AMD has shared an update regarding the features and abilities of their latest major software driver update, Catalyst Omega, to coincide with its actual official release.
AMD touts that the new drivers were built on top of the benefits afforded by last year’s Catalyst update, and intended to benefit developers and gamers.
First off, they give specific examples on performance boosts they cited before. A Radeon R9 290X with Catalyst Omega speeds up Bioshock Infinite performance by 19 %. Meanwhile, an A10 7850K will perform 29 % faster for Batman: Arkham Origins. Other boosts are presumably also game and card specific, but it does give an idea of the potential of the update. Furthermore, some cards will auto download updates for player convenience.
UltraHD upsampling, which was mentioned before, has been reconfirmed, so that games that max out at 1080p will be upscaled on 4K displays. There is also Perfect Picture UltraHD tech, that adds compression artifact removal 2, and frame rate conversion for Blu-Ray video, to process it pixel by pixel. Select AMD APU and GPU combinations will also work together via Dual Graphics, for considerably smoother gameplay.
AMD did extensive testing prior to Catalyst Omega’s release, not only on their own, but asking aid from six major PC communities. They went out of their way to recreate and debug issues that the community found to ensure they would all be addressed.
Aside from the qualifications, AMD has added a serious disclaimer that the cited performance gains are opinion from their software marketing head Sasa Marinkovic. It would seem the wording of the previous press release could have been potentially misleading to consumers, especially given how the community is subject to the industry’s hype marketing cycle.
This is probably more for AMD’s protection from people expecting the sun and the moon out of this update, and Catalyst Omega remains a major step forward for gamers with AMD rigs.
Catalyst Omega is available from AMD’s support downloads page here.
