New Catalyst drivers? Yes, please!
You can stop holding your breath now, AMD's WHQL-certified Catalyst 15.7 graphics drivers are available to download. Yes folks, new WHQL drivers...from AMD! It's been several months since we've been able to say that, and though the wait for polished drivers has been long, the reward for your patience is a feature-packed release.
To start with, Catalyst 15.7 is ready for Windows 10 with full DirectX 12 support, and just in time -- Windows 10 will ship out to consumers in waves beginning July 29. Equally enticing (if not more so, for some users), Catalyst 15.7 finally supports FreeSync on multi-GPU setups running in Crossfire.
This is a big deal, as monitor makers are starting to push out panels that support either FreeSync (AMD) or G-Sync (Nvidia) technology, both of which provide a smoother gaming experience by virtually eliminating screen tearing and stuttering. It was a bummer that FreeSync didn't work with Crossfire, but with these new drivers, that's no longer an issue.
That's not all Catalyst 15.7 brings to the Radeon party. Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC) and Virtual Super Resolution (VSR) are also part of the package. FRTC, which was previously only available for some 300 series cards via Catalyst 15.5 beta, allows users to fine tune their graphics cards for more stable performance by limiting the maximum frame rate. This in turn can reduce power consumption and lower system temps. And VSR renders games at a higher resolution and then displays them at a lower resolution. Like Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) technology, the pitch is that you can have 4K visuals on a 1080p monitor.
"We are thrilled to deliver our latest driver upgrade, making customer experiences with Windows 10 and AMD even more entertaining and intuitive than ever," said Ari Rauch, corporate VP, Software Development for AMD. "The AMD Catalyst 15.7 driver enables a refined user experience, with better gaming, better streaming and video quality, and incredible efficiency, taking AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) state-of-the-art architecture to the next level."
Outside of the new features and feature enhancements, Catalyst 15.7 offers increases performance, adds Crossfire profile enhancements for games like Battlefield: Hardline and Grand Theft Auto V, and stomps out several bugs.
You can check out the release notes and download the new drivers here.
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