I really do not see the "WHQL Signed Drivers" being something special. They literally offer no performance differences just because the label is different. I also personally do not care if they do not release a driver every week because its annoying to have to constantly worry if this driver will break something on the system (or a different game). The only thing I find lacking is their CFX support as of late as I would hope they can release more CFX profiles for the games so we can actually use our setups. It can be especially annoying to someone like me with 3 cards trying to run 4k.

But for the WHQL certification, I could not care less and I cannot understand why people would care about that. I have not had a single issue with an AMD driver in a very long time so I do not get why we always have to fight over whose drivers are better at this point.

An ode to those who doubt TPU's integrity.

(A poem, for those of maddened thought)

In days of old, when people were bold and the web wasn't invented
we looked at the news, read our 'to-do's and generally were contented
now the web is spun wide, our eyes turn inside and our voices snarl demented
Cast your aspersions, all factual perversions but your views will not be lamented.

Take your paranoid delusional thoughts elsewhere. TPU doesn't need your hysterics.

ensabrenoir...do you think that any of it will stop an enthusiast from buying Amd's new top cards? Most of the line is rumored to be re brands so they will be fine. The middle and low tier have little to worry about.

I think my issue is... as this guise of an editorial is staged, TPU still have not offered "true news" about AMD and their reveal at Computex.
hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/83254-amd-may-reveal-new-apus-gpus-june-3rd-computex/

While there's speculation/rumors we should be always be aware of the facts (Just the facts, ma'am.”; Sergeant Joe Friday) and the fact is we have about 15 days to hear the real developments.

I might consider the only true "reuse-as is" of any AMD chip that falls within the mainstream gaming category might be the Tonga (1792 Sp) part.

For the record, every driver hosting in our Downloads section earns us just enough revenue per month to buy this (foreground):


And at the end of that month, a new driver will have come out, and our hosting revenues for that driver dry up.

the54thvoid(A poem, for those of maddened thought)

In days of old, when people were bold and the web wasn't invented
we looked at the news, read our 'to-do's and generally were contented
now the web is spun wide, our eyes turn inside and our voices snarl demented
Cast your aspersions, all factual perversions but your views will not be lamented.

Wow, you came up with that... here just for this, you appear to have missed your calling! :rockout:
Actually, kind of a Hans Christian Andersen vibe...

Solaris17I get a WHQL AMD driver like every other week with windows 10.

Me too. Such a meaningless thread.

Oh....BTW, 15.2 WHQL sucks. I'm still using 15.3 beta. 15.4's not as good either.

czaczi87Also the Crossfire support is crap. I have 2x R9 290's and can't utilize the second card in The Witcher 3 and CF in GTA 5 is also broken. I am now strongly considering selling those two Radeons and buying a GTX 980 or a 980 Ti if the price won't be murderous.

Patience is a virtue. Just because of 1 game you get all immature and baby-like buy saying that you will jump ship? Been there, done that, and have not looked back from Nvidia because their drivers, while frequent and fix issues for new AAA at launch, other games suffer; One step forward, two steps back.


WTF are you talking about CFX for GTA V is broken? It works wonderfully since the beta drivers (15.4) and using Eyefinity runs like a dream. 6048x1080 maxed settings (FXAA) I am getting a smooth 60fps with no stuttering with my CFX HD7950!

BansakuPatience is a virtue. Just because of 1 game you get all immature and baby-like buy saying that you will jump ship? Been there, done that, and have not looked back from Nvidia because their drivers, while frequent and fix issues for new AAA at launch, other games suffer; One step forward, two steps back.


WTF are you talking about CFX for GTA V is broken? It works wonderfully since the beta drivers (15.4) and using Eyefinity runs like a dream. 6048x1080 maxed settings (FXAA) I am getting a smooth 60fps with no stuttering with my CFX HD7950!

Well, in GTA 5 I had micro-stuttering and while having higher maximum fps I had occasional drops to 30+fps. That was so annoying that I turned off CF, overclocked the single R9 290@1140/1450, tuned down presets to High (also no AA) and played the game.

