AMD announces Catalyst Omega drivers with Virtual Super Resolution

AMD Catalyst Omega

The new drivers, which have nothing to do with popular modified drivers from few years back, are a new step in performance optimization and implementation of new features.

This driver will be available for download on December 9th.

DSR vs VSR

NVIDIA’s Dynamic Super Resolution finally has some competition. For years both companies neglected the need for easy downsampling technology for end users. Eventually people came up with a 3rd-party modifications, which were shortly put, not the easiest to handle.

With Catalyst Omega drivers AMD introduces Virtual Super Resolution (VSR). The changes can be applied through Catalyst Control Center, however I’m not yet sure if is this going to work across all installed games or just those selected by the user.

This technology has some benefits and some downsides. Not all games are optimized to offer good performance at higher resolution. Sometimes it’s better to choose anti-aliasing filter instead. Company of Heroes 2 for instance, is unplayable with single R9 290X or GTX 980 at 4K resolution in Ultra quality, so you are better off playing with just AA enabled.

G-SYNC vs FREESYNC

Monitors with FreeSync technology are expected to launch early next year (February — March). Unlike G-Sync, FreeSync will simply adopt DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync implementation, so no additional hardware is required, except monitor with newest DisplayPort connector. FreeSync has a great future ahead, and I’m sure NVIDIA will sooner or later adopt DP Adaptive-Sync as well, so G-Sync modules will no longer be required.

Video enhancements

AMD Catalyst Omega will also bring new video quality improving technologies like Fluid Motion Video, Detail Enhancement and Adaptive upscaling.

Driver efficiency improvement and GPU/APU optimizations

5K monitors support and Eyefinity with 24 display support

FEATURES

AMD FLUID MOTION VIDEO

PERFECT PICTURE ENHANCEMENTS

BETTER VIDEO QUALITY THAN MOST HIGH-END TVS

Smooth Blu-ray Playback with Lower Power APUs

• High Quality Frame Rate Conversion
• Interpolates frames using GPU compute
• Removes Video Judder

CONTOUR REMOVAL

PERFECT PICTURE ENHANCEMENTS

AUTOMATIC VIDEO IMPROVEMENT

Improved Algorithm for Compressed Videos

• Removes compression artifacts

1080P DETAIL ENHANCEMENT

PERFECT PICTURE ADDITIONS

ENHANCE YOUR ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE

1080P Detail Enhancement now for APUs

• Provides look-and-feel of 1080P video Original Video Processed Video to lower-resolution content
• Improves frequency response and controllability of overshoot and noise immunity

ULTRAHD-LIKE EXPERIENCE

PERFECT PICTURE ADDITIONS

MAKE YOUR 1080P CONTENT LOOK GREAT ON ULTRA HD DISPLAYS

Makes 1080P Videos 4K-like

Combination of:
– Fluid Motion Video
– Detail Enhancement
– Adaptive upscaling

FRAME PACING ENHANCEMENTS

ENHANCED FEATURE FOR DUAL GRAPHICS

ENHANCED FOR SMOOTHER DUAL GRAPHICS GAMEPLAY

Includes enhancements for
– Batman Arkham Origins
– Metro Series
– Tomb Raider
– Sniper Elite 3
and many more …

Source: TechSport (article removed)

NEW FEATURES: VIRTUAL SUPER RESOLUTION

UP TO 4K QUALITY GAMING ON 1080p HD DISPLAYS

Render games at higher resolution and display them at lower resolution

• 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 ^TM CONTROL CENTER

• Enabled through AMD Catalyst Control Center
• Select higher resolution in-game settings

ALIENWARE GRAPHICS AMPLIFIER

SUPPORT FOR AMD RADEON™ GRAPHICS

AMPLIFY YOUR PERFORMANCE

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

AMD FREESYNC TECHNOLOGY

WHAT GAMERS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

FREESYNC USES INDUSTRY-STANDARD DISPLAYPORT ADAPTIVE-SYNC

Eliminates screen tearing without all the usual lag and latency

• Synchronizes the refresh rate of a compatible monitor to the frame rate of your content, however much it varies
• Monitor partners are validating with drivers from AMD now
• Monitors planned availability: Q1, 2015

5K MONITOR SUPPORT

UNPARALLELED DISPLAY PERFORMANCE FOR PROFESSIONALS AND GAMERS WHO REQUIRE THE HIGHEST RESOLUTION AVAILABLE

Silky-smooth, fatigue-free graphics

• 5120×2880 at 60Hz
• 14.7 million pixels, 218 pixels-per-inch
• Dual DisplayPort 1.2 input

EYEFINITY

INTRODUCING SUPPORT FOR 24 DISPLAY EYEFINITY!

• Smooth, tear free video playback with up to 24 displays (4 GPUs) on Windows®
• Updated GUI for intuitive set up of Eyefinity desktop
• Quick setup of overlap and blending parameters
• Scale display capability in a single system configuration
• No need for 3rd party hardware and software solutions

FULL LIST OF FEATURES

• Compression Artifact Removal 2
• Detailed Enhancement 2
• Frame Rate Conversion 2.0
• Virtual Super Resolution
• 5K x 3K Display Support
• Dynamic Refresh Rate (FreeSync)
• Frame Pacing for Dual Graphics
• AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing improvements
• OpenCL 2.0
• Driver support for CodeXL 1.6
• OGL ES3.0
• Faster Display Mode Enumeration
• Color Gamut Remap
• VAAPI support for Phase 1 Decode
• Rotated Eyefinity Support for Radeon™ R9 285
• Windows Installer Updates
• Windows Autodetect Software Utility
• Linux® Distro Specific Packaging
• Configurable UVD Sessions

AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing improvements

• Designed to reduce stuttering from graphics memory intensive applications: Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution, Watch Dogs, Far Cry 3

Display Mode Enumeration

• Designed to improve on “Plug a display -> See the display” time

OpenMP 3.1 on HSA APUs

• AMD and SUSE Linux® have collaborated to create a GCC compiler allows OpenMP 3.1 applications to accelerate compute on HSA devices

Rotated Eyefinity Support for AMD Radeon™ R9 285

• Enables a mix of portrait and landscape oriented displays

VAAPI support for Phase 1 Decode

• Embedded product feature to enable Video Acceleration API (VAAPI) for Linux®
• Enables video decoding in the AMD Catalyst™ Linux® Driver

Configurable UVD Sessions

• Embedded product feature to enable up to 20 simultaneous video streams (eg. Video Surveillance showing many camera streams)

Color Gamut Remap

• API to permit OEMs enablement of sRGB images on wide gamut displays for more natural colors

OpenGL ES3.0 Support

• Support for Windows® and Linux®

Improvements to AMD Catalyst™ Windows Installer

• Less clicks to get through an install
• Installer Windows resizing to match detected display

Windows Autodetect Software Utility

• Improved detection of the hardware on which the install is taking place

Linux® Distro Specific Packaging

• Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution specific packages – much easier for users of those distributions to install AMD Catalyst Linux drivers

TOP BUG FIXES

Source: SweClockers