AMD Catalyst 12.7 BETA

[RejZoR]

Interesting, AMD picked up an interesting policy...

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...n_win7-64.aspx

This page now lists WHQL and BETA driver. What this means is that they'll release BETA versions more often and will be of the same quality as WHQL, just without it. The actual WHQL that will be released less often will be actually WHQL signed.

I kinda understand the AMD now, the whole WHQL signing process was often holding them back or caused driver release to be released way later after the game was released. Now they can release the drivers on the game release date exactly or just 1 day later. I don't think the quality of drivers will change much. I mean, if anything, they'll get even better because they won't be constrained by the quite lenghty WHQL signing process.

[FierceRed]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

I kinda understand the AMD now, the whole WHQL signing process was often holding them back or caused driver release to be released way later after the game was released. Now they can release the drivers on the game release date exactly or just 1 day later. I don't think the quality of drivers will change much. I mean, if anything, they'll get even better because they won't be constrained by the quite lenghty WHQL signing process.

I've been using ATI hardware since forever (the last nVidia card I had was a 32mb Geforce MX 2 around 2002) and my take on this is just a huge facepalm as to why it took so long for them to do this.

There was nothing stopping them from releasing Beta drivers on Day 1 for the hottest games except themselves. If their pursuit for WHQL signing at all costs was an internal policy for the satisfaction of bureaucracy, thus costing them negative PR with their technical savvy customers by keeping them waiting for headache-minimized gaming performance, then they have no one to blame but themselves and are reaping what they've sown if people switched to nVidia.

Only with BF3 did I actually see a concerted effort to make top performance availability to their customers a priority over rigid WHQL lockstepping, and imho that's long overdue for such a 'groundbreaking' concept. When you don't respect those of your customers who are smarter and paying more attention to you, you're asking for trouble and the resulting screams for change were there for those AMD staff with the ears to hear them. Even before the launch of Geforce.com, finding Beta nVidia drivers was never a problem as they were always front and center with the latest WHQL packages, whereas with AMD.com it was always a bit of a hunt.

Their policy change is without a doubt a good move, it's just about bloody time.

[erocker]

Originally Posted by FierceRed

I've been using ATI hardware since forever (the last nVidia card I had was a 32mb Geforce MX 2 around 2002) and my take on this is just a huge facepalm as to why it took so long for them to do this.

There was nothing stopping them from releasing Beta drivers on Day 1 for the hottest games except themselves. If their pursuit for WHQL signing at all costs was an internal policy for the satisfaction of bureaucracy, thus costing them negative PR with their technical savvy customers by keeping them waiting for headache-minimized gaming performance, then they have no one to blame but themselves and are reaping what they've sown if people switched to nVidia.

Only with BF3 did I actually see a concerted effort to make top performance availability to their customers a priority over rigid WHQL lockstepping, and imho that's long overdue for such a 'groundbreaking' concept. When you don't respect those of your customers who are smarter and paying more attention to you, you're asking for trouble and the resulting screams for change were there for those AMD staff with the ears to hear them. Even before the launch of Geforce.com, finding Beta nVidia drivers was never a problem as they were always front and center with the latest WHQL packages, whereas with AMD.com it was always a bit of a hunt.

Their policy change is without a doubt a good move, it's just about bloody time.

New driver team. I gotta say these 12.7's are doing great for me. Hopefully they keep them coming.

[Xzibit]

Can't seam to find it anymore but I read that the 12.6 drivers had a Known Issue of Blocky corruption when playback on video in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.

Anyone know if thats been fixed in 12.7 ?

[RejZoR]

Cat 12.6 is garbage. I've had so many problems with it that i don't even try to look at it.

[Xzibit]

Out of curiosity.

I brought home a 7870 to see for myself and sure enough its there on some video formats. 12.7 is little better than 12.6 in that reguard.

I havent had a AMD/ATI card to mess around with for a long time, more than 7 years.

One thing that immediately made me pleased was the color depiction. Dam,the colors just look so much better than all my Nvidias.

Now I got to see how high the core clock goes on this thing.

[Xzibit]

Narrowed it down between 1195-1175 core clock

Is it possible to add a ramp-up speed (ala fan graph) to control the fan speed. Other then the set speed in the Overdrive ?

63c isnt high but the cooler the better and the fan is only at 45%. I dont mind a little noise aslong as its not constant. It be nice to be able to control fan speeds at temps.