Is Catalyst 14.6 up yet? When I click the link, it still says Catalyst 14.4.
Anyway, by mixed resolution Eyefinity, do you mean we can also run monitors in custom resolution now? i.e. one 1920x1080 monitor in the middle and two 1600x900 monitors on the left and right. The total horizontal resolution would be 5120 (1920+(1600x900x2)). Then can we crop the center monitor to run at a maximum vertical resolution of 900 so it matches the left and right monitors? The total resolution would be 5120x900 and you still get 1:1 pixel mapping, except there will be a hidden or empty area on the center 1920x1080 monitor since it's displaying at 1920x900 cropped. Is this the case or am I thinking something else?
What's the point of using Fit mode over Fill tho? I'm sure there's one or they wouldn't have bothered... Wouldn't you rather ALWAYS use more of your display space tho? I guess there's games that might not play nice with Fill and you'd end up with hidden game elements, which would be particularly bad if it's UI elements that are now completely inaccessible.
I'm glad they added both modes, I've never considered moving from 24" for my main display because 3x27" would just be too much (too much desk space, too much of a burden on my GPUs, too much everything) but 24-27-24 might be worth a look now...
Look at the pictures. If your center monitor is larger than the left and right displays, enabling fill mode would mean nothing lines up correctly! In such a scenario you could also use the new Expand mode if you really wanted to, but then you're cropping out some of the image (AKA "Help! Half of my minimap is cut off!"). Fit is the best compromise, by far. But I'm glad they added both Fit and Expand, they've really boosted the flexibility of Eyefinity and made it easier to recommend.
After a test I can say: That option changes absolutely nothing.
Old hack still works and real 10-bit output is still possible, but it's unrelated to that option. I can even get smooth 10-bit gradients with that option at 6 bit...
color calibration per monitor in Eyefinity would be a very useful future addition. The mixed mode look awesome; time to upgrade middle monitor to 30" :-)
"there's no reason to not run the free update to 8.1"
Except for the part where it's actually a new OS and does have driver compatibility issues. Some examples off the top of my head include AMD 4000 series and older hardware don't have 8.1 drivers, and I ran into USB licensing driver issues with SafeNet at work. I think there were also some other requirements on the CPU (CMPXCHG16B), I was bitten by this while trying to run 8.1 in a VM.
I used a Radeon HD 2400 PRO in Windows 8.1, and AMD does indeed provide a driver for it. To be fair, I think it's listed as a Windows 8 driver on their page, but regardless, it worked fine on 8.1 without any forcing at all (just installed as-is).
Kind of a moot point about the HD4xxx series with regards to this driver, their last WHQL driver was 13.9 so they're not even bothering rolling out the latest stuff for those cards. Either way, the 13.9's work fine on 8.1
The early Athlon 64 X2 can not run 8.1 - but people still running these systems are not the typical Win 8 users anyway. Most people "still" running 8.0 have very likely simply not heard about the update or are afraid of breaking things.
I don't think anyone in that 6% even knows what an AMD is, let alone why they'd need to download "Dry Verse" for it. I further suspect that roughly 95% of those 8.0 users can't figure out how to load up the Marketplace and click the button for the update. Maybe they should start forcing the update.
Does anyone know if this driver fixes the R9 290x youtube/flash video bug? I've read tons of people are experiencing bsods while watching youtube and other media, myself included.
I've had a very similar issue playing back MKV video - both via VLC, and Plex with DXVA acceleration.
I have 2 Powercolor Radeon 7850 2GB cards in Crossfire;
I've tried each of the 14.x drivers, and saw a similar issue when playing high bitrate / high resolution MKV files via VLC or Plex. Often they'd start out grey and artiface, would stick and freeze, and if the system was left with the video paused, would end up bluescreening, with amdkmdag (If I recall correctly) cited as the source. These BSOD errors would reference issues with paging in memory.
This is after I had uninstalled each, then used driver sweeper. On an i7-3820 / 16GB DDR3 backed rig.
But when I backed the drivers to 13.4? Not a problem in sight.
Hopefully 14.6 can fix this; since it's sort of unfortunate to have to choose either video playback, or enhanced features.
Doing some further testing, the passthrough of DTS-HD streams is working on the 7.12.0.7714 audio driver, but not the 7.12.0.7719 - Used in 13.4 and 14.6 respectively, as far as I can tell.
