AMD's Catalyst 15.10 Beta Optimizes 'Ashes Of The Singularity' DX12 Performance

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

AMD's latest Beta Catalyst driver optimizes performance for "Ashes of the Singularity," and it comes with a couple of other fixes.

AMD's latest Catalyst driver for Radeon graphics cards is a Beta driver that tackles a handful of issues. It is the 15.10 Beta driver (15 because 2015, 10 because October), and it is most interesting if you're playing Ashes of the Singularity due to some new DirectX 12 quality and performance optimizations. Additionally, the driver has a handful of other resolved issues and remaining known issues, listed below.

Resolved Issues:

  • [77786] Video playback of MPEG2 video fails with a playback error/error code message
  • [77754] A TDR error or crash is experienced when running the Unreal Engine 4 DirectX benchmark
  • [77073] Star Wars: Battlefront is able to use high performance graphics when launched on mobile devices with switchable graphics
  • [76930] Intermittent playback issues with Cyberlink PowerDVD when connecting to a 3D display with an HDMI cable
  • [59403] Ashes of the Singularity -- A 'Driver has stopped responding' error may be experienced in DirectX 12 mode
  • [58435] Driver installation may halt on some configurations
  • [76924] A TDR error may be experienced while toggling between minimized and maximized mode while viewing 4K YouTube content

Known Issues:

  • [77970] Ashes of the Singularity may crash on some AMD 300 series GPUs
  • [59528] Core clock fluctuations may be experienced when FreeSync and FRTC are both enabled on some AMD CrossFire systems
  • [58233] Ashes of the Singularity may fail to launch on some GPUs with 2 GB Video Memory. AMD continues to work with Stardock to resolve the issue. In the meantime, deleting the game config file helps resolve the issue
  • [77255] The secondary display adapter is missing in the Device Manager and the AMD Catalyst Control Center after installing the driver on a Microsoft Windows 8.1 system
  • [59475] Elite: Dangerous -- poor performance may be experienced in SuperCruise mode
  • [59792] A black screen may be encountered on bootup on Windows 10 systems. The system will ultimately continue to the Windows login screen

______________________________________________________________________

Niels Broekhuijsen has been with Tom's Hardware since 2012, and works as a Contributing Editor on the news team. He covers mostly hardware, components, and anything else that strikes his fancy. Outside of work, he likes to travel, cook, and fix things that are broken.

You can follow him at @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

30 Comments Comment from the forums
  • turkey3_scratch
    Ashes of Singularity already has proved to perform excellently on AMD GCN cards, so with these optimizations they could even see larger FPS boosts.
    Reply
  • hammereditor
    AMD doesn't need drivers to perform well at DX12 async shaders.
    Reply
  • Johan Kryger Haglert
    I remember crashed drivers from Radeon 9600 days, is that something one still have to live with with AMD cards?
    Reply
  • salgado18
    16783289 said:
    I remember crashed drivers from Radeon 9600 days, is that something one still have to live with with AMD cards?
    Short answer: no.

    Long answer: it may happen with either Nvidia or AMD drivers, but it's like a 1% chance for either. This talk of "AMD drivers are bad" or "Nvidia drivers are bad" is in the deep past. Both have the same average quality, and most of the times, errors happen due to individual hardware and/or software configurations.

    It's like saying: in the 90's, Fiat brought to my country the Tipo. Some cases of Tipos catching fire expontaneously came out, so the car was badly seen, and sold very little. No other cases of the type happened in any other model or brand (including Fiat) since then, so we can't just say "Fiat cars catch fire".
    Reply
  • Alec Mowat
    16783289 said:
    I remember crashed drivers from Radeon 9600 days, is that something one still have to live with with AMD cards?
    Short answer: no.

    Long answer: it may happen with either Nvidia or AMD drivers, but it's like a 1% chance for either. This talk of "AMD drivers are bad" or "Nvidia drivers are bad" is in the deep past. Both have the same average quality, and most of the times, errors happen due to individual hardware and/or software configurations.

    It's like saying: in the 90's, Fiat brought to my country the Tipo. Some cases of Tipos catching fire expontaneously came out, so the car was badly seen, and sold very little. No other cases of the type happened in any other model or brand (including Fiat) since then, so we can't just say "Fiat cars catch fire".

    Not sure I agree with this. AMD drivers are still bad. Crossfire is buggy compared to Nvidia SLI. If there is an issue, expect months before the next driver release.

    And for DX12, one game doesn't cut it for me
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9659/fable-legends-directx-12-benchmark-analysis/2

    It's like saying: in the 90's, Fiat brought to my country the Tipo. Some cases of Tipos catching fire expontaneously came out, and now they own Chrysler. So I'll never buy a Chrysler, or a Fiat, because they don't perform as well as the competition.
    Reply
  • Alec Mowat
    I remember crashed drivers from Radeon 9600 days, is that something one still have to live with with AMD cards?

