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  • blanarahul - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Now, we are in for some real competition!
  • blanarahul - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    What is the Hydravision package?
  • imaheadcase - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Real competition for a driver? Are you high right now?
    They finally put a 3d settings in drivers for ATI. Welcome to the future../sarcasm
  • Omoronovo - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    The 3d settings were obviously always there.

    The difference now is they are split off under a separate page instead of being under the "gaming" heading as before. the article doesn't make this at all clear.

    In fact, I'm not even sure this was worth mentioning unless it was miraculously missing from the 12.11 beta driver, as this offers no additional benefit over the "old" catalyst.
  • Kogies - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Yeah, but...

    http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update...
  • Kogies - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    The above is for 13.2, I got a little ahead of myself.
  • RonanH - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Ohh that's interesting, is that what's causing what I can only describe as "hitching" when framerates are otherwise stable?
  • Kogies - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    There is a little friction on the web for the frame-latency type of testing, but they are doing a good job showing exactly why it is worthwhile.

    Frame rates average over a second, which is why they aren't helpful at identifying the "hitches" you mention.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link


    The 7950 has been SCREWED UP FOR OVER A YEAR!

    It's theeee one the amd fanboys wanted, too - and all bought ROFL...

    AMD is a frikkin joke, and their fans must be truly clueless.
  • Mr Perfect - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Interesting read, thanks for sharing.
  • scottjames_12 - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link

    +1
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    He's stoned out of his gourd imaheadcase, completely oblivious and in perfect bliss and he has no clue what Hydravision is.
    Perfect AMD fanboy base.

    So AMD is what five YEARS behind, and still their settings are shy...
    Where's the game detection nVidia has ?
    Where's only games on this system or all games ?

    LOL - so frikkin LUUUUUUUSSSEEERRRRR.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    See my comments on todays' progress.
  • B3an - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    These still have the bug with Photoshop on Win 8 where the background flickers when zooming in/out and doing other stuff.

    These also wont install the HDMI audio driver for me. It fails. This is an old bug i used to have on Win 7 many months ago, but the last few driver versions haven't had it on either Win 7/8. Now AMD have manged to bring it back. Great.

    After upgrading from the previous drivers the 13.1's also completely screwed up after a system restart, so i had to uninstall all AMD drivers, then re-install.

    Was hoping that driver quality would finally improve now AMD don't release them so often, but guess not.
  • Gigaplex - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    The HDMI audio driver failed to install for me too. First time I've ever experienced this issue.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link


    New driver new broken, its amd, fanboy, get used to it !
    You've lived it for years - so anyway, nothing has changed.

    ROFL - the crap that amd is - we shouldn't ever let it die, it can remind us what epic failure and epic fanboys are all about.
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    So....

    I tried to Crossfire two 7950 cards and the performance was terrible. Onto the web... A whole load of people with the same issue, so, I changed the motherboard. Same issue. I gave up, sole them, threw in 2x 660 cards and all was well.

    Why do I have to edit the registry to stop one card turning off? Why do I have to create profiles? This was the first and last time that I built a performance rig with the gpus based on AMD

    Maybe I did something wrong? Who knows.
  • IanCutress - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    ULPS is designed to reduce power consumption when you are in 2D mode. The card kicks back in when you go into 3D. It's a godsend when I'm testing 4-way and have to manually jack up the fan speed so the 7970s don't get blistering hot during a game test.

    Dealing with more than one card in a game engine is tougher than most people realise. You either use both cards to render the same frame (involving splitting the buffer and causing crosstalk), or use the cards to render alternate frames (again causing crosstalk to update memories) which is difficult if one card starts to lag behind. This is usually fixed using clever algorithms in the driver to adapt, but it tends to be done on a driver by driver basis.

    A good test is Dirt3 - if it doesn't work there, it doesn't work anywhere. Going from one 7970 to four, I get the following from an older test:

    Dirt 3 - One 7970: 73.95 FPS
    Dirt 3 - Two 7970: 136.28 FPS (+84.3% of a single card)
    Dirt 3 - Three 7970: 195.11 FPS (+79.6% of a single card)
    Dirt 3 - Four 7970: 237.40 FPS (+57.2% of a single card)

    On the same older drivers, Civilization V performs badly:

    Civilization V - One 7970: 78.73 FPS
    Civilization V - Two 7970: 83.13 FPS (+5.6% of a single card)
    Civilization V - Three 7970: 82.50 FPS (-0.1% of a single card)
    Civilization V - Four 7970: 83.00 FPS (+0.1% of a single card)

    With the newer drivers, Civ V performs better as it got added. These are the dangers of using a multi card setup - waiting for your game to get a proper multi GPU profile. If the game is AMD or NVIDIA 'enhanced', then it'll probably get the multi-card profile before the other company.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    You did nothing wrong, AMD is , was, and will be always *****d.

    You experienced the AMD Gamers Manifesto ! ( ROFL HAHAHAHA )

    Take a dozen www.Verdetrol.com pills and you'll feel better.
  • TrantaLocked - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    13.1 WHQL is a 12.11 plus more, certified! Definitely the biggest WHQL for GCN so far.
  • blackoctagon - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    I never experienced any 'issues' in Windows 7 (or games) with 12.11 Beta, so this WHQL seems to be the same thing, just with AMD's final stamp of approval.

