Update: AMD Releases Catalyst 15.9 Beta Drivers

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• Manch - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  So now I'm the fanboy? LOL Seriously? You're the one on about it being a PR piece for Nvidia! The game which the benchmark is based off of is an XBONE/Win 10 exclusive! Why would MS the publisher allow the game run worse on AMD hardware that powers their console? Doesn't make sense. From the preview benchmark article "Fable Legends is an Xbox One/Windows 10 exclusive free to play title built by Lionhead Studios in Unreal Engine 4. ". It also states as another poster mentioned in the paragraph labeled "The Test: 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 (Ryan did the testing but is covering Samsung’s 950 Pro launch in Korea at this time). It can underscore just how early in the game and driver development cycle DirectX 12 is for all players. But as with most important titles, we expect drivers and software updates to continue to drive performance forward as developers and engineers come to understand how the new version of DirectX works."
  
  So it's obvious you didn't bother to actually read the article. You're popping off about it being a PR hit piece but I'm the fanboy? Objectivity? Bullshit. For which brand am I a supposed shill? I the owner of two 290X cards already stated that Nvidia as the test shows outperforms the AMD cards. The performance Delta is still within what has been already benchmarked with other games. There is no conspiracy here, no significant advantage was given to anyone. Just to you maybe. Good Lord...

• ddriver - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link

  So let me see if I got it right:
  
  - you have no problem with benchmarking nvidia sponsored engine on an amd gpu with a driver not even optimized for the title
  - you have a big problem with revisiting the benchmark to utilize the now available optimized driver
  
  ... and you still claim to not be a fanboy? And the proof for that is your claimed ownership of amd GPUs, which I can bet every undercover nvidia fanboy will claim as well...
  
  Sure thing pal...

• D. Lister - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link

  @ddriver
  
  If I believed in conspiracy theories I would think that you were acting like this because you were paid by Nvidia to act like an obnoxious AMD fanboy, to turn people away from AMD's brand. Thankfully I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories.

• wolfemane - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link

  This is one area I think ddriver has a point. I don't think its a PR stunt, but without proper drivers established for both sides the results are pretty much non conclusive, and DOES make AT look like nvidia pr pushers. The engine is nvidia focused, and when the bench was ran the article made it known that there were no optimized AMD drivers for it.
  
  Now... revisiting an article based on a benchmark of an unfinished game? Whats the point? What type of performance increase would you seriously expect from an optimized driver on a benchmark that's probably going to go through changes up to the point of the game being released, making the current state of optimized drivers irrelevant correct?
  
  Its a benchmark of an unfinished game... and its a benchmark. Which in the end really means nothing. If the game was out and a review was done with unoptimized AMD drivers vs optimized nvidia drivers that would most certainly call for a revisit once AMD released new drivers.
  
  In reality, AT just jumped the gun. They were given a new toy and wanted to get out preliminary results to its reader base. Should they have waited for AMD drivers? No. Should they revisit the previous article? No, whats the point...? We are after all talking about a benchmark of a game that has not yet been released.

• xthetenth - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  It's a better result for NV than Ashes, but Fable might actually be the better result for AMD in context. AMD and NV walked into a UE4 game, and for once the game didn't dramatically underperform on AMD hardware.
  
  That's a good sign for AMD, that DX12 won't just sucker punch them on engines that aren't in their wheelhouse (actually a good sign for both, because neither really wants huge swingy performance gaps between Gameworks and NV having the market share that a big game or two strongly favoring AMD would likely hurt them).

• Manch - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  Yeah UE usually do favor Nvidia HW. Being that this is an XBONE/WIN 10 exclusive, I'm sure a lot of work was done to make it run well on AMD's GCN HW. Hoping what they learned from this will help with drivers for other UE based games. Also since AMD has a lock on console HW I think we will see optimizations that benefit AMD in UE games overall. UE does power a lot of games regardless of platform. Still, AMD needs a solid win in the GPU space. Optimizations can only close the gap so much.

• Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  When they get around to looking at Ashes they could revisit Fable.

• jamjakap - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  I installed it and played call of duty advanced . It was horrible my fps went down 40 % . I usually get 91 fps but since that new beta driver I get 39 - 45 fps. I do have a amd r9 fury x . When I installed back to the driver 15.8 everything is back to 90 fps. Also my vram of card is no back to 2300 mb when I have installed the newest driver my vram usage was 3900 mb constantly . ? Any suggestions ? Thanks in advance

• Manch - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  Any other games take a hit?

• ruthan - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link

  AMD happens.