AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Download

Posted by: Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 05/27/2014 12:15 PM [ 485 comment(s) ]

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Download AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta driver

The AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta driver is notable release for us for a couple reasons:

Mantle is now enabled for notebooks based on AMD Enduro technology
Mixed-resolution AMD Eyefinity configurations are now supported for SLS
Performance improvements for Watch Dogs
Performance improvements for Murdered: Soul Suspect

Please read: Windows 8.1 is supported with this Beta driver whilst Windows 8 is not.

Starting with AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta, AMD will no longer support Windows 8.0 (and the WDDM 1.2 driver)
Users should upgrade (for Free) to Windows 8.1 to take advantage of the new features found in the AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta
AMD Catalyst 14.4 will remain available for users who wish to remain on Windows 8

A future AMD Catalyst release will allow for the WDDM 1.1 (Windows 7 driver) to be installed under Windows 8.0 for those users unable to upgrade to Windows 8.1

Watch Dogs:

AMD Radeon R9 290X - 1920x1080 4xMSAA – improves up to 25%
AMD Radeon R9 290X - 2560x1600 4xMSAA – improves up to 28%
AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) - 92% scaling

Murdered: Soul Suspect:

AMD Radeon R9 290X – 2560x1600 4xMSAA – improves up to 16%
AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X) - 93% scaling
AMD Eyefinity Verbesserungen:

Mixed Resolution Support

A new architecture providing brand new capabilities
Display groups can be created with monitors of different resolution (including difference sizes and shapes)
Users have a choice of how surface is created over the display group
Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays.
Expand – create a virtual Eyefinity surface using desktops as viewports onto the surface.
Eyefinity Display Alignment
Enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors
One-Click Setup
Driver detects layout of extended desktops
Can create Eyefinity display group using this layout in one click!
New user controls for video color and display settings

Greater control over Video Color Management:

Controls have been expanded from a single slider for controlling Boost and Hue to per color axis
Color depth control for Digital Flat Panels (available on supported HDMI and DP displays)
Allows users to select different color depths per resolution and display

AMD Mantle enhancements

Mantle now supports AMD Mobile products with Enduro technologyEnables support for Multi-GPU configurations with Thief (requires the latest Thief update).
Battlefield 4: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1366x768; high settings) – 21% gain
Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; high settings) – 14% gain
Star Swarm: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920x1080; medium settings) – 274% gain

AMD AM1 JPEG decoding acceleration

JPEG decoding acceleration was first enabled on the A10 APU Series in AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta, and has now been extended to the AMD AM1 Platform
Provides fast JPEG decompression
Provides Power Efficiency for JPEG decompression

Download Locations

Download Desktop Driver Windows Vista/7/8.1 32 and 64 bit [ 43504 downloads | Report broken link ]

Download APU and Mobile Driver Windows Vista/7/8.1 32 and 64 bit [ 13096 downloads | Report broken link ]

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Rich_Guy
Ancient Guru
Posts: 11478
Joined: 2003-05-11

#4826937 Posted on: 05/28/2014 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heroxoot

I'm experiencing a lot more heat with this driver. Games that only put my GPU at say 70c are now pushing 76c. Idle used to be around 48c in my room with the AC on and now it is 52c. I am enjoying the performance but this was the wrong time of year for such a hot driver.

Yeah im about 5 degrees hotter on the GPU to, ive also just noticed, its pushed my CPU temp up 9/10 degrees as well, used to only hit around 57/58 while gaming, now hitting 67/68, so the extra heat from the GPU is having an affect

Scout
Master Guru
Posts: 166
Joined: 2011-02-09

#4826938 Posted on: 05/28/2014 12:56 AM

still no crossfire in wolfenstein new order..

BaNsHiE
Member Guru
Posts: 56
Joined: 2012-12-20

#4826940 Posted on: 05/28/2014 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heroxoot

Really???

