If you are looking forward to update your OS with the recently released Windows 10, then there’s no reason not to if all you feared for are the lack of driver support for AMD, as the company’s recent Catalyst 15.7 Drivers are WHQL certified to work with the said OS from day one. For starters, the Catalyst 15.7 driver is fully certified for HEVC Decode, which is detrimental to support game streaming via Microsoft’s Xbox One console. The Catalyst 15.7 driver also fully supports DirectX 12 enabling up to 15x more performance based on Draws Per Second benchmarks – which should be tested in realworld scenarios once titles with DirectX 12 support has been released. Download here
Furthermore, AMD brings FRTC to fine tune your GFX card’s performance, lessening the power consumption by limiting the frames rendered per second. VSR or Virtual Super Resolution also comes with the driver, enabling extra details for PCs without 4K displays. For more info, read the PR below.
When AMD launched the AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver, we expected the world to take notice, but we were blown away by the amount of interest a single driver can generate. In only 6 months, our drivers – including Catalyst Omega – were downloaded over 40 million times. The best part: overall customer satisfaction went up by 19%! Now it’s the time to continue what we started in December and deliver another great driver for a great OS: Windows® 10.
Entertaining. Intuitive. Seamless
Windows 10 was designed to create a new generation of Windows for the 1.5 billion people using Windows today (https://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/06/01/hello-world-windows-10-available-on-july-29/). AMD processors enable premium experiences across the expanding Windows® 10 ecosystem.
AMD and Windows® 10 deliver a first-class entertainment experience by making games and streaming video look better than ever, while making the PC experience more personal, more productive and seamless across devices. Today, AMD released Catalyst 15.7, a WHQL certified, preview driver for Windows® 10 that will help enrich the user experience through more reliable performance, innovative features and technologies. The AMD Catalyst™ driver will continue to be improved and be fully integrated with Microsoft® Windows 10 as part of the Windows driver update component.
- AMD helps Windows 10 stream content at the highest resolutions (4K and beyond) thanks to the hardware-based HEVC decoder
- HEVC DECODE with Xbox® Video Player
- STREAMING Xbox® One™ to PC
- Ready for the latest gaming technologies in Windows® 10
- Games will look great on your AMD-based PC running Windows® 10 because all 2015 AMD APUs will provide support for Microsoft DirectX® 12 and AMD FreeSync™
- Enabling up to 15X more details in games using DirectX® 12 (AMD Internal Testing. 3DMark API Overhead Feature Test. System Configuration: Intel i7-5960X, 16GB DDR4-2666, 2TB Seagate HDD, AMD Radeon R9 390 GPU, Driver 15.20-150609a-184226E, Windows 10 v.10130. 18,463,548 draw calls per second in DirectX® 12, and 1,172,587 in DirectX® 11.)
- Supports WDDM 2.0 which works with Windows® 10 to reduce the driver workload on graphics hardware. Display modes can be changed quickly and without the bothersome flicker that Windows users had to endure in the past.
Cooler. Quieter. Power Efficient Catalyst
But that’s not all. Much like all AMD Catalyst driver updates, AMD Catalyst 15.7 comes packed with features and performance increases. Most notable capabilities include
- Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC) enables fine-tuning your graphics card for more stable and consistent performance in games with real-time frame rate control limiting the maximum frame rate during gameplay — and delivers the benefits of reduced system/GPU power consumption, lower system temps, and lower fan speeds for quieter operation.
- Virtual Super Resolution provides image quality enhancement to gamers and Windows desktop users (renders at high solution then down-scales; giving effective Super Sample Anti-Aliasing)
- Now supported on AMD Radeon™ R7 260 and above GPUS and desktop A-Series 7400K and above APUS in AMD Catalyst 15.20, with Single and Multi-GPU configurations with more supported VSR modes!
- FreeSync eliminates screen tearing without all the usual lag and latency. And now it works in Crossfire™ mode! You just need a FreeSync capable AMD component and a FreeSync compatible monitor. FreeSync CrossFire support is enabled on applications based on DirectX® 10 or newer (DirectX® 11 and DirectX® 12) and does not currently support AMD Dual Graphics APU configurations
Developing for Developers
Developers are at the core of what we do. Because better content doesn’t just happen, it’s created. We are enabling new features in some of the familiar tools just for them:
- GPU Perf Studio 3.3
- Windows 10
- DirectX® 12
- OpenGL 4.5
