AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver 15.5 Beta for Windows 8.1 Download

Posted at December 18, 2024 by PCI-DB Team

AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver 15.5 Beta for Windows 8.1 Description

Highlights of AMD Catalyst 15.5 Beta for Windows:

- This driver release is recommended for The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt and Project Cars.
- This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.

Package Contents:

- AMD Catalyst Display Driver version 14.502.1014.1001

Crossfire Profiles updates for:

- The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt

Performance Improvements for the following:

- The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt: Up to 10% performance increase on single GPU Radeon R9 and R7 Series graphics products
- Project Cars: Up to 17% performance increase on single GPU Radeon R9 and R7 Series graphics products

Know Issues:

- ​The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt: To enable the best performance and experience in Crossfire, users must disable Anti-Aliasing from the games video-post processing options. Some random flickering may occur when using Crossfire. If the issue is affecting the game experience, as a work around we suggest disabling Crossfire while we continue to work with CD Projekt Red to resolve this issue
- Project CARS: Corruption may be observed if Anti-Aliasing is set to DS2M when run in Crossfire mode. As a workaround we suggest using a different Anti-Aliasing method.

AMD Issue Reporting Form:

- This driver release incorporates suggestions received through the AMD Issue Reporting Form. To provide us with your feedback, visit the AMD Issue Reporting Form.

NOTES:

- This driver is not intended for use on AMD products running in Apple Boot Camp platforms. Users of these platforms should contact their manufacturer for driver support.
- When installing the AMD Catalyst Driver for Windows operating system, the user must be logged on as Administrator, or have Administrator rights to complete the installation of the AMD Catalyst Driver.
- The AMD Catalyst 15.5 Beta Software Suite requires Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to be installed.
- The AMD Catalyst 15.5 Beta Software Suite requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 to be installed. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 is included in all Catalyst packages.
- AMD Eyefinity technology is designed to give gamers access to high display resolutions. As pixel count grows, the graphics "horsepower" required to drive the displays at a reasonable frame rate can increase dramatically. Depending on the game and system configuration, users may notice texture corruption and reduced frame rates when running games in multi-monitor Eyefinity modes.

AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility:

- AMD Radeon R9 290 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 280 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 270 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 260 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 250 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 240 Series
- AMD Radeon R5 230 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
- ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series

AMD All-In-One Desktop Product Family Compatibility:

- AMD Radeon HD 7600A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7450A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6600A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6350A Series

AMD Desktop APU Product Family Compatibility:

- A-Series AMD Radeon R7 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R6 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R3 Graphics
- AMD Radeon HD 8000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000D Series

AMD Mobile APU Product Family Compatibility:

- AMD Radeon HD 8000G Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000G Series

AMD Mobility Radeon Family Compatibility:

- AMD Radeon R9 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon R5 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000M Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000M Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series

Recommendations:

For further information on how to optimize your drivers for The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt and AMD CrossFire please continue reading below.

Optimizing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Performance on AMD Radeon Graphics:

Users are encouraged to install AMD Catalyst 15.5 Beta, now available with optimized performance for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In addition to this graphics driver, there are additional manual steps AMD Radeon customers can take to further improve the performance of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

OPTIMIZING HAIRWORKS - TESSELLATION LEVELS:

AMD Radeon users who wish to use the HairWorks feature are advised to manually create an application profile that will optimize the tessellation level of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to 8X or 16X. This profile will streamline the workload presented by the application’s dynamic hair, improving performance without compromise to image quality

OPTIMIZING AMD Crossfire and ANTI-ALIASING:

Significant improvements to the performance of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt can be realized on AMD CrossFire technology configurations by adjusting the anti-aliasing settings.

Users are encouraged to change the EnableTemporalAA setting from TRUE to FALSE in the application's Rendering.ini file. This configuration file can be found in the \bin\config\base folder of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's installation directory.

Users are strongly encouraged to alter this setting, as flat to negative multi-GPU performance scaling may be encountered if this optimization is not performed.

Alternatively, users can access The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's postprocessing options menu and set anti-aliasing to off.

FULL SCREEN EXCLUSIVE MODE:

AMD CrossFire technology requires that an application utilize full screen exclusive mode to enable multi-GPU performance scaling. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may default to the windowed or borderless windowed modes, which will prevent users from realizing the full performance of their system.

Full screen exclusive mode can be configured by setting the display mode option to full screen in graphics options menu of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

About Graphics Cards:

While installing the graphics driver allows the system to properly recognize the chipset and the card manufacturer, updating the video driver can bring about various changes.

It can improve the overall graphics experience and performance in either games or various engineering software applications, include support for newly developed technologies, add compatibility with newer GPU chipsets, or resolve different problems that might have been encountered.

When it comes to applying this release, the installation steps should be a breeze, as each manufacturer tries to make them as easy as possible so that each user can update the GPU on their own and with minimum risks (however, check to see if this download supports your graphics chipset).

Therefore, get the package (extract it if necessary), run the setup, follow the on-screen instructions for a complete and successful installation, and make sure you reboot the system so that the changes take effect.

That being said, download the driver, apply it on your system, and enjoy your newly updated graphics card. Moreover, check with our website as often as possible in order to stay up to speed with the latest releases.

  It is highly recommended to always use the most recent driver version available.

Try to set a system restore point before installing a device driver. This will help if you installed an incorrect or mismatched driver. Problems can arise when your hardware device is too old or not supported any longer.

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