Tuesday, May 6th 2014
AMD Pulls Catalyst 14.4 WHQL, Reposts it with a Cautionary Note
Over the weekend enthusiasts couldn't find AMD's Catalyst software suite 14.4 WHQL on the company's Game portal. The company reposted it a little later, with a cautionary note about why they had to pull the download. Apparently, the AMD motherboard chipset drivers included in the suite were later found to be unstable on some systems, particularly the southbridge AHCI driver. The issue seems to affect only certain southbridges, the SB700, SB710, and SB750. There's no word on newer generations of southbridges with SATA 6 Gb/s controllers and FIS switches, such as SB850, SB950, and A-series FCH chipsets, being affected. Our SB950-based motherboard isn't showing any signs of instability. AMD rebuilt the suite without the affected driver when it re-posted the suite later on Monday.
Source:
Heise.de
34 Comments on AMD Pulls Catalyst 14.4 WHQL, Reposts it with a Cautionary Note
Personally, I still have yet to find a AMD card that has fixed the "ghost image" in the end issue in minecraft, that's been there since uh.... the X1900 series. That's pretty sad. Just one example.
I think it's a well known fact that AMD has shitty OpenGL support though. Some people may not care.
Anyways I have been with nvidia for years then decided because the 590 was out of stock to get some 6990's. Since the , I have been with AMD and had no issues other than a few with bf4.
Admittedly, minecraft is not the best OpenGL benchmark, but at least in that game it's night and day difference on any configuration. AMD can't even get mipmapping working without a huge performance penalty.
Since most games are Direct3d though anyways, I'm not too worried. And to be fair, AMD is making major strides everyday in performance on OpenGL. I just wish they'd fix a few of the long lingering bugs I've noticed.
Like this:
img.techpowerup.org/140512/2014-05-11_19.17.33.png
See that cloud/whirlpool in the distance? That should not be there, ever.
By the way, the issue I referenced is well documented to be AMD's fault, and is listed here:
bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-1607
I can't tell you personally how many times I've had to work around AMD's buggy openGL implementations. Mojang seems to suggest it even extends to DirectX, this has not been my experience. AMD's excellent hardware and decent improvement rate is the reason I bought into AMD now. I believe they have the ability to fix the graphics driver issues, but pulling the wool over your eyes won't fix anything... I mean come on. A problem is a problem.
The fact that they pulled the driver is at least evidence that they are being proactive about this quality issue, which is more than I can say for several users here. Just because major games work (and have implemented appropriate workarounds) does not make AMD hardware drivers "good."
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-review-benchmark,3659-13.html
Most of the AMD cards come out on top of the Nvidia cards with the K5000 in this benchmark being on top with the old W9000 right behind it. That of course leaves some of the more recent cards out, but its pretty apparent that most of the AMD cards outmatch the Nvidia cards. The new W9100 is a blaster when it comes to OpenGL.
The linux drivers are crap, but everyone knows that and honestly I can't blame them for giving it a low attention level. The thing that still irks me and has been longstanding is them (as Mojang put it) playing "playing fast-and-loose with graphics APIs." Admitedly as a dev I have only noticed this in OpenGL land, but their cards do behave differently than NVIDIA ones (or most other manufacturers for that matter) when using some common commands, and I refuse to believe that issue is situated in hardware. It's the drivers.
Ironically, the FireGL drivers do seem much better and more spec accurate, but the average Radeon user can't get them.
I couldn't live boot to Ubuntu, Backtrack, Fedora, Windows 7, and for whatever reason I couldn't boot to the Startup Repair for Windows...
I gave up last night and left my PC unplugged, since I started diving into posts about sleep mode and sleep issues (I have narcolepsy too so that's kinda funny haha). ME AND MY PC ARE LYK BROs.
Anyways... tried Windows 7 again this morning and no-go still, but Startup Repair worked the 2nd time. It BSOD'd on me the first.
Resolution (so far): was to go back to an earlier restore point, which rolls back your drivers (not your files), and start researching. I might install a slightly older version of the software until they get this fixed. Pretty sure my PC wants AHCI working. Also, off the top of my head, I know there's a noahci parameter in Linux that should prevent the OS from hanging upon boot. I was too lazy to try it. I pretty much pin-pointed it to the SATA settings in the MOBO or sleep/suspend settings.
Good luck to everyone. Hope this helps someone.