No more AMD monthly drivers?

[lay-z-boy]

From R3D.

There should be a public announcement today, but I have been allowed to share this info right now:

- AMD will end monthly Catalyst driver releases starting with Catalyst 12.5 (which won't exist). They have decided to focus harder on quality and improvements vs regular updates which may not bring many new things. This way there will be no need for two separate driver development paths every month: one to get the official WHQL driver and another that keeps doing the regular driver development.
- We should expect more "hot fixes" and "preview drivers" when new games are released or urgent fixes are required.
- There is a beta driver we are testing right now that fixes the Eyefinity tearing on the third monitor when mixing outputs. I have verified that it works with Souther Islands based cards, so I don't know if it will work with previous cards. Anyway, if no major issues are found, this driver should be publicly available next week.

http://foro.noticias3d.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=391920

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=363806

Not too sure about this one. Will we now see fewer but better drivers?

 

[Space Monkey]

Will we now see fewer but better drivers?

Seems like it from the report. From what I've heard over the years about the AMD drivers, this seems like a good move, lets hope that it does allow the driver teams more time to refine them!

 

[drunkenmaster]

It will fix one of their biggest PR problems, people just don't get that with two driver teams working, say 12.1 can have a fix, but it might not be in 12.2.

Because one team is working on 12.1 and puts the fix in, but the team doing 12.2 started before 12.1 was finished, and were working on something else, that might not work with that other fix at the same time.

So they are effectively putting more people on doing the job at the same time. Good, bad, who knows.

It doesn't really matter, the guys who bash the drivers will bash them no matter what. Too few drivers, they'll complain, less drivers and more hotfixes for new games, they'll complain.

I haven't had a real problem in god knows how long.

 

[arc@css]

Should be a good move, and was something I expected them to do eventually.

 

[Orcvader]

Thank god, drivers always seemed a mess for new cards because it feels they were rushing it. Hopefully with this, when they released new GPUs the drivers for it won't be as buggy as the ones for my 7950 has been.

 

[pgi947]

Agree with above, sounds like a good move on amd's part.

 

[Rusty0611]

About time!

But this should help solve the situation people find where a driver fixes one thing and breaks another.

 

[straxusii]

This is good news, the overhead of testing and releasing mission critical software like this each month is huge.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Agree. I'd much rather they release driver less regularly but with more reliable driver. I myself still haven't updated from 12.1 because of fearing that something will go wrong, and I don't exactly have a problem with my graphic card at the moment. I would very much like to keep up-to-date with the driver release, and not hold back by the thought of "don't fix it if it's no broken"...despite updating driver shouldn't be like that.

 

[jallan]

Could be a great move by AMD, was always told even back in primary school... quality over quantity.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Good news. Pretty annoyed that I've had an array of problems with my 6950s compared to just one single issue with a 4870 X2 (which is just that it's launch driver was utter balls), it should be the other way round.

It's not just bad PR that a later driver may not have a fix for a game in that was in an earlier one, it's just plain stupid and reeks of bad management.

 

[mmj_uk]

So when will they fix Tera flashing textures on 7970? it's been out a month I've had to pull my 7970 and use GTX580 just to enjoy it.

Good to see them take the quality over quantity route but I can't see it making that much of a difference, they need to start fixing games before they hit the shelves not months later.

 

[kitch9]

Doing the Nvidia model of releasing a WHQL once a flood and labelling the rest betas so they can be excused if there are any issues I see.

Smart move.

 

[Muel]

Good move AMD. Hopefully now I'll get a driver that gives me no issues at all. Don't think I've had that since I ran a single card instead of my crossfire setup.

 

[Besty]

Well, at least AMD have acknowledged the quality problem.

One step to the solution.

 

[Purgatory]

Finally they realised where their weak point is and hopefully now they will fix it and fingers crossed don't make such a mess of it. .. Thumbs up to AMD for taking a new path and listening to users finally.

 

[Overslop]

Long overdue, hopefully it brings them up to par with nVidia's drivers (present GTX 670/80 series stuttering notwithstanding).

 

[metalmackey]

Wonder if the version number will go up .1 or match the month of release like now.

 

[TheRealDeal]

This wont really affect me as i don't update to every driver that's released. I think i use about 3-4 different drivers per year. I never really run into problems so i don't see this as a good or bad move.

 

[opethdisciple]

It should mean its good, as the qulity of the drivers whould be better.

However... does that mean they will simply rely more on caps to support newer games?

I thought the problem with AMD drivers was the driver team was smallerthan Nvidia's?