I'd like to get some more information on this issue, could you link some sources, please! I have a Sapphire HD 7870 XT and it has been causing me trouble ever since I bought it. The thing is, I rarely get a BSOD, instead I get a full system lock-up, everything stops, the sound loops, and even pressing the reset button does nothing(!!). I have to hold it down a couple of seconds (effectively cutting the power) and only then the system restarts. This has happened while watching streams on twitch.tv, youtube videos, and today while watching a movie using MPC-HC with the MadVR renderer. I have never experienced anything like this with my previous GPU, which was a Sapphire HD6870. The rest of the specs are Intel i5 2500K, 8 GB RAM and a 500W Seasonic EnergyKnight PSU.
Did Eyefinity set up just become cheap? You buy two old monitors and you put them in the sides of your new HD monitor. And you are ready for online FPS. Who cares if the monitors are old, with big bezels and low resolutions (1280X1024 or 1680X1050 for example)? You do have a much better visual of the.... battlefield and the lower resolutions don't drive the frames per second as low as 3 FullHD monitors will do forcing you to buy an even faster graphics card.
Apparently it just did. I'm really happy about the improvements they made to Eyefinity. My two additional monitors (left and right) have been used mostly just for gaming and hobbies where the extra screen estate is very helpful. But when browsing and anything else light, I only use my center monitor. I can finally upgrade my center monitor to a much higher resolution without compromising 1:1 pixel mapping.
Yeah, I might start looking at a 27" for my center display, even tho I'm relatively happy with the three Dell U2412Ms I have... Even more so than the extra work space when not gaming, it'd mean less of a sacrifice for those games that aren't EF friendly. Instead of playing on a center 24" display I could just play on a 27" and sacrifice nothing by having three displays (3x27" is too much for me, in all senses).
I do wonder if it won't look kinda funny having the top third or fourth of the display empty tho, but I got used to bezels fairly quick so... This might be particularly nice for those of us who use PPP occasionally, a bigger center display means more space between the bezels (duh) without sacrificing a ton of space larger side displays (part of the reason I went with x1200 displays to begin with, rather than x1080).
It's not like 1920x1080 displays are expensive... If you wanted to do EF on a budget you could get three cheap TN displays for under $150 and something like two R9 280X (or the two 4950 I bought a few years ago for $200-230 each). This change just lowers the entry cost slightly by allowing you to re-purpose old displays as you suggest, and/or skimp more on the GPUs... If you're buying new monitors I don't see why you wouldn't go at 'least with a decent 1920x1080 IPS display tho, specially for PPP use (TN displays in portrait = yuck).
anandtech can you do a test with - i think one of most sexy new possibilities of this driver - 1920x1080 2560x1080 1920x1080 and then games compatibility , for example i now play battlefield 4 on eyefinity 5760x1080 and when i play fullscreen the minimap in multiplayer and the rest of the hud (gamechat and how part where you cansee how many bullets are still in the weapon and how many clips you still have unused) are on the corners of the middle monitor , so it is perfect , when i p[lay borderless these things move to the left side of the 1st screen and right side of the third screen , so fullscreen is the way to go but what happens fullscreen with a middle screen 2560x1080 and 1920x1080 on the sides , does bf4 ad the 3 horizintal resolutions up and divides it bij 3 and that way puts the minimap not on the left lower corner of screen 2 but somewaht more to the right because there is the 1/3rd of the screen , mmm i hope i explained that right nromaly it puts the minimap right of 1920 and now it is 1920 + 2560 + 1920 = 6400 / 3 = 2133,33 and then the minimap would be jiust right of that but then you are already far into the 2560x1080 screen
When EF first came out, one of the engineers involved in creating it said that PLP's needing to rotate the output on the portrait monitors by 90* breaks a bunch of fundamental bottom layer assumptions in the driver stack; and would be very difficult to make work as a result.
I have 14.6 but can't see an option to change to 10-bit D: I thought it might be too good to be true. I don't have that red accent in my driver, which I believe is associated with FirePro, even though it says "Radeon" in the image up there.
It's either they haven't added in 10-bit for Radeon, the driver doesn't know my GPU is capable because it's generic, or the 7950 can't do 10-bit but the newer cards can - even though I'm pretty damned sure this card has hardware support for 10-bit.
Using an LG 27EA83-D, a 10-bit monitor over mDisplayPort with an MSI R7950.
Even my 6950 can do 10-bit output, so no reason that 7950 can't. But as I've written earlier, new option seems to be completely useless and unrelated to actual support.
Can someone tell me if this works with AMD's dual graphics system on mobile if you disable APU graphics? No mention of that scenario. I have an A10-5757m and a Radeon HD 8750m. Since 8750m is based on GCN, shouldn't it work?
