AMD has released a new set of drivers for its graphics cards. According to the release notes, AMD’s Catalyst 14.6 RC2 driver comes with performance improvements to Plants vs. Zombies. In addition, the Red team has implemented various Crossfire performance improvements for Watch_Dogs, Battlefield Hardline and GRID: Autosport.
AMD launches the Ryzen 9 9950X3D for $699 & Ryzen 9 9900X3D for $599, offering the best-in-class gaming & content creation CPU performance.
X3D really turned around AMD's cpu prospects. I wont touch intel now, vs 10 years ago I wouldn't imagine going anywhere near AMD cpu's for gaming only.
Zen 1 was merely "meh" IMO, it had major RAM compatibility issues, only really worked with Samsung memory from what I recall, and performance was ok at best, the 8700k launched the same year and was top dog even when Zen 2 came out. Though Zen 2 was much better.. it just lacked a bit in gaming, good all rounder chips though for other applications.
AMD are trying to upsell the 9900x3D to 9950x3D, pricing is weird (too close) and odd chip configuration.. it should be a lot cheaper. They did the same with the 9070 -> 9070XT.
Some funny choices going on at AMD..
Zen 1 was pretty great for what it was, considering that was the first time in a long time that AMD was actually competitve with Intel, it was also the first time you could easily get something with more than 4 cores/threads. The RAM issues was frustrating AF though, especially since Zen 1 performance relied so heavily on fast RAM.
If we ignore the price, the 990x3D and 9950X3D look pretty great provided you can actually make use of those extra cores/threads, otherwise the 9800x3D is better value.
Zen1 was the beginning of the turn around and by Zen3 it was starting to become ultra competitive. X3D was really only the final nail in the coffin.
I guess the real question is how many compatibility issues will arise from their motherboard chipsets? also the selection of motherboards for AMD is more limited too. Which often limits what kind of form factor build you want. Last time around I avoided AMD due to their chipsets having horrid USB3 support with accessories. You tend not to see these kind of issues being talked about, it ends up just being games and synthetic benchmarks.
AMD and Sony co-develop FSR 4 upscaler under Project Amethyst, enhancing visuals and performance for future PlayStation consoles.
Clearly there was a colab as every game used to demo the tech was a WWS game. And of course they alluded yo this as far bask as the Pro Tech deep dive.
This means that PSSR is probably a lightweight CNN version of FSR 4 which would make sense due to the Pro and PS6 being AMD cards. The biggest relevant difference in the PRO and the RDNA 4 cards being that the PC cards have 3x+ the TOPS.
They both deliver good results with FSR4 having a better denoiser.
I remember Cerny saying that whatever developments were made with PSSR for the prop, that tech would translate into and help develop FSR 4. Sony is making the right moves with AMD
The question is, is PSSR going to be replaced by FSR4 on future playstation consoles and is the PS5 Pro FSR4 capable?
Unlikely given that FSR4 is only supported by the 9000 cards.
I would expect the PS6 to use FSR4 since it is definitely superior to PSSR, not really much of a point in keeping investing separate resourced into PSSR, but who knows if both will be available on PS6
FSR 5 would likely be out by then and probably a transformer model. I assume Sony will continue to use PSSR for branding purposes but it will essentially be FSR 5 with a PlayStation specifically solution.
In my opinion I think they will still use PSSR for the PS6 mainly because that was a big marketing point for the PS5 Pro and Sony probably doesn't want to abandon it. They might call it PSSR 2.0 or something and will probably use similar tech as FSR4 due to the partnership between the two companies. I doubt PS6 will use anything similar to the 9000 cards so won't have the same bells and whistles as the FSR4.
I was going to build a PC soon with a last gen and card but this makes me think I should wait to make sure I get the best experience in the next generation as well.
I guess I'm going to be all in on AMD which is the opposite of what I would normally lean towards.
Value wise the 9070XT is a decent card if you don't want to pay for Nvidia ones.. That being said, make sure you're happy with the restrictions using some software, if you're happy with just gaming though AMD should be fine.
Probably best bet price wise is get the 9070XT and then upgrade next gen in a couple of years.. With Nvidia this new gen has been a bust, only the 5090 is a decent step up, even the 4090 beats the 5080 by a fair margin.
Hopefully Nvidia bounces back next gen.. though I expect refreshed 5000 cards before then, 5080 Ti / Super will probably be = to a 4090.
Thanks! I'll look into software restrictions. Never thought there would be issues there and it's important since I do some graphic design. I was thinking about the 9070 but will have to wait till a it's actually available to buy without the current nonsense.
DigitalFoundry : Running on AMD's new Radeon 9070-series GPUs at CES 2025, a machine learning upscaling demo of Sony's Ratchet and Clank is almost certainly FSR 4 AI upscaling - and as it's running on Ratchet and Clank - our 'go to game' for AI upscaling quality tests, we could really put the tech through its paces. Oliver and Alex are at the show - and this is their report.
They're saying better than PSSR! Impressive.. guess it's really close to Nvidia's solution. I'm interested in seeing how the 9070XT or whatever their highest end card will perform, we already know AMD are only aiming for the mid range (or upper mid range) with these new cards but it will still be interesting to see how they compare to a 5070Ti on price/performance.
But certain apps don't play well with AMD that do with Nvidia cards, shame because these cards could be great/price performance.. but not an issue for pure gamers.
Visually it may well be similar to DLSS, but they were quick to point out that they do not have any actual performance data at this point. Time will tell, but it is definitely promising and good to see them impressing.
Interesting. Since AMD is largely behind PSSR, they’ve now sort of have two different upscalers in play. Curious to see how it all pans out.
ubisoft can die on fire,Won't Shed A Tear
Downloading now
So instead of properly optimizing Watch_Dogs to work on all cards in general. It becomes AMD's job to pick up after Ubisoft?
Look, I've played many Nvidia optimized games with my AMD card just fine(Borderlands, Metro 2033) but Watch_Dogs reeks of maliciously bad optimization.
Glad I pirated it first to see how bad the optimization was. Would not buy even with these new drivers. There is no excuse for how awful that launch optimization was. Even on Nvidia it's crap.