AMD releases new much improved video driver

There are some things in life that you can only discover if you experience them. This saying is certainly true for owners of ATI and now AMD video cards. While on the hardware level the cards are perfect in most cases, save for a minor problem here and there, which may happen to any other 3D card, the software level has been far from perfect. Bluntly said ATI/AMD drivers have come with various problems for years that then must be fixed. These problems have never been dramatic but if they happen all the time they spoil the general public image of the end products and of course fuel the competition in the face of NVIDIA.

Apparently AMD has paid attention to this annoying issue and has decided to remedy the situation after so many years. The company has released a new GPU driver update that not only brings numerous new features and more performance but tries to be perfect and hence turn the tide. In fact this “special edition” driver has been in the works for months and is one of the biggest AMD has ever released.

Called Catalyst Omega, the new driver brings more performance to the table thanks to a more efficient software design. AMD says users of high-end AMD video cards can experience up to 19 per cent more performance than the previous driver which happens to be Catalyst 14.11.2 and up to 29 per cent more performance on AMD APU-based systems.

Of course you should not expect this performance difference to occur in most hardware configurations and under most 3D games out there but some will definitely take advantage of the new software. Certain web sites say games such as BioShock Infinite and Metro Redux have delivered more performance but some other AMD Gaming Evolved-certified games such as Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs, Crysis 3 and others have not experienced more frames per second. But then again you lose nothing by installing the new driver since it is also free.

Performance isn’t everything, though – AMD has added more than 20 new features in the driver that many people will enjoy. We’ll start with Virtual Super Resolution (VSR), which allows gamers to super sample their games, rendering at up to 4K quality before being downscaled to a lower resolution monitor. AMD has also improved frame pacing on both Dual Graphics and CrossFire systems, which reduces stuttering and frame time variances. The video features have also been touched – now the new driver offers Fluid Motion, which improves interpolation during video playback to remove judder, especially while panning. Contour Detail removes compression artifacts without reducing detail while 1080p Detail Enhancement improves sharpness and the details of lower resolution content when played on a higher resolution display. Catalyst Omega also introduces support for new hardware such as FreeSync monitors, the Alienware Graphics Amplifier and 5K displays as well as TressFX Hair 3.0, OpenCL 2.0 and Mantle game capture and more. The new GPU software has also eliminated numerous bugs including the top ten most reported problems such as errors while installing, black screens, game crashes and more.

The new Catalyst Omega driver is available now on AMD’s web site.

Source: Techspot.com