14 DAY TRIAL // You may have noticed that Advanced Micro Devices has been updating the Catalyst driver a bit less often than NVIDIA has been doing it to its GeForce. It turns out that the former was totally serious when it said it just wanted more time to create something truly awesome. As the first serious software update in the last 2 years, Catalyst Omega brings a lot to the table.
It might come across as too strong a praise, but AMD has indeed released a new driver series, and said driver series improves the video performance of a personal computer by up to 29%.
Advanced Micro Devices calls the new suite “Catalyst Omega Driver” and will maintain and update it as the new, prime software component for its consumer graphics business.
Made for “empowering customers [and] enabling developers,” it increases performance of Radeon add-in graphics cards by 19% and Accelerated processing Units (APUs) by 29%. In systems with both GPUs and APUs (Dual Graphics), you get an extra (depending on certain conditions) 15% boost.
The boosts will vary somewhat depending on the composition of the PCs the parts are in, and the parts themselves, but nonetheless the improvements should be quite clear if you look for them.
The AMD Catalyst Omega “Special Edition” driver components
The following are performance improvements, features and reliability assets that will apply to all driver releases from AMD, from now on.
Ultra HD-like experience is an asset. With most films and videos not available in 4K quality (3840 x 2160 pixels), AMD implemented a 1080p upscaling technology, as well as AMD Fluid Motion Video (better Blue-ray playback), Contour Removal (no compression artifacts), and 1080p Detail Enhancement (improves even low-res video).
The Gaming Features are impressive as well. Besides the Frame Pacing Enhancements brought to specific titles (Batman Arkham Origins, Metro Series, Sniper Elite 3, Tomb Raider), you get to experience better dual graphics (GPU+APU).
Virtual Super Resolution is notable as well, for rendering a game in 4K and displaying it in 1080p. This essentially makes games look better even in 1080p setup if your graphics card can support 4K but your monitor can't (or you don't have a multi-display setup). Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing is also simulated for games that don't have it.
5K monitor support has also been added (5120 x 2880 resolution), along with 24-display Eyefinity setups. Yes, you can combine 24 screens if you have enough video cards in CrossFire. Finally, owners of Alienware laptops can supplement their graphics with external video adapters.
What you can look forward to in 2015
Besides everything above, AMD has been improving the Mantle API and has 100 game developers in its Mantle Beta program, with 20 Mantle API games having been launched or being in development.
Mantle Games will allow for Twitch Streaming, video editing, game capture and stream of recordings, all through a single app (AMD Gaming Evolved). OpenCL 2.0, TressFX Hair and the Maya plugin will all be used by game makers.
Finally, the Hybrid System Architecture runtime has been improved and expanded upon, so that future games can use GPUs and CPU cores equally well in C++ AMP, C++ Parallel STL, Java, Python, and OpenMP programming languages.
Download AMD Catalyst Omega Driver 14.12 now to enjoy all the benefits.
