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AMD Catalyst Omega Driver Released, Sports Over 20 New Features

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AMD has finally released its new Omega driver for its graphics cards. According to the release notes, this new driver comes with 20 new features, support for 5K monitors, performance and frame pacing improvements, as well as a significant number of bug fixes.

Those interested can download this new driver from AMD’s official website.

And here are the release notes for this new driver:

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

  • 5120×2880 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