BaNsHiE

On a side note..... Under known issues with 14.6 beta it states:

"AMD CrossFire configurations with Eyefinity enabled will see application stability with BattleField 4 or Thief when running Mantle"

WTF? does that mean it works or did they mean to say "instability"?

Rich_Guy
Ancient Guru
Posts: 11478
Joined: 2003-05-11

#4826943 Posted on: 05/28/2014 01:02 AM

Yeah come on AMD, surely you can break them, can't be that hard, if them being stable under Mantle is a known issue as you say

Can see it now.

From the 14.6 Beta 2 Release Notes.

Fixed Issues.

"AMD CrossFire configurations with Eyefinity enabled will see application instability with BattleField 4 or Thief when running Mantle"

windrunnerxj
Member Guru
Posts: 140
Joined: 2012-03-28

#4826973 Posted on: 05/28/2014 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rich_Guy

Noticed this as well. Can't really say the exact numbers but playing a few games I've noticed that card's fan is a bit louder than it used to be on the previous drivers. Hope this will be addressed in the next release.

heroxoot
Master Guru
Posts: 455
Joined: 2012-01-19

#4826991 Posted on: 05/28/2014 01:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by windrunnerxj

My fans were literally maxing out during heaven benchmark. Normally I'd sight they run around 75% speed but they were running around 95% speed. I have to guess because STILL NO FAN CONTROL. All I can see is fan RPM, not % of speed.

rflair
Moderator
Posts: 3768
Joined: 2004-11-20

#4826997 Posted on: 05/28/2014 02:16 AM

Long day but did a quick Fire Strike run, best drivers yet for this benchmark.

11702

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/3144638?

Play some Batman Origins and Wolf later.

plywood99
Master Guru
Posts: 196
Joined: 2007-02-24

#4827004 Posted on: 05/28/2014 02:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rflair

Long day but did a quick Fire Strike run, best drivers yet for this benchmark.

11702

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/3144638?

Play some Batman Origins and Wolf later.

Indeed Wolf is updating now. Can't wait to play this episode.

Valagard
Maha Guru
Posts: 1181
Joined: 2005-03-11

#4827023 Posted on: 05/28/2014 02:54 AM

Saw in general a 1-5% performance increase in some my games with my Direct CU II 7970 at 1100/1575mhz

Also saw temps go up by 3c on average, actually this is the hottest my GPU has ever been using automated fan speeds, I was pushing 74c

I also saw an extra 11 watts pulled from the wall on average according to my power meter

*EDIT* The games I was seeing performance increases in like Skyrim, TF2 etc are all having graphical glitches after 5-10 minutes of play or just outright crashing, even if I turned back the overclocks

rflair
Moderator
Posts: 3768
Joined: 2004-11-20

#4827026 Posted on: 05/28/2014 02:56 AM

Yes I am seeing improvements also, Heaven also set a new benchmark high for me.

Temperatures look the same to me, but card is water cooled.

X7007
Maha Guru
Posts: 1200
Joined: 2003-07-21

#4827053 Posted on: 05/28/2014 04:04 AM

Did anyone notice the new Color depth ?

I don't see much difference, my Philips 7007 TV Hdmi says it support 14bit panel so I put 12bit, the default was 10bit.

[IMG]http://thumbnails112.imagebam.com/32940/39c9b9329396980.jpg[/IMG]

ELCID777
Banned
Posts: 246
Joined: 2012-12-06

#4827068 Posted on: 05/28/2014 04:35 AM

These really improved performance in Watch Dogs, but the game is still a stuttery mess.

God damn Ubisoft.....

Aaron123
Master Guru
Posts: 547
Joined: 2005-07-31

#4827128 Posted on: 05/28/2014 06:33 AM

Ill give these a shot. 13.12 drivers are still the best, as every driver after that has been crap, but will report back my results.

Akizuki09
Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: 2014-05-26

#4827132 Posted on: 05/28/2014 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Mac

you cannot run ultra textures with 3gb without loading bottlenecks, its been proven.

stick with high.