Now The Witcher 3 has no CF support which is also dissapointing at the least. Thankfully, when I turned off Hairworks and switched HBAO+ to SSAO I got around 50-60fps with dips to 40 - weird enough the drops are nowhere near as noticeable as in GTA 5. Nonetheless, I would really want to turn everything ON and still have solid 60fps. That was the reason why I have bought a second GPU. I am a Witcher series fan (read every book, played every game) and built a pretty decent rig mainly for this game.

I hope that AMD will give us a new driver with CF support soon (supposedly this week). Truth be told I shouldn't have bought the second R9 290 when I noticed that for almost half a year AMD screwed with us and uploaded only one beta driver. The smart thing to do was to sell my first R9 290 and buy a GTX 980. But I thought: hey, with two GPU's I'll get better performance. I was a fool.

PS. Again, I'm sorry for some grammar mistakes but I'm from Poland and I sometimes struggle with your abundance of tenses ;)

This thread has made me paranoid. Now every time a AAA game title is released I'm going to

Look for updated drivers for...
Mouse - Click faster move smoother
Keyboard - Type and WASD move faster
HDD - Spin faster and smoother
SSD - Improve Read and Writes
PSU - For smoother cleaner power delivery
Speakers - Give it that extra Highs and LoWs for the Pew Pew

Then i'll do it all over again for the next game and the one after that and so on.

I just hope each component in my PCs update their drivers with each game title release.

czaczi87PS. Again, I'm sorry for some grammar mistakes but I'm from Poland and I sometimes struggle with your abundance of tenses

Actually, it was pretty good.

czaczi87PS. Again, I'm sorry for some grammar mistakes but I'm from Poland and I sometimes struggle with your abundance of tenses ;)

Meanwhile, I'm from Lithuania and I struggle with the lack of tenses in English B|

Not to mention the 14.12 was crap and corrupted images in folders (visual corruption only of thumbnails and larger images) on systems running APU's...

However the current beta drive did fix this bug :)

Was wondering myself why the heck it has taken so long for any updates beyond the crappy 14.12

FluffmeisterWith this many apologists supporting them, I'm amazed AMD are in such dire straits.

Everyone knows they chose love over gold


/sad trombone

NosadaA lot of this has obviously to do with the fact that many devs are apparently filled with great artists and crappy coders, and even among them, the ones doing the port to PC are second choice.

As a software developer (I don't do games and don't want to,) but doing what you suggest isn't simply easy. Devs aren't some mythical type of person who have magic powers. I think the problem comes down to having poor tools to do such development.

The current project I'm working on for work is JVM based, written in Clojure, and is highly multi-threaded. Clojure is a great language for that, but then you might ask, "Then why not make a game in it!". Well, the JVM (and Clojure) have piss poor libraries for 3D.

So I think we need to take a step back, not blame the devs, and... blame the devs. :)

More time needs to be taken to develop these tools that devs need to effectively make multi-threaded games. The technology is there, it's just not being utilized properly by virtue of the tools available and such a task is a lot more complicated than many believe.

btarunrFor the record, every driver hosting in our Downloads section earns us just enough revenue per month to buy this.

After the cost of the download servers? No way. The downloads section is operating at a loss, has been since forever, but it's a useful service to the community

OctopussAren't you supposed to write news articles? This is not the section to vent your opinions.
Also, stop repeating the same stupid mantra about the WHQL stuff. AMD repeatedly stated the "betas" were just as stable as the WHQL version, and the ONLY difference is the four letters.

I wouldn't have expected such stupid and useless thread from a staff member.

Just like any other human on the face of the Earth, bta is entitled to an opinion. That's what editorials are for, and this one is clearly marked as such. You have absolutely NO RIGHT whatsoever to tell him what he can and can't write, that's where his boss comes in. Such decisions need to be kept strictly in-house because if you can tell him what he can and can't do, then others can do the same as well and that's when real crap starts happening. You can agree or disagree with his opinion, that's what this forum is for after all, but stop thinking you're his boss, because you're not.

