AMD Catalyst 12.8 WHQL & Windows 8 Certified now available.

I spent an hour on the phone with my brother the other day because he was getting a BSOD trying to install 12.8 on a fresh install of 7x64. I had him get 12.6 and then 12.7 beta and both installed fine. Strange stuff and apparently not an isolated incident judging by Google.

He has a Gigabyte 6850 OC on an Asrock z68 Gen3 board with a i5 2500k. I also had him check his mobo BIOS version because Dave has mentioned on a few occasions that it is important to be up to date, but he already has the newest rev.

 

I use the 12.8 + Last CAP from september ( for cfx support in GW2 ), 2x 7970, and no problem there with it...

I know some have got strange problem with old motheboard ( mainly boards who have been released before the socket 1366 ).. but the z68 is not old.

Now, maybe something to do with MVPVirtu or the IGP driver... when he have try install the AMD one ? Does he have install the motherboard driver, utility before ? or the realtek one too ? With the switchable graphics, we have allready see some problem who appears....

 

Yeah I think it could have something to do with the Intel IGP. I had him disable it but we didn't test 12.8 after that. I use 12.8 on my 6950 without trouble but my z68 board has the IGP disabled by default.

 

FYI 12.8 CAP 3 is available:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista32.aspx

New Crossfire profile for Borderlands 2 and some compatibility improvements.

 

AMD on the ball for a big title release?

 

Is the compatibility with Photoshop improved?

 

AMD did a re-release of the 12.6 Legacy driver, now with Windows 8 support.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalystlegacywin8.aspx

 

Just a few hours ago I stumbled upon a bench on "liquify" that said it was using OpenGL.. Linked at by an AMD apologist.
Is it really OpenGL? (not OpenCL). And what is Adobe doing, throwing token stuff at consumer dogs?

This is dangerous. If we have major players doing tech demo plug-ins that don't even always work this will damage the credibility of GPGPU.

 

Thats me socket 775

 

Why doesn't this silly little thing autoupdate, instead of making me have to watch third-party sites for it who may or may not inform me it's available, then download and run a file (and reboot my freaking PC last time I did this!) It's 2012 for chrissakes. I don't get it. How many people ever download these things, or shit, even know that you CAN, or should?

I know it, but I just effing can't be bothered. It's so bad.

 

Oh it will, usually a few weeks after the driver is released, maybe they stagger it so the whole world doesnt autoupdate on the same day

 

Are you sure? I've never had my CAP autoupdate.

Also, if it waits a couple WEEKS with autoupdating it may just as well not bother at all.

 

Guys yesterday i got myself Sapphire 7870 and i am starting to regret it. With 12.8 or 12.9 beta i have severe core clocks fluctuations that cause lower than normal performance. Going back to 12.6 seems to resolve that issue but i am reading about many ppl complaing about random black screens while gaming on 7870 with 12.6 and lower. I did not have time to test gameing properly yet because i just did fresh install of win7
With 12.8 or up drivers my performance is about 15% lower than normal (at least in 3dm11). I am now doing a fresh install of BF3 for some testing. My main question is: should i return the card and go with GTX 660 or hope this is not actual hardware issue and wait for proper drivers?

 

That's odd. Clock fluctuations could be due to PowerTune, but in theory it's hardware-based, and only a new BIOS can modify its behavior, not new drivers. So I'm not sure what's going on here.

I suppose you could try setting PowerTune to +20% and see if that helps.

 

Here are some links with exact same problem i have right now.
Link 1
Link 2.

I played BF3 for about 1h and everything seems to be running fine. I am going to install 12.9 beta again and check your PT tip.

 

I guess if Cat 12.6 works fine, you might as well stick to that. If fiddling with the PT settings doesn't help, I suggest filing a bug report and hoping the next Catalyst version fixes it.

 

I was initially having problems with my MSI TF3 7870 and black screens on 12.6. I ended up disabling Afterburner and any overclocking then worked back from there. Now I'm running 12.8 and back to 1150 core clock and 1250 memory. I was running 1300 memory and maybe that was causing the black screens.

As far as core clock fluctuations, I have something similar but it presents itself differently. My thread at Rage 3d.

Basically my performance wasn't affected but my utilization would fluctuate wildly between 63% and 100% whereas with 12.6 the utilization would be solid 96-100%. Overclocking or power tune would have no effect on this.

 

Ok i did some quick tests and here are the results with 12.8 driver:
Setting PT to +20% - no luck
Updating BIOS (Asus P8Z77V PRO from BIOS 1015 to BIOS 1504) - no luck
Overclocking core from 1000 to 1005 - seems to be working! I dont see any drops in core clocks and my 3dm11 score is the same as with 12.6 (P6735).

Now im going back to BF3 and see if i can actually play the game without issues.

Bottom line is i still dont know if i should return the card or not. I dont feel like troubleshooting every driver release.
What would you do in my shoes?


EDIT: Just started playing BF3 and got blackscreen after like 2 mins. Awesome

EDIT2: It looks like clocks are stable but GPU-Z reports weird VCCD drops even during full load (i get stupid readings like -85.5V or 0.882V even with 100% gpu usage.

 

Perhaps a defective card?