AMD has published a special edition of its Catalyst graphics driver codenamed Omega. With this release, AMD wishes to bring a high quality driver with a stack of new features:
Introducing the AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver for Windows, a “Special Edition” driver delivered to enhance the AMD GPU and APU experience. The AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver contains over 20 new features, performance improvements, and significant number of bug fixes and improvements. All improvements will be carried forward in subsequent driver releases.
Virtual Super Resolution (VSR): Render games at higher resolution and display them at lower resolution. Up to 4k quality gaming on 1080p HD displays.
5K Monitor Support: Unparalleled display performance for professionals and gamers who require the highest resolution available and silky-smooth, fatigue-free graphics – 5120×2880 at 60Hz.
Alienware Graphics Amplifier: Support for AMD Radeon™ Graphics in Alienware Graphics Amplifier.
Perfect Picture Enhancements: AMD Fluid Motion Video (Smooth Blu-ray playback with lower power APUs) and Contour Removal – Improved algorithm for compressed videos.
Perfect Picture Additions: 1080p Detail Enhancement now for APUs and Ultra HD-Like Experience – Makes 1080P videos 4K-like.
Frame Pacing Enhancements for AMD Dual Graphics
AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing improvements
OpenCL 2.0 Support
Performance Optimizations versus AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 WHQL
Driver Efficiency Improvement: Driver optimization for multi core CPUs allows up to 15% more performance for some AMD platforms
The complete release notes are available HERE.
Related links:
- A Very Special Edition Driver: AMD Catalyst Omega @ AMD Blog
- Catalyst Omega: AMD veut faire progresser ses pilotes @ Hardware.fr
- Review: AMD Catalyst Omega Driver @ Hexus.net
Catalyst 14.12 Desktop Downloads
- Win8.1 64-bit
- Win8.1 32-bit
- Win7 64-bit
- Win7 32-bit
- Linux Ubuntu 64-bit
- Linux Ubuntu 32-bit
- Linux 32-bit and 64-bit
Catalyst 14.12 Notebook Downloads
Catalyst 14.12 is an OpenGL 4.4 driver and exposes 295 OpenGL extensions for a Radeon R9 290X on Win8 64-bit. All details are available in THIS ENTRY of the GPU Database.
Why does it ‘OpenCL 2.0 Support’ but GPU Caps Viewer says 1.2?
Good question! Maybe the OpenCL driver has not been updated yet. Or GPU Caps Viewer does can’t create an OpenCL 2.0 context. I’ll try to check that point asap.
AIDA64 says OpenCL 1.2 too on R9 280X. Maybe 280X can’t OpenCL20 idk
OpenCL™ 2.0 conformance logs submitted (pending ratification) for: AMD Radeon HD 7790, AMD Radeon HD 8770, AMD Radeon HD 8500M/8600M/8700M/8800M/8900M Series, AMD Radeon R5 M240, AMD Radeon R7 200 Series, AMD Radeon R9 290, AMD Radeon R9 290X, A-Series AMD Radeon R4 Graphics, A-Series AMD Radeon R5 Graphics, A-Series AMD Radeon R6 Graphics, A-Series AMD Radeon R7 Graphics, AMD FirePro W5100, AMD FirePro W9100, AMD FirePro S9150
so R9 280X doesn’t support OpenCL 2.0
In short GCN 1.0 doesn’t support OpenCL2 only GCN 1.1
AMD Website says:
AMD Product Compatibility
The AMD OpenCL 2.0 driver is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility
AMD Radeon™ R9 200 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 200 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 7700 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 8950
AMD Radeon™ HD 8600 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 8500 Series
Then again saying the driver is compatible doesn’t necessarily mean the hardware offers full OpenCL 2.0 support.
Radeon R9 200 series have different hardware, 290 GCN 1.1 and 280 (ex 7970) GCN 1.0 so AMD is kinda cheaters, they should differentiate 290 and 280 series
Not that bad driver. It fixed not working 1M particle direct compute demo in MSI kombustor and Ogl 4.5 support is on its halfway.
On Linux they had to submit several patches upstream to be able to support HSA and OpenCL 2.0. I don’t expect that to be straightforward under Windows so maybe OpenCL 2.0 isn’t fully supported on Windows yet – though it is specified on the website.