"Finally, AMD has also included a note that Windows 8.0 users will want to pay attention to. AMD is dropping support for Microsoft’s non-updated version of Windows 8 early;" Yay!!! Death to WIndows 8!!!!
Windows 8.1+ however, still not quite there. But totally usable with classic shell installed. Microsoft really should buy that from the guys who made that, it's really good.
First of all Thanks for AMD network and i have using AMD Radeon HD7770 GC on my PC and catalyst 14.6 helps me a lot in-terms of Picture details and for Gaming. Thanks for sharing the post! Contact me for more on http://www.allmobilebuzz.com
It has been a pain since a long time to choose the best among the AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. the AMDs come at cheap prices and do perform well, while the Nvidia comes at higher performance with robust performances. Here is my tech blog: http://www.techragon.com
Amd and Nvidia are toe to toe , while graphic cards price are rising day by day due to mining. I just wish that prices would go down and gamers can enjoy faster gaming. https://www.shubz.in/
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SymphonyX7 - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Is Catalyst 14.6 up yet? When I click the link, it still says Catalyst 14.4.Anyway, by mixed resolution Eyefinity, do you mean we can also run monitors in custom resolution now? i.e. one 1920x1080 monitor in the middle and two 1600x900 monitors on the left and right. The total horizontal resolution would be 5120 (1920+(1600x900x2)). Then can we crop the center monitor to run at a maximum vertical resolution of 900 so it matches the left and right monitors? The total resolution would be 5120x900 and you still get 1:1 pixel mapping, except there will be a hidden or empty area on the center 1920x1080 monitor since it's displaying at 1920x900 cropped. Is this the case or am I thinking something else?
Kevin G - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
That sounds right from the fit description.There is also the expand option which would render games internally at 5120 x 1080 but obviously not all of it would be displayed.
bahamakyle - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
From what I understood from the article you seem to have described the Eyefinity 'Fit' mode spot on.Impulses - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
What's the point of using Fit mode over Fill tho? I'm sure there's one or they wouldn't have bothered... Wouldn't you rather ALWAYS use more of your display space tho? I guess there's games that might not play nice with Fill and you'd end up with hidden game elements, which would be particularly bad if it's UI elements that are now completely inaccessible.I'm glad they added both modes, I've never considered moving from 24" for my main display because 3x27" would just be too much (too much desk space, too much of a burden on my GPUs, too much everything) but 24-27-24 might be worth a look now...
Alexvrb - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Look at the pictures. If your center monitor is larger than the left and right displays, enabling fill mode would mean nothing lines up correctly! In such a scenario you could also use the new Expand mode if you really wanted to, but then you're cropping out some of the image (AKA "Help! Half of my minimap is cut off!"). Fit is the best compromise, by far. But I'm glad they added both Fit and Expand, they've really boosted the flexibility of Eyefinity and made it easier to recommend.Kevin G - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
10 bit per pixel color support is actually a big deal. This eliminates one of the distinguishing features between consumer and workstation GPUs.Senti - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Actually it worked even on older drivers, but you'd had to add some registry entries manually.Still, it's nice to see it officially supported.
Senti - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
After a test I can say: That option changes absolutely nothing.Old hack still works and real 10-bit output is still possible, but it's unrelated to that option. I can even get smooth 10-bit gradients with that option at 6 bit...
lettermand99 - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
What old hack is that? Works in photoshop cs6?jmke - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
color calibration per monitor in Eyefinity would be a very useful future addition. The mixed mode look awesome; time to upgrade middle monitor to 30" :-)The Von Matrices - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
I find it interesting that AMD is dropping Windows 8.0 so quickly and abandoning over 6% of the market according to http://netmarketshare.com/.Medallish - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
If you actually like Windows 8, there's no reason to not run the free update to 8.1, so personally I don't see the problem.Gigaplex - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
"there's no reason to not run the free update to 8.1"Except for the part where it's actually a new OS and does have driver compatibility issues. Some examples off the top of my head include AMD 4000 series and older hardware don't have 8.1 drivers, and I ran into USB licensing driver issues with SafeNet at work. I think there were also some other requirements on the CPU (CMPXCHG16B), I was bitten by this while trying to run 8.1 in a VM.
