AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite Version Omega

This article provides information on the latest posting of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ Omega.

This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.

Package Contents

The AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ Omega contains the following:

• AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver version 14.501.1003
• AMD Catalyst™ Control Center version 2014.1120.2123.38423​

Installing The AMD Catalyst Software Driver
For detailed instructions on how to correctly uninstall or install the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, please refer to the following support resources:

• How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst™ Drivers from a Windows® Based System
• How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers for a Windows® Based System

NOTES

• This driver is not intended for use on AMD products running in Apple Boot Camp platforms. Users of these platforms should contact their manufacturer for driver support.
• When installing the AMD Catalyst™ Driver for Windows® operating system, the user must be logged on as Administrator, or have Administrator rights to complete the installation of the AMD Catalyst Driver.
• The AMD Catalyst Omega Software Suite requires Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to be installed.
• These release notes provide information on the AMD Catalyst Display Driver only. For information on the AMD Multimedia Center™, HydraVision, HydraVision Basic Edition, Remote Wonder™, or the Southbridge/IXP driver, please refer to their respective release notes found at: http://support.amd.com/.
• The AMD Catalyst Omega Software Suite requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 to be installed. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 is included in all Catalyst packages.
• AMD Eyefinity technology is designed to give gamers access to high display resolutions. As pixel count grows, the graphics "horsepower" required to drive the displays at a reasonable frame rate can increase dramatically. Depending on the game and system configuration, users may notice texture corruption and reduced frame rates when running games in multi-monitor Eyefinity modes.
• Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers are no longer bundled in the AMD Catalyst software suite. The WDM drivers install bundle can be downloaded independently through the AMD website.

AMD Product Compatibility

The AMD Catalyst™ Omega is compatible with the following AMD products.

AMD APU Product Family Compatibility

Windows 8.1 32-bit with Kaveri APU is currently not supported by AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver.

AMD Mobility Radeon™ Family Compatibility

AMD Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features.

Compatible Operating Systems

The latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ Omega is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

• Windows 8.1 (32 & 64-bit version)
• Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit version with SP1 or higher)

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ Omega Windows Driver

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

• Smoother textures and edges
• Game and Engine agnostic solution
• Simulates Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) for games that don't support it
• Enabled through AMD Catalyst™ Control Center
• Select higher resolution in-game settings
• Available on AMD Radeon™ R9 290 series, and AMD Radeon R9 285 GPUs

5K Monitor Support:

Unparalleled display performance for professionals and gamers who require the highest resolution available and silky-smooth, fatigue-free graphics

• 5120x2880 at 60Hz
• 14.7 million pixels, 218 pixels-per-inch
• Dual DisplayPort 1.2 input
• Available on AMD FirePro™ and AMD Radeon™ R series GPUs

Alienware Graphics Amplifier:

Support for AMD Radeon™ Graphics in Alienware Graphics Amplifier

• Expand the capability of the Alienware 13 notebook with a high-performance AMD Radeon graphics card
• Drive resolutions up to 4K
• Performance that far exceeds the built-in graphics.
• Supported on select AMD Radeon™ HD 5000 series GPUs and newer

Perfect Picture Enhancements:

• AMD Fluid Motion Video – Smooth Blu-ray playback with lower power APUs
  • High quality frame rate conversion
  • Interpolates frames using GPU compute
  • Removes video judder
  • Available on AMD 7000 Series APUs and AMD Radeon™ R7 & R9 series GPUs
• Contour Removal – Improved algorithm for compressed videos
  • Removes compression artifacts without disturbing video details
  • Available on AMD Athlon™ APUs, AMD 7000 series APUs, and AMD Radeon™ R series GPUs

Perfect Picture Additions:

• 1080p Detail Enhancement now for APUs
  • Provides look-and-feel of 1080p video to lower-resolution content
  • Improves frequency response and controllability of overshoot and noise immunity
  • Available on AMD 7000 series APUs and AMD Radeon™ R series GPUs
• Ultra HD-Like Experience - Makes 1080P videos 4K-like
  • Combination of:
    • Fluid Motion Video
    • Detail Enhancement
    • Adaptive upscaling
• Available on AMD Radeon™ R7 260 and higher

Frame Pacing Enhancements for AMD Dual Graphics:

