Marketing - AKA Fraud

[NoelC]

Some 8 days ago I got an eMail from AMD claiming a set of great new "Omega" drivers were available for my Radeon 7850 card.  This is what it started off with:

 

AMD CATALYST™ OMEGA SOFTWARE UPGADE:

EXTRA PERFORMANCE - NO EXTRA COST

 

The AMD Catalyst™ software suite is engineered to unlock new capabilities in AMD APUs and AMD Radeon™ GPUs based on GCN architecture. Download the latest update, the AMD Catalyst™ Omega driver, for enhanced performance, reliability, and energy efficiency – with no extra cost:

• Early buyers of an AMD Radeon™ R9 290X who download and install AMD Catalyst Omega today can realize up to 19% faster gameplay with Civilization: Beyond Earth™¹
• 
  
• Users of AMD’s advanced APUs like the A10 7850K can achieve up to 29% faster gaming performance with Batman: Arkham Origins™²
• 
  

 

Something like that would make you think everything ought to be faster after the driver upgrade, no?  And maybe (because of the use of the word "unlock") even have more capabilities.

 

Nope.  No more capabilities, and pretty much the same as or a little worse than its predecessor version, Catalyst 14.9, in performance.

 

See for yourself:

 

Benchmarks that imply performance for normal desktop use:

 

 

 

Benchmarks that indicate potential 3D performance, e.g., for modeling applications or games.

 

 

-Noel

[NoelC]

I should qualify the statement "no more capabilities".

 

I did discover one:  It will compile OpenCL version 2.0 programs for the GPU now.  Before it was version 1.2.  That will possibly enhance capabilities in the future when application designers move up to newer features.  At this point I'm not sure even GPU-heavy applications like Photoshop take advantage of the newer OpenCL version.

 

-Noel

[jaclaz]

I don't get it.

You seem to use that card and driver for something called "work".

The declared improvements are related to another thing, much better than "work", called "games" (LOL):

Early buyers of an AMD Radeon™ R9 290X who download and install AMD Catalyst Omega today can realize up to 19% faster gameplay with Civilization: Beyond Earth™1

Users of AMD’s advanced APUs like the A10 7850K can achieve up to 29% faster gaming performance with Batman: Arkham Origins™2

 

 

Benchmarks measure - more or less objectively - speed, what was promised is "faster gameplay" and "faster gaming performance", and you completely failed to measure the "enhanced energy efficiency" , and of course it is too early to verify the "enhanced reliability".

 

And, hey, man, it's free (LOL).

 

jaclaz

[NoelC]

Benchmarks measure - more or less objectively - speed, what was promised is "faster gameplay" and "faster gaming performance", and you completely failed to measure the "enhanced energy efficiency" , and of course it is too early to verify the "enhanced reliability".

 

And, hey, man, it's free (LOL).

 

jaclaz

 

Here I thought you were a card carrying geek.

 

Why would anyone play with a computer when they can create with one?

 

But I'm not really disappointed - it's actually quite fast, just not faster.  The only reason I posted this is that I don't think any Marketing dweeb ought to be able to write stuff that far out in fantasyland without being called on it (noting you didn't say that you've observed Catalyst 14.12 to be observably faster at anything).  If they never get negative feedback, will the lies end?

 

And actually, it's not really too early to measure reliability...  8+ days of hard use so far without fault seems a pretty good measurement. 

 

 

But that doesn't make it enhanced, since the last version easily did this as well.

 

-Noel

[jaclaz]

If they never get negative feedback, will the lies end?

They won't end anyway , the marketing guys have them taught since they are little children, it is a sort of "imprinting":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)

What really surprises me in that e-mail snippet is how the failed to say how they were "proud and excited to announce" this new driver.

 

And actually, it's not really too early to measure reliability...  8+ days of hard use so far without fault seems a pretty good measurement.

Sure , but still no gaming (which is the field where increases in reliability and speed should be measured, usually by a teenager researcher using Twitter to publish the resulting whitepapers).

This is more like it (nice marketing lingo), it must not be casual that the Author is Head of Software Marketing for AMD:

http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2014/12/08/a-very-special-edition-driver-amd-catalyst-omega

 

...

What is better than even more powerful? Smoother: There are many reasons that make AMD APUs and AMD GPUs a match made in heaven. But one of the major ones is that one brings out the best in the other. When select products are paired together through Dual Graphics with frame pacing enhancements, the powerful gameplay becomes smooth.

...

 

Unless I am mistaken, this means more or less that these drivers were custom made for the specific hardware, and that the specific hardware works better with some other hardware by the same manufacturer and with these appropriate drivers, in gameplay.

 

I would have been surprised of the contrary....

 

But they are good guys, they tested this more, much more than before (which logically means that they over-tested these or that for years they provided not tested enough drivers):

Testing the AMD Catalyst Omega driver required executing around 65% more automated and 10% more manual test-cases, utilizing 10% more varied system configurations, with 10% more different display makes and models.*** However, we did not stop there. 

 

 

And they are your Christmas Gift:

For all the aforementioned reasons, the AMD Catalyst Omega special edition driver is the biggest and the best software upgrade AMD has released this year. It’s our way of saying ‘Thank you’ and Happy Holidays.

jaclaz

[NoelC]

And a wonderful Christmas gift they are, given an appropriate translation:

 

"We have not ruined your computing environment, and the free drivers you have just downloaded are hardly any slower than the ones you downloaded for free from us 3 months ago."

 

Here's hoping all our Christmas gifts stop short of ruining our computing environments!

 

 

-Noel

Edited December 28, 2014 by NoelC

[osRe]

Is that a touchscreen?

[NoelC]

You'd think so at first, but note the color of the screen...

 

"Hmmmm...  Your computer encountered a problem and had to restart?  Ah well, I guess Sinofsky and Ballmer go on the naughty list for another year..."

 

-Noel

Edited December 28, 2014 by NoelC

[jaclaz]

Ahh, the good ol' days...

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1098/retro-scan-of-the-week-santas-trs-80-coco

jaclaz