Personally, I like editorials a lot better than news, because the writer is free to also share educated guesses. And as many of you may have noticed, reviewers know a lot more about what's actually happening than your average Joe.

RelayerDrivers for TW3 have been a major drama. It's not because AMD hasn't wanted to do a driver. The cooperation between AMD and the dev have been really problematic. I haven't really heard AMD's side being reported, but the Dev has released statements, then recanted them, now they are working on something, said you couldn't optimize some Gameworks features for AMD. Now they apparently are working together on something. It's been a mess though.

If you think about it, all the problems AMD has had lately with games have come from titles that are a part of nVidia's GameWorks program. And I know a lot better than to think this is mere coincidence. It has happened before, after all (remember TWIMTBP, anyone?). It's not that AMD's drivers are suddenly crap or that they just don't care enough to roll out a good driver, it's that nVidia's GameWorks program, just like its predecessors, isn't about helping devs make better games, but about making sure games run great and with all the bells and whistles ONLY on nVidia's hardware.

czaczi87Are you people blind or is AMD paying you to write this crap? "If it's not broken, don't fix it" - yeah, but you are forgetting that almost every freaking AAA game in the last half year had poorer performance on AMD cards than on Nvidia cards. Also the Crossfire support is crap. I have 2x R9 290's and can't utilize the second card in The Witcher 3 and CF in GTA 5 is also broken. I am now strongly considering selling those two Radeons and buying a GTX 980 or a 980 Ti if the price won't be murderous.

PS. Sorry for my language usage but I'm not a native speaker.

Maybe you should just consider buying a single single-GPU card next time, one fitted out with a damn good cooling system, instead of wasting money on multi-GPU setups, which only ever work out as intended for benchmarks. If you actually want to play games and enjoy them, just get the best single-GPU card you can afford and you'll have a great time. If you want to brag about sinking an ungodly amount of money into your computer, well, you'll just have to deal with reality.

qubitAMD are fucked. I couldn't possibly recommend any of their products now with such lack of support for premium products. Well, premiumly priced products, anyway.

If this new senior management don't turn the company around asap, we'll probably look at the death of the company within a year. I'm beginning to suspect it's too late already.

What are you on?

OctopussI wouldn't be surprised, considering half or more of the news posts have (PR) in front of them. Maybe TPU is even being paid to put that stuff there.

Well, that's how most tech sites get their news. Save for the occasional rumor and other unofficial sources, most of the information you'll read in the news section comes from actual press releases.

midnightoilWHQL is completely meaningless, and NVIDIA's driver situation is far more controversial - not only have they introduced a lot of bugs lately, but update after update they downgrade the performance of the last generation, sometimes to levels where it's farcical. He's yet to write an editorial about this, and I'm sure he won't. I absolutely guarantee you he's either received favour / recompense for this, or is hoping to curry favour as he knows how kindly NVIDIA looks on this kind of crap. It's so utterly blatant, especially as it comes in the middle of a negative PR storm against NVIDIA because of GameWorks & driver shenanigans.

Previously I had adblock disabled for TPU. As of reading this article, it's enabled. I'd strongly urge anyone else who disagrees with this kind of propaganda to enable ad-block too.

To be honest, I've seen how an article looks if it has been paid for or influenced by interested parties (read: corporations) and this doesn't really cut it. There's just one part that I find odd, and I'll be discussing it further down in this post, but right now I can't say I've seen anything that would actually lead me to believe nVidia is behind this editorial (being the interested party in this case).

btarunrBy then, it will have been 196 days since a Catalyst WHQL driver release. Such a slow driver update cycle would do little to inspire confidence in buying the next-generation Radeon product, even if it establishes a performance lead over GeForce.

Are you actually serious about this statement? As in, are you really saying that even if AMD rolled out a (significantly) better card than the Titan-X, that would yield better performance in real life, not just benchmarks, you would still prefer buying the Titan-X just because AMD releases drivers less often, especially WHQL ones? If so, I must say, this can hardly be called impartial reasoning.