• Includes enhancements for
  • Metro 2033
  • World of Warcraft
  • 3DMark 11
  • Sniper Elite V2
  • Tomb Raider
  • Hitman: Absolution
  • GRID 2
  • Alien: Isolation
  • Batman: Arkham Origins
  • BioShock: Infinite
  • Unigine Valley Benchmark
  • Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition
  • Metro 2033 Redux
  • Sniper Elite 3
  • Assassin's Creed Unity
  • Metro: Last Light

AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing improvements:

• Designed to reduce stuttering from graphics memory intensive applications: Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution, Watch Dogs, Far Cry 3

OpenCL™ 2.0 Support:

New features give GPUs more freedom to do the work they are designed to do

• Shared virtual memory
  • Enables host and device kernels to directly share complex pointer based data structures, eliminating explicit transfers between the host and devices while increasing programming flexibility.
• Device-side Enqueue
  • Updated for improved programmability and increased application efficiency
• Generic address space
  • Enables functions to be written without named address spaces which increases flexibility and saves time by eliminating the need for multiple functions to be written.

Performance Optimizations versus AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 WHQL

• Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™ performance optimizations
  • Mantle API activated for ultimate performance in Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™
• Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare performance optimizations
  • Up to 30% performance increases with FXAA and lower game resolutions
  • Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
• Assassin's Creed® Unity performance optimizations
  • Single GPU performance improvements
  • Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
• Dragon Age: Inquisition performance optimizations
  • Up to 15% performance increase in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.
  • Optimized AMD CrossFire™ Profile update for improved performance
• Far Cry 4 performance optimizations
  • Up to 50% performance increase in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.

Year over Year Performance Optimizations versus AMD Catalyst™ 13.12 WHQL*

• Up to 19% more performance since launch in some games on AMD Radeon R Series GPUs
• Up to 29% more performance since launch in some games on various AMD APUs

*Measured across various AMD Radeon R Series GPU and AMD APU configurations in over 30 game titles

Driver Efficiency Improvement:

• Driver optimization for multi core CPUs allows up to 15% more performance for some AMD platforms

Resolved Issues:

• 14.9 Install issues for intermittent crash or black screen after install
• 14.9 Catalyst™ Control Center issues have occasional AMDMantle64.dll error popups during install
• [406244] Online video can sometimes crash when watching YouTube videos with hardware acceleration enabled
• [406590] Watching online flash videos in Google Chrome sometimes causes the browser to hang when hardware acceleration is enabled
• [406493] Displays that go in to sleep mode intermittently causes the display to not wake up
• [404081] AHCI Chipset Drivers can sometimes cause the system to crash on boot-up
• [405807] 144Hz displays in AMD CrossFire™ configurations can cause intermittent crashing when launching D3D Applications
• [403996] Game stuttering or screen tearing in Quad CrossFire™
• [402133] State of Decay textures can intermittently extrude beyond their boundaries or be corrupted
• [405738] HDMI audio stays disabled when a connected TV is disabled and then re-enabled

Known Issues:

• [410367]  System black hangs/BSOD upon resuming from S3/S4 sleep on AMD Radeon™ R9 285 configured in AMD CrossFire™ mode
• [410293]  With AMD CrossFire™ enabled, Timeout Detection Recovery (TDR) occurs during actual gameplay when YouTube Mix moves to the next song in Firefox®
• [408368] Some artifacting will be seen in certain scenarios with AMD Fluid Motion Enabled
• [407622] Screen tearing on enabling VSync with Alien: Isolation game
• [407934] Frame drops may occasionally be observed playing back progressive Blu Ray content on some AMD Kaveri APU configurations
• [407095]  3D movies cannot be viewed using Power DVD on some AMD Kaveri APU configurations with only 2GB of single channel memory
• [407175] Catalyst Control Center Video Quality settings may not be available or retained if the "Enforce Smooth Video Playback" option is not selected on some AMD HD series GPU's.
• [406495]  Pull down detection fails to lock in Metro Video playback applications
• [410255] A system restart or hang may be observed on sleep/resume while transcoding video with Media Espresso
• [410398] A black screen may be experienced when attempting to enable Eyefinity after changing the display mode (Portrait, Landscape)
• [410391] Primary display may not be retained after disabling Crossfire while in Eyefinity mode
• [409705] Enabling or disabling Crossfire may lead to one side of the 4K MST display being shown as black
• [410393] Minor stuttering may be seen in Dragon Age Inquisition on Single and Multi GPU configurations​