Doubt it, there are plenty of people with SLi/CrossFire setups that are having severe issues with stuttering, which IS the main problem with the game right now. Plus there are plenty of people with single card setups that are claiming no issues with Ultra textures. It's a multicard issue, plus the day 1 patch helped reduce the VRAM usage + these 14.6. I'm still going to throw it at Ubisoft since nearly everyone from Titan to 7970 users are reporting issues. They simply did not optimize the game enough.

Though overall not sure how I feel about these drivers, after a day of usage, it seems like there are a few graphical bugs appearing with the overall improvements performance wise. Still messing around with the drivers, but it does seem to run hotter and less stable than 14.4. SimCity had some nasty shadow flickering, BF4 had some ugly stuttering + random artifact like textures in some areas while using Mantle or DX. Dark Souls 2 however, ran like a champ! Rock solid at 60FPS w/ GeDoSaTo + texture mods. FFXIV seems to of gotten some major CF improvement, though, getting upwards of 80-110FPS in cities / 150+FPS while in dungeons. 3dMark ran fine as well, getting a score of 30474 in Cloud Gate, haven't tried Fire Strike yet.

Going to do some cleaning, seeing if I can improve any rather then simply go for a downgrade since I think Afterburner is having some issues atm. Turned OCing off while testing those software, but I want to see more in terms of performance gains, and my previous OC settings don't seem to want to work for some reason.

Really wish Asus would release updated AMD drivers already, have had some great luck with those in the past.

temo
Newbie
Posts: 23
Joined: 2012-10-23

#4827137 Posted on: 05/28/2014 06:55 AM

Interesting comments about the heat. I noticed an increase in temperature for my card as well, although I didn't realize it was driver related.

Robail
Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: 2014-05-28

#4827157 Posted on: 05/28/2014 07:46 AM

I also noticed a change on the temps at idle
with previous 14.4 the card's temp is between 45 and 50
on this version 14.6 the card's temp is between 55 and 60!!!
i use R9 290 reference

ELCID777
Banned
Posts: 246
Joined: 2012-12-06

#4827203 Posted on: 05/28/2014 09:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Mac

you cannot run ultra textures with 3gb without loading bottlenecks, its been proven.

stick with high.

This is false. And this hasn't been proven. I'm not sure which piece of "evidence" you're basing this claim on, but if it's the recent WD's creative directors tweet regarding 3GB GPU's, then don't bother posting it because it doesn't prove what you're saying, quite the contrary actually.

I've been playing with ultra textures for the last couple of days and constantly monitoring my VRAM usage, it's never exceeded 2.8GB.

I average around 2.3/2.4GB while in open city sections, and it dips to 1.8GB and lower in enclosed/interior sections.

For comparison sake, I play modded Skyrim with nearly 14GB of custom HD textures including loads of 2k and 4k textures, and that is the only game I have ever experienced any VRAM issues with.

I'm constantly going over my GPU's 3GB limit in that game, so I know what a VRAM bottle neck is. There isn't a vram bottleneck with 3GB GPU's using ultra textures in WD's, as I, as well as others have been able to verify for themselves.

Furthermore, two of my friends are also experiencing heavy stuttering with ultra textures enabled, and these guys are using 4GB and 6GB GPU's, respectively. So again, it's not a VRAM related issue, it's an optimization problem.

Something is wrong with the game coming from Ubisofts end.

big ROBOT bill
Maha Guru
Posts: 859
Joined: 2003-06-22

#4827213 Posted on: 05/28/2014 09:41 AM

Just reporting in that these are working fine for me, BF4 and Wolfie.

