http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times Interesting stuff. There is hope for us!! Latest drivers: AMD Catalyst 13.6 BETA2 (13.101.0.0 June 4) http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-6WINBetaDriver.aspx AMD Catalyst 13.4 (12.104.0.0 March 28) Official WHQL 32bit http://www2.ati.com/drivers/13-4_win7_win8_32_dd_ccc_whql.exe AMD Catalyst 13.4 (12.104.0.0 March 28) Official WHQL 64bit http://www2.ati.com/drivers/13-4_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql.exe Latest Application Profile: AMD Catalyst Application Profiles 13.5 CAP1 (May 22) http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx EDIT: Updated when I notice new drivers come out.
Haha really? It was easier to hate on them before they turned massive resources towards making the HD7000 series better and better and better...
The 7000 cards are badass. Love my 7950. Does it out perform an nvidea in rF2? Not sure but I get wicked performance and graphics in other games.
My guess is a stock GTX660Ti may edge out a stock HD7950 in rF2. However in most other games and certainly overall, the HD7950 has it. The HD7950's have awesome overclocking headroom and cooling - not to mention all the performance improvements via the drivers that have come since release, and are yet to come. There are even excellent BIOS flashing options for the truly brave (I have). Replace your HD7950 in a few months with a HD7990 (when the price comes down again), and 3way xfire them. I have a GPU chubby. http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1458&products_id=22314
My old 6950 was a real sleeper with the bios switch. I flashed it to a 6970 and it ran great. I can see where the 7950 would be a worthy choice. I ran 2 MSI 6970 Lightnings for a while but the driver were never quite right. Nice to see the new driver team making some good software.
Yeah it is only just recently it seems that AMD is throwing serious money and development at it. I have just been browsing the HD7990(HD7970X2) -the fastest video card in the world atm.
I heard alot of these latency/stutter improvements will come in the next driver update (13.2), 13.1 just came out, so I guess another month or so. Does this affect 69xx series cards as well???? I'm guessing yes? Can't wait to try the 13.1, I just picked up a third 6950, finally back to tri-fire, well once my new insane psu comes in Remember wether you are a single or multi amd GPU user, always update to the latest caps. They are like mini updates that come out from time to time in between full driver updates.
AMD VIDEO DRIVER INSTALL TIP unless you need it, when installing the driver, click custom, NOT express, then only select 3 things: 1. catalyst control centre 2. sdk runtimes 3. graphics driver (or video driver or whatever, this is the driver itself) 4. and the catalyst install manager will be greyed out and ticked no matter what just those 4, you don't need that other bloatware crap, transcoding, drag n drop, smoothvision, hydra, etc etc
It is possible that if you have a motherboard that uses AMD chipset that you might want some of the other "bloatware crap". If you are watching or making HD video's you may also want it, but not sure what was changed. It really all depends on what you wish and if you always do a complete uninstall of current drivers prior to installing new ones.
too bad it's only for newer cards. the rest will die lonely (since 12.6). at least for nvidia even older cards gets newer driver updates
yeah its very strange, i tried the new 13.1's with my HD6950 crossfire set up and got 10% more fps...? went from 176 to 192... it doesn't really make that much difference as i run vsync at 60fps though, but pCars is also running better, so it must have some effect on older cards, unless its just better crossfire implementation?
I don't think any of that other stuff has anything to do with your chipsets drivers, but ya you may want it/need it for other things video editing/making stuff, that's why I specifically said "unless you need it" . Also, I would have thought that most video editing/maker guys would be using other better software and programs for converting video and all that jazz, rather than the AMD GPU driver stuff but I don't know much about video editing to be honest with you.
Using the AMD GPU assisted transcoding is MUCH faster than just CPU. Rendering and converting formats for HD video is around 400% quicker with the right settings and presets. In regards to other cards receiving benefits from the coming AMD updates, I am pretty sure that the latency issues they are targeting were also present on previous gen AMD cards?
400% faster really? So if I have fraps or dxtory (I use dxtory) and I record video with it and want to put it on YouTube but need to convert it first, this will make it ALOT faster than lets say a quadcore 2500k at 4.8 ghz?
If the program uses GPU then yes it will be a lot faster. In most cases GPUs are so fast that you actually become bottlenecked because of the hard drive, so for really fast coverting you should use SSD or drives in RAID setup.
There are also some unofficial 13.2 Beta drivers, but read descriptions on page and decide. http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/amd_catalyst_13_2_beta_download.html "THE LEAKED BETA 13.2 IS AN UNFINISHED DRIVER SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO TEST FRAME LATENCY, WITH NO FINAL QA COMPLETED ON ANYTHING ELSE IN THE DRIVER. PLUS OTHER GOODIES INTENDED FOR THE REAL 13.2 ARE MISSING. DO NOT INSTALL IT IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT BETA." Also, here are some tests of 13.2 drivers and there is BIG improvement in latency times, http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times/2