The full release notes are available here or take a look at the highlights below.
The latest version of the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, AMD Catalyst 14.9 is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:
- Windows 8.1 (32 & 64-bit version)
- Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit version with SP1 or higher)
Highlights of AMD Catalyst 14.9 Windows Driver
- Support for the AMD Radeon R9 280
- 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 – 1920×1080 – 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 (2560×1440, 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 – 1920×1080 Ultra – improves up to 11%
- AMD Radeon R9290X – 2560×1600 Ultra – improves up to 15%
- AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 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 (3840×2160 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 (2560×1440, AA, 16x AF) – improves up to 20%
- 3DMark Sky Diver improvements
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 (1366×768; high settings) – 21% gain
- Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; high settings) – 14% gain
- Star Swarm: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; 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 2×1 or 1×2 Eyefinity configurations
- Geometry corruption in State of Decay
Finally. At this rate they’ll
Finally. At this rate they’ll be releasing “normal” driver updates once a year from 2015. All AMD cards should come with a huge sticker “use Beta drivers only” else suffer a ridiculous wait for updates.
You’d think AMD would want to kill off the “poor drivers” reputation after all these years. Yes their drivers are nice and stable now, but perception means everything and releasing drivers every 6 months is not a good look.
Well, I guess the positive
Well, I guess the positive way to look at this is that they’re still working on the drivers, which wasn’t perfectly clear to me since they implemented their once-in-a-good-long-while driver update philosophy.
What is point of AMD wasting
What is point of AMD wasting time to optimize drivers for 3D mark?
epeen
epeen
The new GPU from AMD is
The new GPU from AMD is coming soon.
I don’t get this. I though
I don’t get this. I though the purpose of a standard driver architecture was so that a single driver was made and the various programs that needed to interface with that hardware could do so without having to provide their own specific driver.
Why are we putting game/application specific fixes into the drivers? Why aren’t the game developers coding their games to run efficiently for AMD/NVIDIA drivers rather than the other way around?
We don’t hear about HP releasing new drivers to increase printing speed in Excel. We would expect Microsoft to do that.
Why is it the other way around for games?
Because microsoft makes
Because microsoft makes billions of dollars per year in profits alone and has huge margins.
Amd+Nvidia+the entire gaming ecosystem could fit inside Microsoft with room to spare, and the margins are paper thin.
In conclusion:
The graphics and game producers need each other in order to simply survive, so they work hand in hand just to be able to churn out rent money.
Microsoft doesn’t, and doesn’t need to give a damn about whether or not hp’s drivers work well with windows. That’s hp’s problem.
They do code them optimize
They do code them optimize them but they only have so much time and man power. Hence why effort is needed from gpu companies.
So is pcper gonna test these
So is pcper gonna test these in crossfire?
AMD Feature: ‘atikmdag.sys’
AMD Feature: ‘atikmdag.sys’ BSOD – Bluescreen still exist…
and all those Flash & HTML5-Videos BSOD System error dumpfiles! can’t even count it any more…
[404660]: GPU gets stuck in a low power state after it was previously stressed to max power !!! error
AMD driver bugs and ‘CCC’ AMD Catalyst Control Center, and now with shitty ‘Mantle’ implementation is the best PR Joke in 2014. the hole AMD Radeon R9 270 – R290X series suxXx!
All these problems exist since 2006!!! AMD will never fix it !!!
AMD will H:O:P:E:F:U:L:L
AMD will H:O:P:E:F:U:L:L N:E:V:E:R FIX this!
All badly disappoint Gamer & Professional Users will switch to Nvidia quality Graphics Cards Solutions – for sure 😉 to assign a reason for error-free operation!
AMD official Intermittent
AMD official Intermittent Installation Issues With the AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 Driver – it’s an AMD Feature!
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU-141002.aspx
We are aware that a small number of users are experiencing the following issues with the AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 driver:
1.Random installation crashes or hangs
2.Intermittent black screen or BSOD error on reboot after driver installation
3.AMD Catalyst™ Control Center intermittently crashes or fails to load
We are looking into the issues listed above and will be posting an updated driver as soon as it becomes available. If you are experiencing any of these issues we suggest you reboot your system in safe mode, uninstall the current driver and install the previous AMD Catalyst™ driver posting.