"Considering AMD has yet to publish a WHQL certified Win7 driver for GCN"
Isn't that the truth! My 4890 finally bit the dust and was beyond excited about the 7970 launch the same week... only to be disappointed by atrocious driver releases for a month.
I've had the same thing with 4870's, 5870's and 6970's on release. I always have Crossfire too. All the time AMD's drivers have been really poor for atleast the first 2 months, and even worse when you have Crossfire. Sometimes just getting the drivers to actually install properly has been a big issue. I miss Nvidia drivers but AMD has always had the better hardware / price for me for a while.
But i've learned my lesson which is why i've not got a 7970 on release this time.
So you guys are complaining about AMD not releasing drivers for an OS that was just released yesterday and is still in the Customer Preview stage? So what did Nvidia release yesterday?
Nvidia released a WHQL driver last week and works with Win8, tested with my gtx 460 sli setup. No problems. I've read there are more 3D features built in to win8, but am unable to test those since I don't have a 3D monitor.
So are the drivers for the 7000-series actually that bad? All it says is that they haven't released a WHQL certified driver, which doesn't say anything about the quality of the drivers.
Unfortunately, yes. The "Preview 11" drivers are, at least on my system, the best. Almost no issues, but, according to the benchmarks are not the best performing. The current release candidate was freezing both at desktop and gaming, at least for me - and that was after a full reformat. I'm confident the card itself is fine, since it runs perfectly fine 95% of the time under the preview 11 driver.
With such paradigm shift, AMD might need many months to fix the drivers. The new architecture is very different, so the drivers will be completely redesigned and reimplemented from the ground up, I guess.
So, in other words, the same as usual, it takes forever and is never really fixed, 5 out of the 25 bugs always get you no matter the version nor the hotfix nor the cap combo. This is nothing but the usual, and it won't be any sooner or later than the usual, which is unbearable for about 47% of amd users for the lifetime of their cards.
The built-in driver should be good enough for WDDM 1.1 cards. Or for that matter, the current Catalyst driver should be fine (though you'd have to do some extra work to get it to install).
The only real purpose of this driver is to enable WDDM 1.2 for the cards that support it (AMD's DX11 cards).
My guess would be their trying to make the final touches on their 12.2 drivers and combine VLW4/5 & GCN into one package instead of the fragmented driver packages we've seen since GCN released (Preview releases I mean, not WHQL obviously). Seeing how GCN is a major architecture change compared to their VLW architecture. They must be trying to understand how the hardware works while optimizing the drivers.
Honestly, I expected this. I'm also expecting major performance improvements down the road. I just hope AMD comes through.
Honestly this is a major issue and concern as a worst-case scenario for AMD after their 3rd major arch in the span of a little over a year. How long, if ever, will it take to merge their different driver branches that support the 3 different driver archs on their last 3 generations of video cards?
I guess that's a major benefit of Nvidia's driver and GPU arch, backward compatibility. All goes back to CUDA and a true vision and commitment to that vision as it seems Nvidia keeps building on their GPU architecture with backward compatibility while AMD just continues to release new features on new GPUs but no support on older ones.
No, NVIDIA doesn't build backward compatible cards. They've just managed to guess the future proof architecture at once years ago. While NVIDIA was making GPGPUs, AMD was making GPUs for games.
No Nvidia built an architecture that did both well because they saw the similarities involved with HPC and GPU rendering. AMD is only finally realizing this.
They also put the legwork into developing CUDA and ensuring full forward and backward compatibility with their CUDA-capable GPUs going back go G80.
Also when I refer to backward compatibility, I'm talking about new or improved features, like 3D Vision, PhysX or SGSSAA that may have been introduced after a product launch but are still compatible with the older cards too.
Now look at how AMD handled the situation with SGSSAA with DX9 only on certain cards...now DX10/11 finally but only on 7-series, but you get the idea. GCN is going to be more of the same for GPU compute but luckily for AMD, they don't have much of an HPC business to disturb with the discontinuity.
Yeah, like 3 monitor surround gaming for the GTX200 series, introduced after the cards launched - so like a big added value for that whole series, which is still right now a great value to take advantage of as 2x 260 2x 275 2x 280 and 2x285 are really nice triple monitor sli combos some under $200 right now. Plus the ambient occlusion addition in the drivers that went back to the G80 in that case I think. ( amd fans told me they hated shadows in games when that happened - lol ) Now since ambient occlusion is kind of standard like in BF3, it's great of course say amd fans - thanks to Nvidia....
So now amd has abandoned gpu's for games, as you and yours have claimed nvidia did with gpgpu's. How does it feel to be abandoned by amd ? How does it feel when they don't give one whit about you the gamer ? ( I suspect your tune carrying will suddenly undergo a 180 degree transformation).
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18 Comments
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Zok - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
"Considering AMD has yet to publish a WHQL certified Win7 driver for GCN"Isn't that the truth! My 4890 finally bit the dust and was beyond excited about the 7970 launch the same week... only to be disappointed by atrocious driver releases for a month.
C'mon AMD! Let's get this fixed.
