AMD is working on Catalyst beta drivers for 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' and 'Project Cars'

Shawn Knight

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upcoming catalyst radeons witcher project cars amd radeon gpu drivers graphics card gpu drivers beta drivers the witcher 3 graphics card drivers catalyst 15.5 beta

AMD graphics card owners that have tried playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Project Cars are likely already aware of the fact that both titles run like crap on Radeon hardware. There’s a ton of controversy surrounding what did or didn’t happen as it relates to Project Cars but regardless of what or who is to blame, AMD is thankfully aware that there’s an issue and believe it can be remedied with an updated driver.

AMD recently posted a message on its website saying it is committed to improving performance for both of the aforementioned games. To that end, AMD is creating Catalyst 15.5 beta to optimize performance for the games. The company said it will continue to work closely with their respective developers to improve quality and performance.

upcoming catalyst radeons witcher project cars amd radeon gpu drivers graphics card gpu drivers beta drivers the witcher 3 graphics card drivers catalyst 15.5 beta

The new beta drivers will be posted online as soon as they are ready.

In the meantime, AMD offered a temporary workaround for those having issues with the “HairWorks” feature in The Witcher 3. Gamers are encouraged to enable the settings shown in the photo below in the Catalyst Control Center.

amd catalyst witcher wild hunt project cars radeon gpu drivers graphics card gpu drivers beta drivers the witcher 3 graphics card drivers catalyst 15.5 beta

Our recent benchmark analysis of Project Cars reveals just how bad the issue is for Radeon owners. For example, when running at 1080p with moderate graphics settings, 290X owners shouldn’t expect anything over 50 frames per second under clear weather conditions. That figure drops to just 28 FPS with rain enabled.

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"AMD graphics card owners that have tried playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Project Cars are likely already aware of the fact that both titles run like crap on Radeon hardware."

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, "runs like crap" doesn't strike me as professional an expression as "runs terribly" or "are both exceptionally poor performers on..." It may convey the sentiments of the accompanying article comments, but those are supposed to be crude.
 
I'm running 15.5 now and at the moment there isn't an improvement on 15.4 with Project Cars.
I will wait for the official release just to see if they have changed anything from now.
 
Maybe they should stop working on beta patches and roll-out an official version rev for once !
What is wrong with these clowns?
 
Maybe they should stop working on beta patches and roll-out an official version rev for once !
What is wrong with these clowns?

It's their new philosophy that started with 14.12 Omega. They said they'll only release a WHQL driver once or twice a year that will bring massive improvements, bug fixes and new features but will otherwise release small betas when needed, for critical bugs or critical game's performance.
 
They said they'll only release a WHQL driver once or twice a year
I for one think that is a great idea, and wish nVidia would do the same.

I think both approaches are bad. nVidia seems to release new stuff every other week and AMD resorts to betas, which gives the impression of making the user base the guinea pigs. I say go WHQL when it makes sense but using an arbitrary once or twice "annually" formula seems inattentive IMHO. Sometimes major improvements and corrections come more frequently than AMD would like to admit !?!

14.12 Omega came out in December; it's time to roll these betas through official testing and do a major release.

Just sayin ...
 
AMD hardware is atleast performing far better than kepler cards, who have officially recieved an update from Nvidia in witcher 3. A gtx 660 is providing 50% fps than r9 270x and gtx 780ti performing equivalent to r9 280x.

Things are looking gloomy for older gen nvidia cards, has the company dropped optimising games for them altogether? I think project cars too had the same issue?
 
AMD hardware is at least performing far better than kepler cards, who have officially recieved an update from Nvidia in witcher 3.

Far better? Please tell me that's not based on that pcgameshardware.de test. Please!
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/the_witcher_3_graphics_performance_review,6.html

Another beta driver? What is this, two drivers for Witcher 3 and the game hasn't even been out a week? And how long has pCARS been out now? smh....
You only have beta drivers when you don't think or can't wait for M$ to certify them. Either case is bad imo. AMD needs to get their people in the game studio a lot sooner rather than later. This is getting ridiculous now. And how long before the flickering when using Crossfire with Dying Light and MKX get fixed? AMD is slacking and it's their own customers that suffer.
 
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You only have beta drivers when you don't think or can't wait for M$ to certify them.
There's actually a third option. WHQL certification costs $250 per OS version, so that's like $2.5K* in cash that AMD would have to divert from the money they have saved for the next round of golden parachutes.:eek:

* XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10 in both 32 and 64-bit
 
I'm running 15.5 now and at the moment there isn't an improvement on 15.4 with Project Cars.
I will wait for the official release just to see if they have changed anything from now.

Just out of curiosity, where did you get the 15.5 drivers? They are not posted on the AMD driver download site yet.
 
Far better? Please tell me that's not based on that pcgameshardware.de test. Please!
I didn't know there was some problem in that testing? Yeah amd tagging all its drivers is ridiculous but atleast ccc gives an option to download beta drivers.
I wasn't bashing any company, just that if the benches hold to be true Nvidia is really not doung justice to its customers.
 
I didn't know there was some problem in that testing? Yeah amd tagging all its drivers is ridiculous but atleast ccc gives an option to download beta drivers.
I wasn't bashing any company, just that if the benches hold to be true Nvidia is really not doung justice to its customers.

If you look at the top of the pcgameshardware.de test done with Gameworks off, it says "semi-final" review build and the second test doesn't. I had to investigate their fishy results!

I found three other tests that night with different results that put the cards in the performance order they should've been in, and guru3d's test I read today also confirmed it.

The next day on the site I saw those pcgameshardware tests said...
"AMD is currently hard at work optimizing for both The Witcher 3 and Project Cars and will be bringing out a new Catalyst driver to boost performance in those titles. AMD also stated that it’s working with the game developers to improve both visual quality and performance, so we might see some AMD specific technologies get implemented. Speaking of drivers, in my testing I found that even AMD’s older 15.3 drivers were very smooth. I experienced no bugs or crashes so far and performance has actually been surprisingly strong. The game performs much better than earlier benchmarks would have you believe."

In regards to Gameworks performance on previous gen nVIDIA cards...
"Do note, Maxwell GPUs are up to three times faster at tessellation than previous-generation GPUs, so you may experience lower HairWorks performance on other graphics cards due to the extensive use of tessellated hairs."

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
 
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Thats funny because I'm running 7950 in crossfire on farcry 4,gta5,and witcher 3 w/o witcher 3 drivers might I add.I haven't ran into any problems.Dying light is the only newer game I'm having trouble running crossfire,but running single 7950 is running great!
 
Don't know what's the big fuss about Radeon cards. Mine pc is a q9550, 6 gigs of ddr2 and radeon 290x, game runs just fine on 10680x1050. Got hairworks on geralt only, foliage is on high and shadows on medium, everything else on ultra. Game is perfectly playable, no stuttering, no crashes, no problems.
Mick
 
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