AMD Releases Catalyst 14.9 Drivers
by Jarred Walton on September 29, 2014 7:15 PM EST
It seems like it's been a long time since we've seen a WHQL driver release from AMD… and it has been. The previous WHQL driver dates back to April, the Catalyst 14.4 drivers, so we're close to five months between updates. In the interim, AMD has had beta/release candidate drivers for 14.6 and 14.7, along with the initial driver release for the R9 285 Tonga GPU. The new 14.9 drivers appear to be the official release of the R9 285 drivers, with version numbering of 14.301 (compared to 14.300 for the launch driver).
As usual, there are quite a few updates listed in the release notes, with minor to moderate performance improvements noted for 3DMark Sky Diver and Fire Strike, 3DMark11, Bioshock Infinite, Company of Heroes 2, Crysis 3, GRID Autosport, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare, Batman: Arkham Origins, Wildstar, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV, Lichdom, and StarCraft II. There's no mention made of any of the upcoming games, so it looks like we'll mostly be looking for hotfixes to address any issues with yet-to-be-released games. Other changes include Mantle support for AMD mobile products with Enduro technology.
The drivers are available at the usual place, and support is specifically listed for the R9/R7/R5 series of desktop and mobile GPUs, along with the earlier HD 5000/6000/7000/8000 series of desktop and mobile GPUs. APU support is also included for the R7/R6/R5/R3 products and all APUs with HD 6000D/G or newer graphics (which basically means all of AMD's APUs). In other words, if you have a Direct3D 11 enabled GPU from AMD, the drivers should be available (though there are likely mobile products where that may not be the case).
Source: AMD
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meacupla - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
I don't think drivers would help as much as price drops would...TiGr1982 - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
It seems, that AMD pretends that nothing is happening, so no official price drops so far (after GM204 release) AFAIK.The Von Matrices - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Their lineup has too many cards to just drop the price on all of them. If AMD did that, then there would be $10 price differences between each model. I wonder which will be discontinued.TiGr1982 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Yes, and it seems that currently GM204 drops all of their cards lineup -like dropping a card-house...
Samus - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
I think they're still cleaning up all the poop that dropped out two weeks ago.Once that mess is taken care of they'll focus on price drops.
Tetracycloide - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Needs both really. Implementing downsampling in the drivers would help at least a little.TiGr1982 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
May be of interest to somebody, probably:It seems that this new package (14.9 WHQL) may have issues with old APUs - on my TV box with E2-1800 (Brazos, very first AMD APU in fact) with so-called HD 7340 (80 VLIW5 shader integrated GPU) 14.9 WHWL installed fine, but CCC started crashing constantly, so I had to return back to previous 14.8 for APUs on this box (that package works fine, however).
Nevertheless, 14.9 WHQL (news subject) is working fine with my big desktop GCN-based HD 7950 (aka R9 280), so, in my personal experience, this 14.9 WHQL is more aimed towards discrete GPUs.
TiGr1982 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
WHQL, I meant, and Zacate, not Brazos (same thing though).heffeque - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I've got a E-450 and was thinking of installing Win8.1x64 (clean). I'll try 14.9 first, just in case it's just your system failing, but if mine does too, I'll know that 14.8 works fine.Thanks for the heads up!
atlantico - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
The 14.9 WHQL drivers fixed the DisplayPort problem I had with 14.4 WHQL on my HD7950, so I'm a happy camper and can use DP again!