    Far more exciting is the forthcoming 13.2 Beta - an incomplete version of which has already been leaked - which is reported to address frame latency issues in certain games. It's not clear to me whether this Beta will only address frame latency in SINGLE-GPU configurations or whether Crossfire-induced microstutter will also be mitigated

    (and no, before you ask, the 'dynamic vSync and frame-limiting tools in the latest preview of RadeonPro do NOT mitigate the problem as much as the reviews claim)
  • Death666Angel - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    "AMD's final stamp of approval" more like Microsoft's final stamp of approval.
  • blackoctagon - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Fair call!
  • faizoff - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    After updating to 13.1 last night I noticed Adobe After Effects lags a lot on my Win 7 64-bit computer with ZDFC XFX Radeon 6870. I have OpenGL enabled and prior to updating my video drivers I actually had it disabled. I noticed a big performance change for the better when I enabled it specially in RAM previews and Rendering.

    Now it seems to be behaving as previous disabled OpenGL state even though it's enabled. Will have to troubleshoot more.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Windows:

    Installs with errors. (i.e doesn't actually install correctly at all, I read the log).

    Now back on 12.11 Beta 11.

    Linux 64 bit:

    Crashed within 10 mins. Was nice not to have the 12.11 Beta icon in the corner, but I guess I was hoping for too much.

    After x windows crashed, there was no recovering, forced me into a reboot.

    Re-downloaded each copy and tried again to no avail.

    Even deleted & cleaned up before new install.

    Tsk tsk.
  • marc1000 - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    is the output of 5.1 sound over HDMI enabled in this driver? I remember last year that I only could output 2.0 sound on my old 5770 card. it's time for an upgrade, so it would be great to know if it is finnaly working.

    thanks,
  • Makaveli - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Hmm how is your computer hooked up to the TV?

    Is it HDMI directly into the TV?

    or HDMI into a AVR then AVR to TV?
  • marc1000 - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    i used HDMI to TV, then HDMI-ARC to HomeTheater. but the ATI driver would only see stereo speakers and did not let me select 5.1 output.

    then I hooked the mainboard directly to the HomeTheater using an optical cable, the mobo driver would let me select 5.1, and all worked fine.

    I just dont want to have to use 2 cables anymore.
  • Death666Angel - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    Sounds like the graphics card only sees the stereo channels of the TV and not the AVR it eventually ends up in. Why not just plug the PC HDMI into the AVR since the AVR should be connected with the TV anyway? :)
  • marc1000 - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    That's because my AVR is integrated with the bluray player. It only has 1 -archdmi-arc connection. If it had another hdmi input this would be a lot simpler. But the xbox works with 5.1 over arc. There is no reason a pc shouldn't.
  • Makaveli - Saturday, January 19, 2013 - link

    I thought that was the issue and death is correct. I have the same problem with my setup which is also one of those all in one receivers and not a true AVR and only has 1 hdmi in.

    You will either have to keep your two cable setup or get an AVR that has multiple HDMI inputs so you can go PC directly to AVR then TV.

    I find however even with windows set to stereo I can set audio in XMBC and I do get sound on all channels.

    The above solution though is the best choice.
  • itbj2 - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    I did not have any problems with Win8-64bit. Actually, PlanetSide 2 at 2560X1440 seems to run much smoother then it did with the 12.11 beta drivers.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    That's the screen rez ( when they aren't in 6 monitor mode) and one of the games the two amd catalyst writer employees love to play, so you got lucky they made certain it worked so it didn't cut into their game time.
    Well, one down, 257 to go.
  • tzhu07 - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link

    I upgraded, no issues so far.
  • Makaveli - Saturday, January 19, 2013 - link

    I upgraded this driver in windows from inside CCC. Then rebooted to a stop error about a hardware change so I was like wtf. I had to run a windows repair which corrected something on boot that the driver changed!!!!!

    Anyways once I got back into windows everything was fine and 13.1 seems stable. I think i'm gonna go back to uninstalling previous drivers then installing new ones. And not just do it over stop which has been working fine forever.
  • Venom450 - Saturday, January 19, 2013 - link

    I downloaded this yesterday and attempted to update twice and both times came out in me have to do a system restore with a proper working display driver. I don't know if anyone else is having this issue but I'm sure it can't just be me. This is the first driver i've had that caused my computer not to properly boot up.
  • NikosD - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link

    It's the first time for AMD by releasing Catalyst 13.1, that officially admits they are not capable of providing DXVA Hardware Acceleration for resolutions above 1920 x 1080 for any codec.

    The driver limits Hardware Acceleration to 1920 x 1080, although ATI have said on April, 2010 with Catalyst 10.4, that they provide HW acceleration up to 4K resolutions.

    They have never managed to provide it actually and now they officially admit they can't.

    Loosers!
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    God Bless you, you are now a free man.
  • NikosD - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    God Bless you, too. You have now justify your salary from AMD for good.

    Well Done!
  • atkoj - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link

    Installing the 13.1 Catalyst fails on my 7850 on Windows 7 64bit and requires a system restore. I tried a clean Windows install - same issue. Looked in the driver package .INF file for Windows 7 64bit - it does NOT contain any info for GCN-based cards! (The files for 32bit, and for 64bit Vista and Win8 are fine)

    They've majorly screwed up the release, do not install for GCN-based cards on Windows 7 64bit until they have corrected this and re-released it. This is reported as well in the AMD forums.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    Holy crap.

    That is beyond unbelievable, I didn't even believe AMD could totally screw that one up...

    I am ashamed I gave them the benefit of the doubt on "mr captain obvious basics #1".

    I believe they have finally surpassed the Chicago Cubs curse.
  • Venom450 - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link

    I tried installing this twice yesterday once again and it caused the same issue as it did the first day the update came out. It cause my display driver to crash and computer would not boot up. My friend has a 7790 and a more updated computer than mine and same issue came up with his. I just hope amd fixes these bugs in their updates.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link

    Hope and change is coming...

    ROFL - time to pony up the 200 dollar plus "drivers tax" from AMD, you may pay it at any retail outlet at the register or online, at least you get an nVidia video card with it !

    :)

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