AMD's new Catalyst 14.9 drivers improve performance, CrossFire scaling in multiple games

[Shawn Knight]

AMD recently released a new batch of WHQL-certified Catalyst drivers (version 14.9) that offer up a wealth of performance enhancements for a variety of games.

The new driver pack offers varying degrees performance improvements for BioShock Infinite, Company of Heroes 2, Crysis 3, Grid Auto Sport, Murdered Soul Suspect, Plants vs. Zombies, Batman Arkham Origins, Wildstar, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed IV, Lichdom and Star Craft II.

Specifically, gamers can expect improvements of as little as five percent in Tomb Raider using Radeon R9 290 Series cards up to as much as 20 percent in Star Craft II with 290X cards. The update also improves CrossFire configuration scaling by as much as 92 percent in some instances.

Elsewhere, AMD has made a number of improvements to its Eyefinity multi-display setups. The driver enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors, one-click setup to create an Eyefinity display group and mixed resolution support.

Catalyst 14.9 also takes care of multiple bugs including geometry corruption in State of Decay, instability issues for Grid Auto Sport when running 2x1 or 1x2 Eyefinity configurations and screen tearing on CrossFire systems with Eyefinity portrait display configurations, just to name a few.

The full list of release notes can be found on AMD’s website by clicking here. 32- and 64-bit versions of the drivers are available for Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Linux simply by clicking here.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/58236-amds-new-catalyst-149-drivers-improve-performance-crossfire-scaling-in-multiple-games.html

 

[BBlair]

Yeah right All the beta drivers after 14.4 has caused huge artifacts in Mafia 2, So I had to go back to 14.4. And I can guarantee 14.9 also will cause artifacts in mafia 2, I will try this driver and find out.
And by the way, You actually have to play the game before the artifacts happen, You can't just load the game and move Vito around a little bit and then claim there is no problem.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Yeah right All the beta drivers after 14.4 has caused huge artifacts in Mafia 2, So I had to go back to 14.4. And I can guarantee 14.9 also will cause artifacts in mafia 2, I will try this driver and find out.
And by the way, You actually have to play the game before the artifacts happen, You can't just load the game and move Vito around a little bit and then claim there is no problem.

And why would they ever fix it? I liked the game as well but it's at least three years old, AMD won't waste their time with it now.
That said, artifacts in game sounds more like dodgy hardware to me but if you can play all other games without artifacting... who knows.

 

[BBlair]

Yeah right All the beta drivers after 14.4 has caused huge artifacts in Mafia 2, So I had to go back to 14.4. And I can guarantee 14.9 also will cause artifacts in mafia 2, I will try this driver and find out.
And by the way, You actually have to play the game before the artifacts happen, You can't just load the game and move Vito around a little bit and then claim there is no problem.

And why would they ever fix it? I liked the game as well but it's at least three years old, AMD won't waste their time with it now.
That said, artifacts in game sounds more like dodgy hardware to me but if you can play all other games without artifacting... who knows.

What? are you not very bright? or do you just love being a doormat? We pay good money for this hardware and it should work with all games. Just because a game is old does not automatically mean that people should no longer play it! That is insane to think that way! I still love Mafia 2 and the Fallout series , And I love many new games too.

But anyway I tried Catalyst 14.9 in Mafia 2, And I have to say WOW! I was very shocked to see that AMD finally fixed the artifacts! Mafia 2 ran like a dream! This makes me feel a little bit better now about AMD! I can now be proud again of my R9 270.

 

[insect]

I think I know where they got the performance gains. Updated these last night and the dynamic overclocking starting pushing my cards to their limits. I'm on water cooling with loop as Radiator 1 > 290X (x2) > Radiator 2 > CPU > RAM > Res > Pump. CPU OC'ed to 5.0 Ghz. Water temperature during heavy loads was typically ~26 C before update. After this update my water temps jumped to 30 C. When I checked temps on the cards they were up around 50 C on the card. Clocks were way higher than normal also - about 500 mhz more (~30% over stock). Not exactly breaking point temps, but damn!

