MSI / AMD drivers

[thoto1]

Hi there.

All my components are arriving somewhere this week, and I want to make sure I download the right drivers for my GPU.
For instance: The GPU is a MSI R9 270x HAWK, should I download MSI drivers or AMD drivers?
I'd say the most recent ones, but if that happens to be AMD, will my card perform worse because I don't have the MSI drivers?

Or are they the same?
If you look here(MSI site) it says AMD Graphics Driver 15.7.1.
Here on the AMD site it says the same 15.7.1 but also 15.9 (Catalyst ??)

-Im not Dutch and I'm fairly new to this subject-

[MicGlou]

Getting the newest drivers for videocards from the respective chip maker (in this case AMD) is always recommended, only in a very few rare cases it's necessary to use the manufacturers drivers because of some special abilities implemented on the card (f.o. a system specific card), but with 99,9% this is not the case.

Second is that once a certain model from a manufacturer becomes a bit older the support concerning updates for software/drivers on the manufacturers homepage is usually stopped, if one would only consult the manufacturers support site for updates chances are you will start experiencing problems running newer games.

BTW... in this case the drivers on the manufacturers website is still updated and MSI offers the latest driver at this moment. Catalyst 15.9 is the version of the software package as a whole including the Catalyst suite etc, not just the driver. But I get the confusion, MSI should also mention the Catalyst version because that is the download they offer, but obviously they only show the version of the driver in the Catalyst suite.

[ Voor 25% gewijzigd door MicGlou op 29-09-2015 14:26 ]

[Salmon]

You can just download the one from AMD directly. If you wanna be safe, take the stable version instead of the beta version of the driver. But mostly the beta driver will be fine too

[thoto1]

Bedankt! both of you

Is AMD Catalyst somewhat like MSI afterburner?
And do I need this Catalyst?(Or does using it come with a lot of advantages).

edit:
I'm not planning on Overclocking my GPU

[ Voor 14% gewijzigd door thoto1 op 29-09-2015 14:44 ]

[MicGlou]

thoto1 schreef op dinsdag 29 september 2015 @ 14:44:
Bedankt! both of you

Is AMD Catalyst somewhat like MSI afterburner?
And do I need this Catalyst?(Or does using it come with a lot of advantages).

edit:
I'm not planning on Overclocking my GPU

MSI Afterburner is mainly for overclocking control, you can also do that with Catalyst but not as extensive as Afterburner can.

And you don't really need Catalyst, driver only should be enough if you're not interested in minor OC settings and installing extra profiles etc. But AMD doesn't offer a separate download for driver only like they used to. But what you could do is start the Catalyst installer, it first should start extracting the files to C:\amd folder as standard. After the extraction Catalyst installation will start automatically, but when it does cancel it. When you've done that you could manually install driver only from the c:\amd folder it was extracted to, the driver can be found in one of the sub folders; c:\amd\xxx(driver version)xxx\packages\drivers\display\ (if I'm not mistaken)

BTW... what I didn't realize is that the Catalyst Suite number and the drivers version are one and the same... On the AMD website I see that you were looking at the latest stable 15.7 version versus the 15.9 beta version. So I was a bit off explaining that part... I'm not much of a gamer nowadays so I don't really care about the latest drivers anymore, and when I play a game Steam normally alerts me to newer drivers.

[thoto1]

MicGlou schreef op dinsdag 29 september 2015 @ 16:08:

MSI Afterburner is mainly for overclocking control, you can also do that with Catalyst but not as extensive as Afterburner can.

And you don't really need Catalyst, driver only should be enough if you're not interested in minor OC settings and installing extra profiles etc. But AMD doesn't offer a separate download for driver only like they used to. But what you could do is start the Catalyst installer, it first should start extracting the files to C:\amd folder as standard. After the extraction Catalyst installation will start automatically, but when it does cancel it. When you've done that you could manually install driver only from the c:\amd folder it was extracted to, the driver can be found in one of the sub folders; c:\amd\xxx(driver version)xxx\packages\drivers\display\ (if I'm not mistaken)

BTW... what I didn't realize is that the Catalyst Suite number and the drivers version are one and the same... On the AMD website I see that you were looking at the latest stable 15.7 version versus the 15.9 beta version. So I was a bit off explaining that part... I'm not much of a gamer nowadays so I don't really care about the latest drivers anymore, and when I play a game Steam normally alerts me to newer drivers.

Thanks!
So correct me if I'm wrong;

If im not into overclocking, I should just download the driver? (the Catalyst download thing you mentioned).
Of those two above, I will probably choose the driver solely (15.7.1, not the 15.9 beta).

[MicGlou]

thoto1 schreef op woensdag 30 september 2015 @ 20:57:
[...]


Thanks!
So correct me if I'm wrong;

If im not into overclocking, I should just download the driver? (the Catalyst download thing you mentioned).
Of those two above, I will probably choose the driver solely (15.7.1, not the 15.9 beta).

The Catalyst suite also offers extra settings beside the limited overclocking abilities, the optional MSI Afterburner is the software you should use for that if you're interested. But the Catalyst suite offers more, for example it gives easy control over monitor orientation, color management, installs the HDMI audio drivers and it allows usage of multiple desktops, but if you're not interested in those elements you could do without them. But on the other hand it doesn't hurt much to install it just for those once in a while occasions you do want some extra settings and the impact on the system is very low ... in other words, why would you not want to install it? I always do...

Only thing to pay attention to when you install the full Catalyst suite is that you do not install the optional 'Raptr' app, it can do some settings for you in games to optimize them, but in my experience it's mostly annoying and a bit of bloatware... I actually do not know anybody who uses it

So yes, to make a long story short... you could do with the driver solely, but like I explained you have to pick it out of the Catalyst installer package because AMD doesn't offer a driver only download... if you're okay with the above and do not mind the hassle, go for it

I'm in a good mood Here are the drivers taken from the package(s) if you only want the display driver.

32bit Windows: https://onedrive.live.com...__FvLtI&ithint=file%2czip

64bit Windows: https://onedrive.live.com...GolRrcY&ithint=file%2czip