AMD is releasing the Catalyst Omega, a graphics driver that incorporates a massive number of new features, performance improvements and bug fixes.
Catalyst Omega signals a departure from the policy of AMD to release new drivers only when they are needed, as Catalyst Omega drivers will be special annual releases wherein AMD will introduce major upgrades.
With the Catalyst Omega, AMD launched Virtual Super Resolution (VSR), which is the company's response to Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolution released with GTX 980 and GTX 970. VSR allows the rendering of video games at resolutions that are beyond the resolution of the display, which will afterwards be down-sampled to be able to fit into the user's screen. While the feature will cause a big hit on the frame rate, the result is anti-aliasing in its best looking form ever.
AMD is also launching Free Sync, which is the company's alternative to the G-Sync of Nvidia. Monitors supporting Free Sync will eliminate tearing and stuttering within games, allowing titles running on frame rates lower than 60 FPS to play better and smoother. AMD worked together with the VESA alliance to make the technology available to everyone, with monitors supporting it to start being released in the first quarter of next year.
Catalyst Omega also solves the frame pacing issues that are found on systems that run Dual-Graphics and CrossFire, with the improvements working on Radeon GPUs and AMD APUs.
The driver also includes support for the Graphics Amplifier box found with the Alienware 13 gaming laptop, allowing user to boost the performance of their systems.
Also included in Catalyst Omega's new features is support for 5K resolution, specifically 5,120 by 2,880 resolution, running at 60 Hz. This is done in advance of the release of 5K monitors, such as Dell's UP2715K monitor.
Another feature is the EyeFinity utility, which allows users to set up a 24-monitor system using four FirePro graphics cards that connects six monitors per card. The utility then allows the user to easily set up the monitors with the required blending and overlap settings.
In addition to all the new features, the Catalyst Omega also hosts several performance upgrades. For AMD Radeon GPUs, performance could increase by up to 19 percent compared to Catalyst 13.12 that was released last year. For AMD APUs, performance could increase by up to 29 percent.
The Gaming Evolved client, the AMD counterpart of the GeForce Experience of Nvidia, has been upgraded to support game capture while playing games on Mantle mode, along with a video editor.
AMD has also added several new algorithms for video playback, resulting in smoother playback and less judder. Other upgrades include a new algorithm to prevent compression artifacts and detail enhancements for 1080p video.
Lastly, Catalyst Omega adds developer features, including OpenCL 2.0, TressFX Hair 3.0 and CodeXL 1.6.
These are not all of the changes, as there are a total of 20 new features and 400 bug fixes, among a host of performance improvements.
The full details of the Catalyst Omega, along with the download link to the driver, are now available through the official website of AMD.