B3an - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
It's always like this with AMD.I've had the same thing with 4870's, 5870's and 6970's on release. I always have Crossfire too. All the time AMD's drivers have been really poor for atleast the first 2 months, and even worse when you have Crossfire. Sometimes just getting the drivers to actually install properly has been a big issue. I miss Nvidia drivers but AMD has always had the better hardware / price for me for a while.
But i've learned my lesson which is why i've not got a 7970 on release this time.
highlnder69 - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
So you guys are complaining about AMD not releasing drivers for an OS that was just released yesterday and is still in the Customer Preview stage? So what did Nvidia release yesterday?jeremyshaw - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Considering you didn't read, I wonder if this message is worth the time typing out, however, I guess others will read it.Both are talking about late Win7 drivers. Get a grip.
notty22 - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Nvidia released a WHQL driver last week and works with Win8, tested with my gtx 460 sli setup. No problems.I've read there are more 3D features built in to win8, but am unable to test those since I don't have a 3D monitor.
kyuu - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
So are the drivers for the 7000-series actually that bad? All it says is that they haven't released a WHQL certified driver, which doesn't say anything about the quality of the drivers.Zok - Friday, March 2, 2012 - link
Unfortunately, yes. The "Preview 11" drivers are, at least on my system, the best. Almost no issues, but, according to the benchmarks are not the best performing. The current release candidate was freezing both at desktop and gaming, at least for me - and that was after a full reformat. I'm confident the card itself is fine, since it runs perfectly fine 95% of the time under the preview 11 driver.Zingam - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
With such paradigm shift, AMD might need many months to fix the drivers. The new architecture is very different, so the drivers will be completely redesigned and reimplemented from the ground up, I guess.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
So, in other words, the same as usual, it takes forever and is never really fixed, 5 out of the 25 bugs always get you no matter the version nor the hotfix nor the cap combo.This is nothing but the usual, and it won't be any sooner or later than the usual, which is unbearable for about 47% of amd users for the lifetime of their cards.
Spivonious - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Boo, where's the support for HD3000 series? Or is the built-in driver good enough for WDDM 1.1 cards?Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
The built-in driver should be good enough for WDDM 1.1 cards. Or for that matter, the current Catalyst driver should be fine (though you'd have to do some extra work to get it to install).The only real purpose of this driver is to enable WDDM 1.2 for the cards that support it (AMD's DX11 cards).
Aikouka - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I guess this might explain why they missed their usual monthly Catalyst release as 12.1 is still available on their site as the latest stable release.Glibous - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
My guess would be their trying to make the final touches on their 12.2 drivers and combine VLW4/5 & GCN into one package instead of the fragmented driver packages we've seen since GCN released (Preview releases I mean, not WHQL obviously). Seeing how GCN is a major architecture change compared to their VLW architecture. They must be trying to understand how the hardware works while optimizing the drivers.Honestly, I expected this. I'm also expecting major performance improvements down the road. I just hope AMD comes through.
chizow - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Honestly this is a major issue and concern as a worst-case scenario for AMD after their 3rd major arch in the span of a little over a year. How long, if ever, will it take to merge their different driver branches that support the 3 different driver archs on their last 3 generations of video cards?I guess that's a major benefit of Nvidia's driver and GPU arch, backward compatibility. All goes back to CUDA and a true vision and commitment to that vision as it seems Nvidia keeps building on their GPU architecture with backward compatibility while AMD just continues to release new features on new GPUs but no support on older ones.
Zingam - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
No, NVIDIA doesn't build backward compatible cards. They've just managed to guess the future proof architecture at once years ago. While NVIDIA was making GPGPUs, AMD was making GPUs for games.chizow - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
No Nvidia built an architecture that did both well because they saw the similarities involved with HPC and GPU rendering. AMD is only finally realizing this.They also put the legwork into developing CUDA and ensuring full forward and backward compatibility with their CUDA-capable GPUs going back go G80.
Also when I refer to backward compatibility, I'm talking about new or improved features, like 3D Vision, PhysX or SGSSAA that may have been introduced after a product launch but are still compatible with the older cards too.
For example, Nvidia rolls out SGSSAA by accident with Fermi and the functionality is available for 8800GTX too: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,748911/Geforce-...
Now look at how AMD handled the situation with SGSSAA with DX9 only on certain cards...now DX10/11 finally but only on 7-series, but you get the idea. GCN is going to be more of the same for GPU compute but luckily for AMD, they don't have much of an HPC business to disturb with the discontinuity.
CeriseCogburn - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Yeah, like 3 monitor surround gaming for the GTX200 series, introduced after the cards launched - so like a big added value for that whole series, which is still right now a great value to take advantage of as 2x 260 2x 275 2x 280 and 2x285 are really nice triple monitor sli combos some under $200 right now.Plus the ambient occlusion addition in the drivers that went back to the G80 in that case I think. ( amd fans told me they hated shadows in games when that happened - lol )
Now since ambient occlusion is kind of standard like in BF3, it's great of course say amd fans - thanks to Nvidia....
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
So now amd has abandoned gpu's for games, as you and yours have claimed nvidia did with gpgpu's.How does it feel to be abandoned by amd ?
How does it feel when they don't give one whit about you the gamer ?
( I suspect your tune carrying will suddenly undergo a 180 degree transformation).