AMD Releases Video Driver for Windows 8 Consumer Preview
by Ryan Smith on February 29, 2012 9:00 PM ESTIn conjunction with today’s release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, AMD has released a new set of drivers specifically for Windows 8. Dubbed the AMD Catalyst driver for the Windows® 8 Consumer Preview, it most notably includes full support for Windows 8’s new WDDM 1.2 features. The rest of AMD’s software features are also supported, including Overdrive, CrossFire, and Eyefinity.
Radeon HD 7000 users will be out of luck for the time being, however. These drivers do not support GCN GPUs; drivers for that will be released at a later time. Considering AMD has yet to publish a WHQL certified Win7 driver for GCN it’s safe to assume that will happen before we see a Win8 driver, particularly if AMD plans on having Direct3D 11.1 support ready for the Consumer Preview.
Source: AMD
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Zok - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
"Considering AMD has yet to publish a WHQL certified Win7 driver for GCN"Isn't that the truth! My 4890 finally bit the dust and was beyond excited about the 7970 launch the same week... only to be disappointed by atrocious driver releases for a month.
C'mon AMD! Let's get this fixed.
B3an - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
It's always like this with AMD.I've had the same thing with 4870's, 5870's and 6970's on release. I always have Crossfire too. All the time AMD's drivers have been really poor for atleast the first 2 months, and even worse when you have Crossfire. Sometimes just getting the drivers to actually install properly has been a big issue. I miss Nvidia drivers but AMD has always had the better hardware / price for me for a while.
But i've learned my lesson which is why i've not got a 7970 on release this time.
highlnder69 - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
So you guys are complaining about AMD not releasing drivers for an OS that was just released yesterday and is still in the Customer Preview stage? So what did Nvidia release yesterday?jeremyshaw - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Considering you didn't read, I wonder if this message is worth the time typing out, however, I guess others will read it.Both are talking about late Win7 drivers. Get a grip.
notty22 - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Nvidia released a WHQL driver last week and works with Win8, tested with my gtx 460 sli setup. No problems.I've read there are more 3D features built in to win8, but am unable to test those since I don't have a 3D monitor.
kyuu - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
So are the drivers for the 7000-series actually that bad? All it says is that they haven't released a WHQL certified driver, which doesn't say anything about the quality of the drivers.Zok - Friday, March 2, 2012 - link
Unfortunately, yes. The "Preview 11" drivers are, at least on my system, the best. Almost no issues, but, according to the benchmarks are not the best performing. The current release candidate was freezing both at desktop and gaming, at least for me - and that was after a full reformat. I'm confident the card itself is fine, since it runs perfectly fine 95% of the time under the preview 11 driver.Zingam - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
With such paradigm shift, AMD might need many months to fix the drivers. The new architecture is very different, so the drivers will be completely redesigned and reimplemented from the ground up, I guess.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
So, in other words, the same as usual, it takes forever and is never really fixed, 5 out of the 25 bugs always get you no matter the version nor the hotfix nor the cap combo.This is nothing but the usual, and it won't be any sooner or later than the usual, which is unbearable for about 47% of amd users for the lifetime of their cards.
Spivonious - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
Boo, where's the support for HD3000 series? Or is the built-in driver good enough for WDDM 1.1 cards?