Eyefinity enhancements
Mixed Resolution Support
A new architecture providing brand new capabilities
Display groups can be created with monitors of different resolution (including difference sizes and shapes)
Users have a choice of how surface is created over the display group
Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays
Expand – create a virtual Eyefinity surface using desktops as viewports onto the surface
Eyefinity Display Alignment
Enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors
One-Click Setup
Driver detects layout of extended desktop
Can create Eyefinity display group using this layout in one click!
New user controls for video color and display settings
Greater control over Video Color Management:
Controls have been expanded from a single slider for controlling Boost and Hue to per color axis
Color depth control for Digital Flat Panels (available on supported HDMI and DP displays)
Allows users to select different color depths per resolution and display
AMD Mantle enhancements
Mantle now supports AMD Mobile products with Enduro technology
Battlefield 4: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1366x768; high settings) – 21% gain
Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; high settings) – 14% gain
Star Swarm: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; medium settings) – 274% gain
Enables support for Multi-GPU configurations with Thief (requires the latest Thief update)
AMD AM1 JPEG decoding acceleration
JPEG decoding acceleration was first enabled on the A10 APU Series in AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta, and has now been extended to the AMD AM1 Platform
Provides fast JPEG decompression
Provides Power Efficiency for JPEG decompression
Resolved Issues
60Hz SST flickering has been identified as an issue with non-standard display timings exhibited by the AOC U2868PQU panel on certain AMD Radeon™ graphics cards. A software workaround has been implemented in the AMD Catalyst 14.9 driver to resolve the display timing issues with this display
Users seeing flickering issues in 60Hz SST mode are further encouraged to obtain newer display firmware from their monitor vendor that will resolve flickering at its origin.
Users are additionally advised to utilize DisplayPort-certified cables to ensure the integrity of the DisplayPort data connection.
4K panel flickering issues found on the AMD Radeon R9 290 Series and AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
Screen tearing observed on AMD CrossFire systems with Eyefinity portrait display configurations
Instability issues for Grid Autosport when running in 2x1 or 1x2 Eyefinity configurations
Geometry corruption in State of Decay
Known Issues
[404829]: Horizontal flashing lines on second screen in a clone mode with V-Sync on using AMD Mobility Graphics with Switchable Intel Graphics
[404508]: Display takes a long time to redraw the screen after an S4 cycle
[405432]: Mantle driver will TDR when running Star Swarm on the loading screen
[404660]: GPU gets stuck in a low power state after it was previously stressed to max power
[403032]: Severe flickering observed on default launch of SimCity 4
[403449]: Playing any media sample in full screen in the 2x1/1x2 Fill SLS configuration leads to TDR
[400573]: Intermittent application hang observed while launching Aliens vs. Predator
[400693]: While running performance test, crash is observed with fault module atidxx32.dll
[401386]: Severe corruption and flashing light observed with specific game settings in Grid 2
[401289]: Flashing lights in Batman Arkham Origins game main menu
[xxxxxx]: Driver installation randomly crashes or hangs
[xxxxxx]: Intermittent black screen or BSOD on reboot after driver installation
[406933]: AMD Catalyst™ Control Center intermittently crashes or fails to load

Now, I am not saying its required, but its a hell of a lot more than just "marketing". ;)
 
Thats mainly the new R series performance, so its useless to me. Although in theory its just a slight improvement over 7000 series but almost the same architecture. Guess the step was so small that AMD decided to make a new series with nearly identical performance related to efficiency and technical specs, additionally upped up resources for the flagships. I wonder if there will be more huge steps soon, even Nvidias Maxwell is more of a image than the next real thing, i dunno.

Well, the good thing is, the lifetime of my systems have increased a lot for current gen. My CPUs may be powerful enough for over 5 years and even the GPU is able to be sufficient for 3-4 years easely (dont even need to update, just switch to a new Gen), so i never had such a low demand for new hardware ever. Somehow its becoming cheaper and cheaper building PCs because of its increased lifetime. But its important to build with quality caps and such, else it may not survive over 4 years when used almost every single day (with the exception of holiday). My Onkyo died after 2.5 years* of use... yet many people still dare to tell me that the hardware endurance is higher than anything i ever need... just foolish when showing them a bunch of burned hardware that was not even able to pass the 3 or 4 year line, and one of the MB died after only 1 year. *The most cheeky users was telling me that a device is just living as long such as the warranty period and everything above that age is just "a bonus"... i tell ya my mind was burning because of unlimited rage at that moment.
 
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My point was that there are many improvements and tweaks that can help out a lot of users and it is not just marketing like your post said. It doesn't specifically list your card, however I am sure that there are some improvements and tweaks for too it since it has a renamed twin in the Rx series of cards. ;)
 
Hmm you can become the new marketing gurru for AMD, just to bad i have no saying here. :p
 
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