Plug2k
Maha Guru
Posts: 1456
Joined: 2007-09-28

#4827221 Posted on: 05/28/2014 09:55 AM

well i have fixed my performance issues some what but the only thing i cant seem to fix and its a game killer.
--------------------------------------

STUTTERINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG FEST.
i drive down the streets and no matter what its stuttering all the bloody time
that goes for running down allys and well basicly the hole game stutters for me.

and im running it with 16gb system ram
4gb vram
and system page file is set in windows 7 x64 to system managed on c drive

minimum allowed : 16mb
recommended :24505
currently allocated 16337

-----------------------------------------

and i read somewhere if you completely disable it it breaks stuff.
but what about if i allocate 768 to custom size that way if the game needs more it should shove more into graphics memory right ?

dam stutters are annoying me as i cant play the way it currently is as it kills immersion ;/
I know something is going on with ram/memory/vram allocation as it takes a very long time for windows page to refresh when exiting to desktop, was stuck on a black screen for about 10 seconds before the desktop showed back up and my stuff loaded slower than usual cause they needed to be reloaded into ram.

crz
Master Guru
Posts: 187
Joined: 2013-01-22

#4827246 Posted on: 05/28/2014 10:38 AM

I have also noticed the increased temperature, more precisely I have noticed that the fans are spinning faster than usual.

As for Watch Dogs, with Ultra textures it is a stutterfest when driving fast even though Crossfire seems to be working. I will try High next and also Crossfire disabled to see how that goes.

DummyPLUG
Member Guru
Posts: 130
Joined: 2012-06-18

#4827275 Posted on: 05/28/2014 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by X7007

windows desktop limit to 8 bit only, you need a application such as CS6 with a 10bit or higher image to see the different.

p.s. dunno if amd start enable 10bit for consumer card or just by accident

velocityx
Master Guru
Posts: 305
Joined: 2011-03-31

#4827310 Posted on: 05/28/2014 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plug2k

I would be more inclined to say that stuttering is a CPU thing.

A9M4D
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: 2014-05-27

#4827313 Posted on: 05/28/2014 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rich_Guy

Used DDU, still the same, found it only does it on first boot after the drivers are first installed (after the mandatory reboot), as found the desktop eventually appears and all loads up fine, after i get rid of the Windows can't find Firefox.exe.

Think i might know what it is though, when installing the drivers for the first time, it always opens up IE for something, but i think now, its trying to do it via FF (which i use), but seen as its trying to do it straight away, before anythings had a chance to load up, its throwing up that can't find it error, as when i popped the 14.4 RC1s back on, was all fine again, as those do the IE like previous sets.

Seem fine, 3D Mark 11 got a boost, couple of hundred points, so now going to try a few other benchies, Metro 2033/LL, and a few other game ones, see if they around same still.

Hi mate, I was just reading your post and you claimed the after the install and the black screen appears the desktop eventually appears. I was wondering how long it took for the desktop to appear, as I am currently having this problem. I have gone into safe mode and did the DDU thing but I still get the black screen - am I just not waiting long enough for the desktop to appear? I have an R9 290

Lane
Ancient Guru
Posts: 6340
Joined: 2005-02-25

#4827347 Posted on: 05/28/2014 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scout

still no crossfire in wolfenstein new order..

If i dont do a misstake ( or missmatch with another game ), the game engine need to be modified for allow the use of CFX or SLI . Something it seems the developper are not ready to do anytime soon.

Lane
Ancient Guru
Posts: 6340
Joined: 2005-02-25

#4827353 Posted on: 05/28/2014 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DummyPLUG

windows desktop limit to 8 bit only, you need a application such as CS6 with a 10bit or higher image to see the different.

p.s. dunno if amd start enable 10bit for consumer card or just by accident

I dont think, AMD use 10bits per chanel since many years now, in reality even the 8bit is not 8bit, it is 10bit dithered to 8bit ( hence why the color banding is reduced on AMD gpu's, who dont support 10bit anyway ( max is 8bit ).. AMD GPu "force" the 10bit( if your monitor use it ).. it work for games, for software, anything. ( for the desktop ( i dont know ).

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