    In that sense, it's been 10 years and Windows is a lot more stable than it used to be. I wouldn't necessarily blame the drivers for everything that happened back then.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    And for DX12, one game doesn't cut it for me
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9659/fable-legends-directx-12-benchmark-analysis/2

    From the first page of that article you linked to:

    The software provided to us is a prerelease version of Fable Legends, with early drivers, so ultimately the performance at this point is most likely not representative of the game at launch and should improve before release. What we will see here is more of a broad picture painting how different GPUs will scale when DX12 features are thrown into the mix. In fact, AMD sent us a note that there is a new driver available specifically for this benchmark which should improve the scores on the Fury X, although it arrived too late for this pre-release look at Fable Legends

    Basically those numbers aren't very useful at this point except to compare Nvidia to Nvidia and AMD to AMD. After launch it will be interesting to take another look.
    Reply
  • Johan Kryger Haglert
    16783438 said:
    Short answer: no.

    Long answer: it may happen with either Nvidia or AMD drivers, but it's like a 1% chance for either. This talk of "AMD drivers are bad" or "Nvidia drivers are bad" is in the deep past. Both have the same average quality, and most of the times, errors happen due to individual hardware and/or software configurations.

    It's like saying: in the 90's, Fiat brought to my country the Tipo. Some cases of Tipos catching fire expontaneously came out, so the car was badly seen, and sold very little. No other cases of the type happened in any other model or brand (including Fiat) since then, so we can't just say "Fiat cars catch fire".
    No, the driver talk is NOT deep.

    I've read some likely fairly popular description of AMD vs Nvidia drivers and tolerance and I've used Linux since 1996 or something and I know the Nvidia drivers has been way superior there and they also supported Solaris and FreeBSD.

    Also I've got the impression Nvidia is quicker to modify their drivers for specific games.

    And I for sure didn't had those crashing issues that my friend had on my Nvidia card. I've never had problems with them (I've had with Noveau drivers but that's not Nvidias drivers.)

    Now with the asynchronous-computing issues for the Maxwell-cards I guess it's too easy and likely unfair to blame shitty drivers for the DX11-performance with AMD cards relative the performance using DX12, Mantle or Vulkan. I don't know how good AMD OpenGL-drivers has been on Windows.

    It was an honest question from me though because I think the R9 380 especially hold a good spot against the GTX 960 currently and with the process shrink next year and twice the performance / watt for AMD cards as-well things should go better for AMD and in my case it still have the Linux drivers issue (well, unless Vulkan fixes that too and X/whatever starts to use that) but IF there was a lot of issues with crashing drivers or poor performance when it came to new titles that would be reconsider the cards anyway because I don't want poor drivers.
    Reply
  • none12345
    /shrug my current system amd cpu+gpu almost never crashes(every 3-4 years or so).

    When it does crash, its not the drivers, or any other software. It means the heat sinks have wadded up with lint/dust and they need to be cleaned. As soon as take the system and blow out the dust, it wont crash again for another 3 or so years.

    Assuming you didnt buy low level budget hardware, most systems are pretty darn stable these days. Crashes are very rare on any of the systems i own or use normally. If a system does crash its almost always from a power spike(lights flicker, on a system without a UPS), or its a thermal problem(fans stopped, heat sinks dusty)

    If your gpu is crashing in games constantly, at least in mainstream games, its likely because of that overclock you think is stable really isnt stable. Its almost certainly a thermal problem not the drivers. Or in the case of a cheap power supply it could be unstable voltages at high load. One of those 2 things are almost always the case.

    That said, i also have noscript on by default in my browser. And im blocking a few million ip address of ad sites, china sites, etc, etc. All those ones who like to push addware/spyware/virsues/etc on you. So i dont have a problem with that causing crashes.
    Reply
  • Alec Mowat
    16784321 said:
    And for DX12, one game doesn't cut it for me
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9659/fable-legends-directx-12-benchmark-analysis/2

    From the first page of that article you linked to:

    The software provided to us is a prerelease version of Fable Legends, with early drivers, so ultimately the performance at this point is most likely not representative of the game at launch and should improve before release. What we will see here is more of a broad picture painting how different GPUs will scale when DX12 features are thrown into the mix. In fact, AMD sent us a note that there is a new driver available specifically for this benchmark which should improve the scores on the Fury X, although it arrived too late for this pre-release look at Fable Legends

    Basically those numbers aren't very useful at this point except to compare Nvidia to Nvidia and AMD to AMD. After launch it will be interesting to take another look.

    That's been AMD's excuse for the last decade, "AMD sent us a note that there is a new driver available specifically for this benchmark"

    Just doesn't work in the real world. I'll never recommend AMD, unless at some point in the future, your games run on unfulfilled promises and false hopes. But you can probably just get an Nvidia card and see the performance now.
    Reply