Home Gaming AMD overhauls Catalyst, introduces super sampling

AMD overhauls Catalyst, introduces super sampling

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23

OmegaRed

Nvidia’s recently unlocked its own Super Sampling tech, which it calls Dynamic Super Resolution, to make your games look better on that 1080p screen of yours. While PC hardware keeps getting more and more powerful, GPCU’s are increasingly becoming capable of smoothly rendering games well beyond the capabilities of most people’s screens. 4K monitors are stupidly expensive, so this is the next best thing; rendering games at higher resolutions and then shrinking them back down to fit your screen.  AMD’s just released its new drivers, allowing members of Team Red to easily make their games look even better.

OMEGA1

They’re calling it Virtual Super Resolution (VSR)  – and like Nvidia’s DSR, allows gamers to super sample their games, rendering them at at up to 4K, before downscaling them back down to fit 1080p screens. Why? It functions much like anti-aliasing, giving gamers a superbly crisp image, reducing those godawful jaggies.  Unless you have supremely powerful hardware though, it’s best to use this for older games.

Omega2

It’s just one of a handful of new features in AMD’s brand new Omega drivers, giving its Catalyst drivers the kick up the bottom they so sorely need. AMD’s also improved performance in dual-graphics and crossfire setups, and included a swathe of improvements to video playback. The new drivers also include 1080p Detail Enhancement, which make lower resolution content look a heck of a lot better on higher resolution displays. Speaking of fancy displays, Catalyst Omega also introduces support for things like  FreeSync monitors, Alienware’s Graphics Amplifier, and even 5K displays!

Omega

There are also a number of bugfixes, new features and even HDMI audio corrections and just about a million other reasons to make it so that everybody running AMD updates right now – including increased performance.  You can grab the new drivers here.

Last Updated: December 5, 2014

23 Comments

  1. Rags

    December 5, 2014 at 15:07

    I love DSR, been replaying ME3 with it and other titles like banished. Great to see AMD guys getting it too.
    And 4k screenhosts make for great desktop backgrounds.

    Reply

    • Retief Pretorius Boshoff

      December 7, 2014 at 20:54

      AMD is c Copy Cat
      DSR > VSR
      Gsync > freesync
      Nvidia 3d > used tridef because they cant make their own 😛
      memory compression . memory compression
      blah blah

      Reply

      • nomad

        December 8, 2014 at 05:35

        waahhhh

        Reply

      • Ryuhoshi

        December 8, 2014 at 15:17

        It works also in reverse mate. TressFX –> HairWorks for example.

        Reply

      • Guest

        December 8, 2014 at 23:40

        Except Nvidia didn’t make any of those, they all were around prior to nvidia officially placing them in their driver support. Especially DSR which was around several years prior. And the 3D tech that they use was actually made by ELSA, not nvidia. They simply bought the right’s to it. As well Freesync is a standard open source system, unlike Gsync. You know what’s funny? G-sync was announced in 2013, while Freesync is from 2008.. Sure is copying around here huh?

        Just remember, check your facts before you spout off things you might not have all of the facts on.

        Reply

        • Retief Pretorius Boshoff

          December 9, 2014 at 00:20

          So for a technology that has been around since 2008 why only bring the tech to upcoming monitors?
          True dsr has been around for ages especially in emulators but the first initiative was taken to implement this into a gpu was nvidia.
          Nvidia also bought the rights for physx from agea.

          Thing is nvidia took the initiative to do something new.

          As for freesync send me the link.
          Which was first firestream or cuda?

          Reply

      • guywhoknows

        April 10, 2015 at 22:40

        amd prices < nvidia prices.
        with the same quality amd has better (lower) prices

        Reply

        • bluh

          April 10, 2015 at 22:53

          yup you can just see your pc stutter without dedicated physx shame poor cpu

          Reply

          • nahhson

            April 18, 2015 at 02:30

            lmao, riight, that tech that is barely usable these days that is even being phased out by nvidia? yep. hey bud? take a peek at a few benchmarks sometim, amd hols the budget, enthusaist and middle end markets in a vice grip. get with the times. this isnt the intel vs amd cpu market were talking about here.

  2. Hammersteyn

    December 5, 2014 at 15:07

    Lol Omega Red

    Reply

    • RustedFaith

      December 5, 2014 at 15:38

      He is quite bad ass though 🙂

      Reply

  3. FoxOneZA

    December 5, 2014 at 15:21

    Super sampling is only available for 2 AMD GPU’s it seems. Anyways, it seems like AMD have finally “fixed” their drivers.

    Reply

    • RustedFaith

      December 5, 2014 at 16:05

      yeh noticed it as well still gonna try on my 7970 🙂 It might be locked to newer gcn technology because the 285 and 290 cards have the exact same technology under the hood. The 280 cards still have older gcn technology.

      I hope its not the case but sadly it seems that way for now.

      Reply

  4. RustedFaith

    December 5, 2014 at 15:23

    The link doesn’t work cant find the new driver link as well on their page ?

    Reply

  5. RustedFaith

    December 5, 2014 at 15:37

    Link removed by AMD it seems the news was a bit premature

    Reply

  6. Wraith

    December 5, 2014 at 15:50

    Drivers have been pulled 🙁

    Reply

    • RustedFaith

      December 5, 2014 at 15:53

      yup trying to see if someone managed to snap it up while it was available. Its being released next week though …

      Reply

      • murlakatamenka

        December 5, 2014 at 16:39

        We’ll wait for them then 🙂

        Reply

  7. Kromas, Guardian of Cenarius

    December 5, 2014 at 18:59

    Also if you are not playing DA:I on mantle with these drivers I feel sorry for you. AMD the way DA is meant to be played!. 😛

    Reply

    • RustedFaith

      December 6, 2014 at 10:45

      I would but it microstutters to much, stuck with DX11 until they fix that. Do you have the drivers already because there are no download links available.

      Reply

  8. Paul17041993

    December 6, 2014 at 13:37

    wrong choice of terminology, AMD have had SSAA for many years already, this however is more of a OGSSAA technique where the resolution is hard-increased, vs multiple samples per pixel as per standard SSAA

    standard SSAA is a lot better in the terms of efficiency, you need about x3 OGSSAA (9 static pixels per pixel) to get a close effect to x8 SSAA (8 dynamic poly samples per pixel), HOWEVER OGSSAA allows you to record and take screenshots at the higher resolution, and is universually compatible with games that use legacy rendering techniques not necessarily compatible with AA, or games like terraria where you can afford to half the pixel size and give twice the screen space.

    Reply

    • Paul17041993

      December 6, 2014 at 13:40

      oh yea dot 3 on the topmost slide…

      Reply

  9. Admiral Chief BellatorMachina

    December 8, 2014 at 07:43

    TEAM RED

    Reply

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