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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Parhel - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Major PITA install for me. I figured I could just 'upgrade' so I installed the new driver without uninstalling the old one first. I do not recommend that!TiGr1982 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Same thing for my AMD Brazos box, you're not alone. Even completely uninstalling didn't really help. Had to return to the previous 14.8 for APUs. Not a big deal though, absolutely.Welcome to the world of AMD Catalyst /Sarcasm
atlantico - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
If you use DDU then everything is uninstalled and you can't blame AMD for your BSOD. Literally everything is cleared out with DDU, it's as if you never installed anything.jdrch - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
"I have to say that AMD's drivers can be a much bigger pain in the butt than NVIDIA's."- I've used both on multiple machines and have had the exact opposite experience.
jdrch - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
"I've actually never had an AMD driver install crash or fail in any sort of way" - This has been my experience exactly."Uninstalling the drivers completely before installing a new version is always a good move. Not necessary in most cases, but a good move."
- You'd think so, but I tried that once with an Nvidia Quadro on a Dell Precision and got caught in a horrible bootloop in which Windows Update would detect the card as new hardware and pull drivers for it, thus causing the Nvidia driver installation to fail. I never managed to fix the problem. Haven't done a clean GPU driver install since, and so far that's worked out well for me.
atlantico - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
@jdrich: damn that's rough, ok I'd qualify it then with "in most cases on desktop towers it is a good move to completely remove the drivers"... and as before, it may not be necessary to do so.I'm not religious about computer voodoo and my ideas never work for laptops, which are their own universe, often with very custom drivers and chips to make things run smooth.
What I'm saying is this: on my desktop tower (which probably weighs 20+kg containing the large version of everything) it has served me well, especially when using beta drivers, to completely uninstall GPU drivers before installing new ones.
I was far to generic in my previous claim and you're right. It's not always wise or appropriate to unstall GPU drivers completely.
creed3020 - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Do you have any systems with APUs? I personally don't find them any friendlier that dGPUs for installs. Just curious.I've seen installs on top of previous versions almost always fail. I got to the point where I archive all my old versions just in case I cannot install the new version...
Rock1m1 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Still has the Display standby issue for me: A lot of times the display does not wake up when when it is on standby.TiGr1982 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
What's your GPU/card?(I never had this problem on my Radeon HD 7950 Boost with any AMD drivers so far)
atlantico - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
What is your system, GPU and OS? I'm not 100% sure this is a GPU issue.