Espionage724 - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
I used a Radeon HD 2400 PRO in Windows 8.1, and AMD does indeed provide a driver for it. To be fair, I think it's listed as a Windows 8 driver on their page, but regardless, it worked fine on 8.1 without any forcing at all (just installed as-is).owan - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Kind of a moot point about the HD4xxx series with regards to this driver, their last WHQL driver was 13.9 so they're not even bothering rolling out the latest stuff for those cards. Either way, the 13.9's work fine on 8.1Homeles - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Have you tried forcing the drivers to run? Just because an OS or piece of hardware isn't explicitly supported doesn't mean the driver's won't work.heffeque - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Here's yet another "expert" that doesn't know that Win8.0 Enterprise can't be updated to 8.1.MrSpadge - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
The early Athlon 64 X2 can not run 8.1 - but people still running these systems are not the typical Win 8 users anyway. Most people "still" running 8.0 have very likely simply not heard about the update or are afraid of breaking things.Alexvrb - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
I don't think anyone in that 6% even knows what an AMD is, let alone why they'd need to download "Dry Verse" for it. I further suspect that roughly 95% of those 8.0 users can't figure out how to load up the Marketplace and click the button for the update. Maybe they should start forcing the update.Westx - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
You can download the drivers herehttp://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/downloads/tre...
CloudFire - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Does anyone know if this driver fixes the R9 290x youtube/flash video bug? I've read tons of people are experiencing bsods while watching youtube and other media, myself included.Tulatin - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
I've had a very similar issue playing back MKV video - both via VLC, and Plex with DXVA acceleration.I have 2 Powercolor Radeon 7850 2GB cards in Crossfire;
I've tried each of the 14.x drivers, and saw a similar issue when playing high bitrate / high resolution MKV files via VLC or Plex. Often they'd start out grey and artiface, would stick and freeze, and if the system was left with the video paused, would end up bluescreening, with amdkmdag (If I recall correctly) cited as the source. These BSOD errors would reference issues with paging in memory.
This is after I had uninstalled each, then used driver sweeper. On an i7-3820 / 16GB DDR3 backed rig.
But when I backed the drivers to 13.4? Not a problem in sight.
Hopefully 14.6 can fix this; since it's sort of unfortunate to have to choose either video playback, or enhanced features.
Tulatin - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Doing some further testing, the passthrough of DTS-HD streams is working on the 7.12.0.7714 audio driver, but not the 7.12.0.7719 - Used in 13.4 and 14.6 respectively, as far as I can tell.matagyula - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
I'd like to get some more information on this issue, could you link some sources, please!I have a Sapphire HD 7870 XT and it has been causing me trouble ever since I bought it. The thing is, I rarely get a BSOD, instead I get a full system lock-up, everything stops, the sound loops, and even pressing the reset button does nothing(!!). I have to hold it down a couple of seconds (effectively cutting the power) and only then the system restarts. This has happened while watching streams on twitch.tv, youtube videos, and today while watching a movie using MPC-HC with the MadVR renderer. I have never experienced anything like this with my previous GPU, which was a Sapphire HD6870. The rest of the specs are Intel i5 2500K, 8 GB RAM and a 500W Seasonic EnergyKnight PSU.
yannigr - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Did Eyefinity set up just become cheap? You buy two old monitors and you put them in the sides of your new HD monitor. And you are ready for online FPS. Who cares if the monitors are old, with big bezels and low resolutions (1280X1024 or 1680X1050 for example)? You do have a much better visual of the.... battlefield and the lower resolutions don't drive the frames per second as low as 3 FullHD monitors will do forcing you to buy an even faster graphics card.SymphonyX7 - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Apparently it just did. I'm really happy about the improvements they made to Eyefinity. My two additional monitors (left and right) have been used mostly just for gaming and hobbies where the extra screen estate is very helpful. But when browsing and anything else light, I only use my center monitor. I can finally upgrade my center monitor to a much higher resolution without compromising 1:1 pixel mapping.Impulses - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Yeah, I might start looking at a 27" for my center display, even tho I'm relatively happy with the three Dell U2412Ms I have... Even more so than the extra work space when not gaming, it'd mean less of a sacrifice for those games that aren't EF friendly. Instead of playing on a center 24" display I could just play on a 27" and sacrifice nothing by having three displays (3x27" is too much for me, in all senses).I do wonder if it won't look kinda funny having the top third or fourth of the display empty tho, but I got used to bezels fairly quick so... This might be particularly nice for those of us who use PPP occasionally, a bigger center display means more space between the bezels (duh) without sacrificing a ton of space larger side displays (part of the reason I went with x1200 displays to begin with, rather than x1080).