First and foremost, as anyone working for a tech site would know, especially someone that's been in this business as long as you, the driver teams are generally busy with working on the drivers for the new stuff before any major new release. As the 390X is right around the corner and it's going to use technology that's never been used before (HBM), I find it hard to ask just what in hell they're doing since the answer is rather obvious.

Second of all, as long as I already have a fully functional driver at hand, I can hardly find a logical reason to demand new drivers every other day or so. And quite frankly, 14.12 Omega has been just about the best driver AMD has rolled out in a long, long time and I haven't had the slightest issue with it. I never even bothered to check for beta stuff. Then again, it's true that I didn't even care about Project Cars, or GTA V and that I run a single-GPU setup and don't have to worry about CrossFire profiles and all that mess. I will be playing The Witcher 3, however, but not for a while (I'm going to grab the Homeworld Remastered Collection first, for the sake of the good old times), and I'm quite sure that I'll have an adequate driver for that (that being the one launched right with the new cards). I do have to go with the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" saying here. I care a lot more about having a driver that's good enough to satisfy my needs for a longer period of time than I do about changing drivers sooner than socks.

Third, you're bound to get a new WHQL driver with the new series of graphics cards, which is very soon.

scorpion_amd13If you think about it, all the problems AMD has had lately with games have come from titles that are a part of nVidia's GameWorks program.

Both inaccurate and very simplistic. Take one of the latest AAA titles for example. GTA V isn't wholly a GameWorks title, and even with a high degree of studio/IHV involvement and foreknowledge, Some AMD graphics users still managed to have their enjoyment spoiled by the fact that MSAA is still problematic, while a more pervasive problem exists with the same game and AMD's shitfest that goes by the name Enduro (or is now just switchable graphics?).
Nvidia certainly have some highly dubious strategies regarding game development, but to absolve AMD of any blame whatsoever with game drivers is apologist nonsense - especially when AMD themselves have come clean in the recent past regarding not paying close enough attention to what is going on with game development programs. Lest you forget, there have been instances where AMD's hardware simply refused to run a AAA title simply because no one at AMD thought to code for it.

I have a theory. Graphics card news has been kind of slow lately. Yes there has been some new information about the next amd gpu's, but it is relatively slow. The cards are not coming out for awhile. There is not a super exciting new card to review. 161 days is a factual observation, but every enthusiast knows it will cause a flame war. My theory is that this editorial was posted for the entertainment of w1zzard and btrunar.

MathraghAnd on the flipside, AMD users are repeatedly stating drivers lately have been more stable than they've ever been, while it seems to be the reverse for Nvidia users (anecdotally, as is tradition with these claims)

I can't help but feel like this is a bit of fear mongering, and apart from maybe that Cars game which might need a new driver (which AMD also said they were committed to bringing out soon) I mostly see their drivers performing very well.
Especially when you compare the performance of AMD cards to Nvidia's non-Maxwell generation, where the Titan and 780 Ti used to be stronger than their AMD counterparts the latter now outperform them in newer games.

I'm all for keeping manufacturers on their toes and all, but basing quality solely on 1 metric, and putting down some fairly baseless claims about the future viability of AMD in general is in my opinion not really beneficial to anything but pageviews/sensationalist journalism.


On a side note, they seem to be far from standing still in their windows 10 driver branch. See this thread (which happens to also shine light upon the major deficiency of AMD's current driver).

Edit: I tend to forget about crossfire it seems...

for me drivers have been a growing issue since they havent been released as often. The crossfire scene is in shambles because we cant get some drivers for games that have ether been out for weeks if not months. I didnt even touch farcry 4 until it got crossfire profiles which took around 4-6 months. My trust in AMD has been shaken so much that i was once considering buying a few 390x videos cards to replace my 3 290x video cards. Also the rumored price its outrageous for the 390x possibly being put at 850 bucks. If it is then I will not be buying new amd cards but possibly switching to nvidia.

scorpion_amd13As in, are you really saying that even if AMD rolled out a (significantly) better card than the Titan-X, that would yield better performance in real life, not just benchmarks, you would still prefer buying the Titan-X just because AMD releases drivers less often, especially WHQL ones?

