With AMD's new leader and restructuring comes a new type of driver update. The Omega driver is intended to provide a large number of new features as well as performance updates once a year. It does not replace the current cycle of Beta and WHQL driver updates and the next driver update will incorporate all of the changes from the Omega driver plus the new bug fixes or updates that the driver was released to address.
Many sites including The Tech Report have had at least a small amount of time to test the new driver and have not seen much in the way of installation issues, or unfortunately performance improvements on systems not using an AMD APU. As more time for testing elapses and more reviews come out we may see improvements on low end systems but for now the higher end machines show little to no improvement on raw FPS rates. Keep your eyes peeled for an update once we have had time to test the change on frame pacing results, which are far more important than just increasing your FPS.
The main reason to be excited about this release, it is the long list of new features, from a DSR-like feature called Virtual Super Resolution which allows you to increase the resolution of your monitor although for now 4K super resolution is limited to the R285 as it is the only AMD Tonga card on the market at the moment. Along with the release of the Omega driver comes news about Freesync displays, another feature enabled in the new driver and their availability; we have a release date of January or February with a 4K model arriving in March.
Check out the links to The Tech Report and below to read the full list of new features that this driver brings and don't forget to click on Ryan's article as well.
"AMD has introduced what may be its biggest graphics driver release ever, with more than 20 new features, 400 bug fixes, and some miscellaneous performance improvements."
Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
- Introducing the new AMD Catalyst Omega Driver @ [H]ard|OCP
- AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega Performance Analysis @ techPowerUp
- AMD Catalyst Omega Drivers; Details & Performance @ Hardware Canucks
- AMD Catalyst Omega Launch @ Kitguru
- XFX R9 285 Double Dissipation Black Edition Review @ OCC
- Alpenföhn Peter 2 on GTX 970 @ HardwareOverclock
- Colorful iGame GTX 970 4096 MB @ techPowerUp
- ASUS GTX 980 STRIX OC Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Swiftech Komodo R9 LE GPU Water Block Review @ OCIA.net
http://forums.ubi.com/showthr
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/972897-AMD-Omega-Driver-Massive-boost-in-Frame-rate-for-ACU
“AMD Omega Driver, Massive boost in Frame-rate for ACU”
“my R9 280 and FX-8350 are now giving me 43fps in Cite on top of the church, where before around that areas I was getting low 20s.”
Very impressive.
Read through that topic,
Read through that topic, seems like a lot of people with R9 cards are having great luck with that driver. Guess it wasnt Ubisofts fault all of it.
“As more time for testing
“As more time for testing elapses and more reviews come out we may see improvements on low end systems but for now the higher end machines show little to no improvement on raw FPS rates.”
What does freesync have to do with FPS? Freesync and G-sync are not supposed to increase or decrease FPS at all, they are supposed to smooth tearing/stuttering etc.
To follow up on what i said,
To follow up on what i said, i dont think it was clearly explained what Omega was in this article and to me i assumed (based on the included picture) that it was a codename for Freesync. So disregard my above comment.
… and that is why I was not
… and that is why I was not really responding to your comments in this thread or the other yesterday. The first two sentences in the post describe exactly what Omega is, so while feedback of a positive or negative nature is appreciated it does have to be relevant to what was actually posted.
As to your other feedback … I guess I am sorry you are overly informed because you had to read two articles instead of just one?
We do still appreciate the visit.
I don’t even want to know if
I don’t even want to know if this would of fixed my 285 issues.
I’ve had a very long, crappy 2 months of RMAing products both nvidia and amd.. Never in my life have I had such bad experiences.
Never mind all at the same time.
But yeaaa, I love it when anyone releases notable performance improvements with drivers.
2 or so years ago with they butt heads giving older cards performance boosts was one of the most awesome things they ever did.
As a builder/seller it really made giving people awesome prices a bit easier.
Failed to install after 4
Failed to install after 4 attempts……great one amd…
Usual high standards
While it may not have
While it may not have installed on your machine it worked perfectly on mine. So it all balances out.
I had no problems installing
I had no problems installing it.
to those who are having
to those who are having problems installing the AMD Omega driver, what was the error?
I had an issue with unsigned drivers not being recognized by Windows, and the issue is that a recent Windows update caused it(kb3004394). I used the AMD uninstall driver tool, rebooted, uninstalled the problem Windows update, rebooted, then was successful with the Omega driver install.