 

[Seraphim401]

I had to remove it, because it overrides my 500 Mhz setting I have set for my HD 7970 when running Boinc.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

What? are you not very bright? or do you just love being a doormat? We pay good money for this hardware and it should work with all games. Just because a game is old does not automatically mean that people should no longer play it! That is insane to think that way! I still love Mafia 2 and the Fallout series , And I love many new games too.

But anyway I tried Catalyst 14.9 in Mafia 2, And I have to say WOW! I was very shocked to see that AMD finally fixed the artifacts! Mafia 2 ran like a dream! This makes me feel a little bit better now about AMD! I can now be proud again of my R9 270.

I'm not very bright? I'm a doormat ? How very flattering of you, and you don't even know me. Good start Rookie.

 

[GhostRyder]

Driver works great for me, though I have not really extensively tested it yet.

 

[BBlair]

What? are you not very bright? or do you just love being a doormat? We pay good money for this hardware and it should work with all games. Just because a game is old does not automatically mean that people should no longer play it! That is insane to think that way! I still love Mafia 2 and the Fallout series , And I love many new games too.

But anyway I tried Catalyst 14.9 in Mafia 2, And I have to say WOW! I was very shocked to see that AMD finally fixed the artifacts! Mafia 2 ran like a dream! This makes me feel a little bit better now about AMD! I can now be proud again of my R9 270.

I'm not very bright? I'm a doormat ? How very flattering of you, and you don't even know me. Good start Rookie.

Well when you flat out say that it is ok for a company to take people's hard earned money, And then say it is ok for them to not only take your money, But that it is ok for them to decide what games you can play because of age? That is kinda spineless. I am sorry, But spineless is the impression you leave. It is never ok to for a company to take your money and then make decisions for you! We are the consumer! We pay the money! So we should have the say, Not the company.

 

[mailpup]

Well when you flat out say that it is ok for a company to take people's hard earned money, And then say it is ok for them to not only take your money, But that it is ok for them to decide what games you can play because of age? That is kinda spineless. I am sorry, But spineless is the impression you leave. It is never ok to for a company to take your money and then make decisions for you! We are the consumer! We pay the money! So we should have the say, Not the company.

I'm not sure I understand. Who is taking your money without your permission besides the government through taxes?

 

[Guest]

I have an ASUS R9 290. I was originally using 14.4, which was completely stable. Yesterday I uninstalled 14.4 and installed the new 14.9 and then the problems started.

My display was constantly crashing in to a black screen which then required a reboot. Sometimes the screen would go blank as soon as I logged on and other times it took up to 30mins before the screen went blank. After pulling all of my hair out and 100 reboots later I couldn't take anymore and uninstalled 14.9 and went back to 14.4 and now my system is stable again and the screen hasn't gone blank on me once since I went back to 14.4. What is going with AMD drivers, they take ages to do a release and then when they do this happens......not good!

Not sure if anyone else (especially if you have an ASUS R9 290) has had issues with the new driver but would be good to hear if you have so I know I'm not the only one!

 

[Guest]

I have found problems like this due to overheating on newer driver versions.
Have had to take over manual fan control and boost to 55% on my cards to ensure they don't overheat and crash the PC.

 

[cliffordcooley]

It is never ok to for a company to take your money and then make decisions for you! We are the consumer! We pay the money! So we should have the say, Not the company.

Why not? That is how Apple and now MS is treating their consumers!

 

[DaVinster]

The 14.9 driver caused havoc on my system. Running eyefinity on three identical 21" monitors with an asus 6870. i7-2600k, win 7 z64 Ult. 16 gigs ram, single SSD drive. 1 DVI; 2 x Active DP adapters. After update I got display link errors and unable to create an eyefinity group with less than insanely low resolution. Says monitors aren't multistream capable? I tried the renaming AMDxxxx.dll trick to no avail. Removing, reinstalling and rolling back the drivers did not help. It also failed to create a restore point but blew away the ones that were there. Unfortunately this is for my motion sim rig and I'm now unable to use it. Finally in desperation I used a reputable graphics card driver removal program and now I'm getting a 'video card information not found error'. Looks like an O/S repair at a minimum. Invested lots of time and money into AMD vid cards and eyefinity. Very disappointed.