AMD Catalyst 13.3 BETA 2

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF CATALYST 13.3 BETA:

Improves performance in Far Cry 3 up to 5 percent
Improve performance in Sim City 4 up to 16 percent
Improves latency performance issues seen in Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution
Resolves slight corruption seen in Tomb Raider with TressFX enabled for CrossFire and single GPU configurations

AMD Catalyst 13.3 BETA 2 (12.100.17.0 March 14)

 

Nice. Thanks for the post, Montage. Time to put it to the test.

 

Still not what is really important fixed yet. AMD makes me sad.

 

Simcity 4? I think they mean 5.

 

DO NOT INSTALL. This will break Enduro support and you'll be extremely frustrated as to why everything stops functioning (e.g. Intel graphics controller). Then you find out that it doesn't support working with Intel drivers and PX.

 

It feels good to have AMD demonstrate to you, you don't matter and they don't care huh?

I can confirm that AMD didn't even care to release working drivers this round for mobile.

 

I can confirm this. I tried installing this driver, and you should not do it. The switchable graphics option is for some reason gone, and I had a hard time getting it back with the older drivers. Wait for a new release!

 

I can report that these drivers (13.3) cause Photoshop CS6 to crash on startup (both 64bit and 32bit), whereas reverting to Catalyst 13.2 beta 7 remedies this problem.

 

I had to learn that the hard way, too. AMD just gives a sh** about mobile cards... I liked the raw computing power of my 6970Ms, but the driver screwed it all up.

 

Be sure to send a report to them... though at this point I wonder if they care...

 

simply rubbish card with rubbish driver. have to system restore

 

So, what I did to revert to 13.2 beta 7:

1. Uninstall All AMD Drivers via Add/Remove Programs (DO NOT REBOOT YET)
2. Repeat for Intel HD Graphics (DO NOT REBOOT YET)
3. Open Device Manager, and Uninstall, check "Delete the driver software for this device" for both AMD and Intel graphics.
4. Reboot and enter Safe Mode
5. Use a tool like Driver Fusion to eliminate what's left of AMD and Intel graphics drivers
6. Device Manager, Uninstall both graphics drivers if needed, again.
7. Reboot into normal mode.
8. Install latest Intel HD Graphics Driver (Link here: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/22376/a08/win64_152812.zip), DO NOT REBOOT YET
9. Install AMD Catalyst 13.2 beta 7 (Link here: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/AMD_Catalyst_13.2_Beta7.exe), DO NOT REBOOT YET
10. Open regedit, browse to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"
11. Open the sub-folder (e.g. 0000, 0001) that resembles the Intel graphics. You will see things like "@BlackOps.exe" in the list if you click on the right one.
12. Set "FeatureTestControl" to ffff
13. Reboot.
14. You'll notice the Intel graphics still don't work and Aero is disabled. This is normal because AMD screwed up the system internally somewhere. But we can repair it, follow the next few steps.
15. Open regedit again. Browse to that same subfolder. Change the following keys as follows:
InstalledDisplayDrivers:

Code:

igdumd64
igd10umd64
igd10umd64
igdumd32
igd10umd32
igd10umd32
aticfx64
aticfx64
aticfx64
aticfx32
aticfx32
aticfx32
atiumd64
atidxx64
atidxx64
atiumdag
atidxx32
atidxx32
atiumdva
atiumd6a
atitmm64

UserModeDriverName:

Code:

aticfx64.dll
aticfx64.dll
aticfx64.dll

UserModeDriverNameWow:

Code:

aticfx32.dll
aticfx32.dll
aticfx32.dll

16. Reboot.
17. You should notice that the Intel drivers are magically working again, somewhat. Intel Media Control Panel may crash if you use it at this point. This is normal.
18. Give it another reboot.
19. Now everything should be back to the way it was before installing the broken 13.3 beta 2.

Phew! That was "fun". Took hours to figure out.

 

Even if these drivers weren't bugged to hell, they still didn't do anything about problem games, like AC3.

 

Make sure to send reports about 13.3 beta to AMD: AMD Issue Reporting Form for AMD Catalyst

I will stay with 13.1 WHQL for now.

 

What tranta said. It's a beta driver so installing it in a switchable gpu system is asking for trouble. I'd do it - but I wouldn't come here to complain if a beta doesn't work properly. Now lucky me I don't have enduro - I had my share with pre-optimus switchable nvidia GPUs.

 

Well, they did list 7970M as one of the supported cards, and since Enduro is one of the major features of the card one would expect it to be supported as well.

 

true, but it's still not a release driver. I agree that it should be supported but as it's a beta - problems can and probably will occur.

 

"Problems" is one thing, but this is outrageous. The 13.2 beta1 worked, for instance.

 

We can read, we know it says beta on it, that's not the point. AMD has been very consistent for years now for ignoring mobile.

 

Sometimes it feels like I have different 7970m than some of you guys.
I've been visiting this forum everyday since I bought Clevo last year in May and it is my second, after IGN, most visited website...
And it baffles me all these stories about drivers installations and blue screens and Enduro and this and that...

I only had 1 bsod upon initial windows re-install on original Clevo drivers (was swapping HDD to SSD) and I think that was something to do with Intel driver not being there at the time.
Also one time (on 13.1 whql) my CC panel disappeared after installation but re-installation including driver sweeper in win safe mode helped.
1 bsod - 11 months of heavy usage, 5 driver updates (I don't jiggle with drivers)

When updating drivers every single time I am following a very simple instruction, used since my first ATI Rage in 1996 or something...
1. Uninstall old drivers.
2. Restart
3. (optional) driver sweeper in win safe mode
4. Install new drivers
5. Restart
done.

If you cannot follow this simple instruction than it's your fault or your GPU/laptop is broken and needs RMA.


Ps.
I am now on 13.3 BETA2 - worked straight out of the box, no problems whatsoever; also, not much improvements with TressFx in TR (FPS drops on close-cam) or blackboxes and micro-stuttering in FC3 (when played on full dx11 - its fine in dx9).
I don't have any other game to check at the moment.

Ps2.
I don't defend Enduro or AMD support on the matter. I think it's rubbish and disgusting all the way as I have/had issues with some of the games and AMD's terrible attitude towards fixing them. Next time I go green.

 

@revok Nice to see a different story. That's the proper way to update drivers.

The current beta driver doesn't provide updates for DX10/11 games - they are still working on the new memory controller for GCN that should provide a fix for the new titles in terms of frame time issues.

And have to say I'm not defending AMD either. I just know that Nvidia has had and has it's share of similar issues.

 

The proper way is to use 3rd party software. That makes me sad.

 

anyone tried revok's method? i remember different people got different problems with different combinations of steps with/without different 3dr party softwares when updating their catalyst in the past.

 

I actually got this driver to "install" on my computer without much difficulty. The problem was that the driver won't "run" - according to device manager windows is stopping it because it's getting an error. I did find out that the ATI driver runs while the Intel driver is uninstalled, but that doesn't really help anyone with enduro where the Intel drivers aren't optional. Also, don't forget about the AMD Catalyst Un-install Utility when uninstalling drivers; it's thorough and doesn't break my machine like driversweeper does. That's what I used to remove 13.3 to revert back to 13.2 and encountered no problems.

 

Well, I'm currently running some tests on this driver on my system - so far so good, it seems more stable at least in 3dmark13 compared to the previous drivers. Furmark crashes on startup but I've no real need for it anyway.