You make it sound like driver updates have no other purpose than for GPU makers to "catch up" with their consumers with fancy splash screens on their driver installers. The purpose of driver updates is to ensure there are no bugs or performance issues, and consumers have the best experience, quick. The onus of a game being optimized for a GPU is NOT on the game developer. It's on the GPU maker. Game developers don't care beyond the game being playable on a particular hardware. AMD believed in just that, until 2013. We had driver updates (Beta/WHQL/hotfix/whatever), come out every fortnight. Either the golden age of PC gaming has ended, or AMD stopped taking drivers seriously.

It takes a special breed of ostrich mentality to overlook the fact that AMD has been lethargic with game optimizations and bug fixes in the past 6 months. Just because you don't see bugs doesn't mean the bugs aren't out there; and just because AMD slowed down its driver update model, doesn't mean there are fewer bugs to address these days. Especially not with the flood of new game releases for summer.

DarksovietDont blame AMD, the company is extremely busy now...:(

This is AMD.

RCoonCapitalising on a AAA release with a new driver is also great PR for any company. It's win-win for user and company. I get the subtle impression that the driver department either no longer exists (outsourced), or is comprised of very very few people.

They put out hiring notices for their driver department recently. Did we all forget about that? This screams to me of internally restructuring to get a competent driver team, cutting the dead wood so to speak.

Solidstate89The persecution complex is strong in this thread.

Laughably so.

I hate to admit it, but again, you guys are pretty much spot on. Nothing stated in that editorial was not true, and yet AMD has a million white knights coming to defend them.

Kinda makes me sad... At least admit there's a problem rather than deny it... Or at worst, can't we just admit maybe AMD is working on something like a new driver dev team? I mean come on, that's not denying the problem but at least it's using logic to justify it.

But for the WHQL certification, I could not care less and I cannot understand why people would care about that.

I certainly wouldn't care if it weren't such a cheap thing that they are skimping on. It points to their driver division having something major going on, and is certainly gossip worthy.

HumanSmokeBoth inaccurate and very simplistic. Take one of the latest AAA titles for example. GTA V isn't wholly a GameWorks title, and even with a high degree of studio/IHV involvement and foreknowledge, Some AMD graphics users still managed to have their enjoyment spoiled by the fact that MSAA is still problematic, while a more pervasive problem exists with the same game and AMD's shitfest that goes by the name Enduro (or is now just switchable graphics?).
Nvidia certainly have some highly dubious strategies regarding game development, but to absolve AMD of any blame whatsoever with game drivers is apologist nonsense - especially when AMD themselves have come clean in the recent past regarding not paying close enough attention to what is going on with game development programs. Lest you forget, there have been instances where AMD's hardware simply refused to run a AAA title simply because no one at AMD thought to code for it.

Well, is it or isn't it on the GameWorks list? Sure, some problems will always exist: this has been the way with software since... ever, actually. As for laptops and gaming... I don't remember when was the last time I recommended a laptop that had an AMD GPU in it.

And I'm not absolving AMD of anything regarding game drivers. When they suck, they suck and that's that. It's not like it hasn't happened before or that it will never happen again, for that matter. However, simply saying that AMD are evil because they don't chuck out WHQL drivers every time someone releases a new game makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What I care about is being able to play the game, whether I can do it using the driver I already have or downloading a new (beta) one. I don't care for the bells and whistles. And no, I don't remember any instance when, as you put it, AMD's hardware simply refused to run a AAA title because no one at AMD thought to code for it. Please refresh my memory.

btarunrYou make it sound like driver updates have no other purpose than for GPU makers to "catch up" with their consumers with fancy splash screens on their driver installers. The purpose of driver updates is to ensure there are no bugs or performance issues, and consumers have the best experience, quick. The onus of a game being optimized for a GPU is NOT on the game developer. It's on the GPU maker. Game developers don't care beyond the game being playable on a particular hardware. AMD did just that, until 2013. We had driver updates (Beta/WHQL/hotfix/whatever), come out every fortnight. Either the golden age of PC gaming has ended, or AMD stopped taking drivers seriously.