Impulses - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
It's not like 1920x1080 displays are expensive... If you wanted to do EF on a budget you could get three cheap TN displays for under $150 and something like two R9 280X (or the two 4950 I bought a few years ago for $200-230 each). This change just lowers the entry cost slightly by allowing you to re-purpose old displays as you suggest, and/or skimp more on the GPUs... If you're buying new monitors I don't see why you wouldn't go at 'least with a decent 1920x1080 IPS display tho, specially for PPP use (TN displays in portrait = yuck).Impulses - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Err, 6950 not 4950~schietdammer - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
anandtech can you do a test with - i think one of most sexy new possibilities of this driver - 1920x1080 2560x1080 1920x1080 and then games compatibility , for example i now play battlefield 4 on eyefinity 5760x1080 and when i play fullscreen the minimap in multiplayer and the rest of the hud (gamechat and how part where you cansee how many bullets are still in the weapon and how many clips you still have unused) are on the corners of the middle monitor , so it is perfect , when i p[lay borderless these things move to the left side of the 1st screen and right side of the third screen , so fullscreen is the way to go but what happens fullscreen with a middle screen 2560x1080 and 1920x1080 on the sides , does bf4 ad the 3 horizintal resolutions up and divides it bij 3 and that way puts the minimap not on the left lower corner of screen 2 but somewaht more to the right because there is the 1/3rd of the screen , mmm i hope i explained that right nromaly it puts the minimap right of 1920 and now it is 1920 + 2560 + 1920 = 6400 / 3 = 2133,33 and then the minimap would be jiust right of that but then you are already far into the 2560x1080 screenBreit - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
No PLP support is a big disappointment! How hard can it be?DanNeely - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
When EF first came out, one of the engineers involved in creating it said that PLP's needing to rotate the output on the portrait monitors by 90* breaks a bunch of fundamental bottom layer assumptions in the driver stack; and would be very difficult to make work as a result.Razyre - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
I have 14.6 but can't see an option to change to 10-bit D: I thought it might be too good to be true. I don't have that red accent in my driver, which I believe is associated with FirePro, even though it says "Radeon" in the image up there.It's either they haven't added in 10-bit for Radeon, the driver doesn't know my GPU is capable because it's generic, or the 7950 can't do 10-bit but the newer cards can - even though I'm pretty damned sure this card has hardware support for 10-bit.
Using an LG 27EA83-D, a 10-bit monitor over mDisplayPort with an MSI R7950.
Senti - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Even my 6950 can do 10-bit output, so no reason that 7950 can't. But as I've written earlier, new option seems to be completely useless and unrelated to actual support.lettermand99 - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
How do you get 10bit support working in photoshop?sturenorth - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
ERROR !!!!!!!!Using two 1920x1080 and one 1920x1200
My displays are plugged into my HD6970 Reference.
Using Portrait and as of 14.6 >BETA< I cannot use ------> Bezel Compensation <--------
The error message I receive upon clicking "Bezel Compensation" is as fallows
Warning: Your display configuration has changed. Ensure your displays are connected and functioning properly.
Please advice!
// Stu
kirilmatt - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Can someone tell me if this works with AMD's dual graphics system on mobile if you disable APU graphics? No mention of that scenario. I have an A10-5757m and a Radeon HD 8750m. Since 8750m is based on GCN, shouldn't it work?santaur89 - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
I wonder if it is now possible to do a portrait + flip portrait for monitors with thicker bezels at one side.Kanuj Sharma - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
AMD and Nvidia both release driver update at the same time they even have a war on for better drivers other than the GPU war<a href=”http://www.candytech.in”>http://www.candytech.in</a>
Hrel - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
"Finally, AMD has also included a note that Windows 8.0 users will want to pay attention to. AMD is dropping support for Microsoft’s non-updated version of Windows 8 early;" Yay!!! Death to WIndows 8!!!!Windows 8.1+ however, still not quite there. But totally usable with classic shell installed. Microsoft really should buy that from the guys who made that, it's really good.
vinoth - Friday, July 17, 2015 - link
First of all Thanks for AMD network and i have using AMD Radeon HD7770 GC on my PC and catalyst 14.6 helps me a lot in-terms of Picture details and for Gaming. Thanks for sharing the post!Contact me for more on http://www.allmobilebuzz.com
Shiva Sai - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
It has been a pain since a long time to choose the best among the AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. the AMDs come at cheap prices and do perform well, while the Nvidia comes at higher performance with robust performances.Here is my tech blog: http://www.techragon.com
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