It takes a special breed of ostrich mentality to overlook the fact that AMD has been lethargic with game optimizations and bug fixes in the past 6 months. Just because you don't see bugs doesn't mean the bugs aren't out there; and just because AMD slowed down its driver update model, doesn't mean there are fewer bugs to address these days. Especially not with the flood of new game releases for summer.

First and foremost, I would ask the you keep insults out of this conversation. If we are to have a civilized one, that is.

Back to the matter at hand, I never said that drivers are just splash screen tech demos. I know very well how important drivers are and I need absolutely nobody reminding me of that. As for who is responsible for optimizations, I think both parties (as in devs and GPU makers as separate entities) are both responsible. If the devs push out a game that is poorly optimized, that's going to hurt sales, which in turn will hurt their profit margins, so it's not like there's nothing of interest for them here. Also, GPU makers have a vested interest in making sure that the GPUs that they sell can run the games their clients want to play at least as well as competing products from other GPU makers. If they'd just work together instead of trying to cut each other out, we would be having a lot fewer problems. However, as long as devs are going to be willing to take a bribe to keep their sponsor's adversaries out of the loop until it's too late (see what happened to Tomb Raider with TressFX on AMD's side and what nVidia is doing right now with GameWorks), well, crap like this will just keep on happening.

And yes, I'll say it again: I don't care how often any GPU maker releases a driver as long as I have what I need to play whatever game I want to play when I want to play it. PC gaming isn't about having a new GPU driver out every week or so, it's about having a choice in regards to all software (included and not limited to running older games).

This is really starting to get under my skin. As a consumer and not a fanboy. I am very upset with AMD.
first of all in 2015 we have seen 3 or 4 major AAA release titles come out, and really bad performance or no support for them straight away.
granted BETA's were released but its bad enough we get buggy games. we dont need to playing roulette with drivers too.

AMD has started crying Foul with Nvidia for having better Tessellation performance. saying the NV is making more tessellation because it cripples the AMD cards. Well AMD admitted their GFX cards do better with Compute throughput (open CL essentially. Workstation stuff not games)
Where as Nvidia have better throughput with CUDA and Tessellation. So Why wouldnt NVidia use more HP they can more efficently use. I dont see how that is AMD's fault. perhaps they should build better drivers... Oh wait they havent in 10 MONTHS. And this is my issue. AMD are for the gamer. then act like it! You give us no information, no new drivers. and this 390 no one knows nothing about, is stopping no one from buying NVidia GFX cards. in fact its making AMD loosed the market share even more AMD have 16% GFX share. Its the lowest its ever been!
Nvidia are releasing drivers every month or so. or they are at least game ready Which I have to applaud
AMD again the team that are "for the gamers" havent even been talking with developers to get a good performing game when its released..... We deserve better!
AMD are digging their own holes in the grave. with lack of innovation. lack of marketing of the new cards. HBM that is all we know.
and I know NV have a titanX and a 980 thats faster than all AMD stuff. and the 980TI will be 6-8GB card and be perfect position to hold the market until pascal comes.

AMD has released details about Fiji. and its not good. For starters its a 4k card. well its memory system is limited to 4GB of ram. that is not a 4K video card pure and simple. a 290X has 8GB and does 4K. so essentially Fiji is a waste of horsepower.

AMD are lucky they are even still alive in the marketplace. if I was the boss all of them would be gettings a swift kick up the you know what, or fired.

scorpion_amd13PC gaming isn't about having a new GPU driver out every week or so, it's about having a choice in regards to all software (included and not limited to running older games).

Nice strawman. I meant that either the golden age of PC gaming is over, as in new bugs and issues to fix have suddenly dried up; or AMD stopped taking drivers seriously.