AMD gimping non-300 series GPUs with different driver fork?

A few minutes ago I stumbled across this post by Edzel Yago from Linus Media Group -> https://twitter.com/edzelyago/status/613748800880967680

He refers to a text on pastebin.com ( http://pastebin.com/pRqsQ9CV ) that is about AMD having different forks for their drivers which increases the performance of 300-series GPUs while keeping the older GPUs on a lower level (to artificially make the new GPUs "look better").

I have no clue when it comes to stuff like this, so I wanted to ask you guys here what you think about this?

If this should turn out to be not true I apologize for causing unnecessary commotion but I'm genuinely interested.

I'm a bit skeptical that AMD is doing this, they are in no financial situation to be playing games like this. Also this evil driver being labeled as Windows 10 tells me that DirectX 12 is baring it's teeth because it is likely that there is some generic, legacy compatible code that is giving a tier 3 card an advantage over a tier 2 card (200 is second tier DX12 compatibility)

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained as stupidity" -Hanlon's razor

1 Like

This is convoluted. because if he's referencing the Windows 10 Unofficial drivers being better than the current official drivers. that would make his whole argument invalid about AMD gimping their old 200 series. they are unofficial and are leaked.. are they ACTUALLY from AMD? or someone who modified some of the current drivers?

I read through Edzel's twitter. and everyone's like "I'm switching to Nvidia.." and my thoughts on those comments. I'm all for it, go for it. i recommend all those people get 780s and 780ti's. cause a lot of those people seem to have convenient amnesia. they really must of forgot that how Nvidia had allegedly gimped the 700 series so that they could sell Maxwell. remember everyone flipping out about a 960 beating a 780ti on Gameworks based games all over reddit?

Another comment is that this poster mentioned he couldn't match the core-clocks of the 300 series.. maybe he forgot a Silicon lottery exists. As for AMD allegedly removing VSR on the 200 series.. where? cause i still have it. and i'm on 15.5 beta drivers.

Maybe i'm just reaching but why is this guy testing 390 series drivers on the 290 series drivers anyways? can you actually test 280-series drivers on the 7970/7950? can people test the 770 drivers on the 680? cause that is what i would like to know. cause i don't believe any of this. if they were official drivers i would probably believe it.

What you say makes a lot of sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

But that's exactly why I wanted to see what others with more knowledge than I have have to say about this. Because at first I too was like "well, that sucks", but then it downed on me that I actually know nothing about drivers and should maybe check somewhere if this is even valid.

i don't see downgrade; getting same performance on my 290x as I did before. With OC I can beat 390x

Well Grenada is Hawaii tweaked for tier 3 DX12 support (you didn't hear that from me though :P )

Woah it is like watching a slideshow of your desktop.

This is interesting but Linus Media Group are down on AMD anyway and I would not call Edzel super up (to date) on driver software or PC hardware *personal opinion. But none the less I will keep a look out, you do reaise a good point with AMD no being in any position to do anything like this, but hey if nVidia can get away with it scott free (I have yet to see a single tech youtuber in my list raise a single concern with nVidia) why not chance your arm.

I could see this working if the drivers don't get any better release after release, but actively downgrading? I am on a 290 and have only seen improvements.

And yes what idiot installs the wrong drivers on purpose? These are leaked unofficial Windows 10 drivers. They are not even out yet, they might well work and be intended for both 200 and 300 series what with being rebrands. just like the current drivers are for the 200 series rather than the 290 specifically.

This is pot stirring from an nVidia bias community *personal opinion.

And I find it amazing that the nVidia driver downgrade, like active downgrade rather than just not improving, is well documented and yet not a peep from any YouTube blogger that I follow (TekSyndicate, Linus, Jayz). This most definitely does not pass the sniff test.

EDIT: That paste bin does not link the driver link. I wonder why. It links to review sites just fine (German ones for everyones convenience), could they not find the driver? Or is this just bull...

Who ever made the post on that site, intentionally tested the Leaked Windows 10 Drivers on his system. it wasn't by accident.

I'm objective, I question anything. doesn't matter if it's Nvidia or AMD, Intel or AMD, ASUS or Gigabyte, HP or Dell. doesn't matter. most of the tech you-tubers own Nvidia cards as you said. Jay has mentioned he likes Nvidia better multiple times in his videos which is fine he's given his reason. Linus is a mixed bag cause he has owned more AMD cards in his life time, but promotes Nvidia much more and he does cause they send him products. i don't think he's biased in all honesty, but similarly AMD doesn't like to send things out to people anyways. Linus usually has to call up Gigabyte, ASUS or Sapphire to get review samples of AMD products. Logan on the other hand, he's said in the past multiple times that he loves OpenCL and OpenGL. but funny enough continues to use Nvidia. i'd rather people live their truth so that people won't use it against them. if you like AMD say you like AMD, if anyone questions why give them a proper and logical reason, similarly with AMD CPUS and or Nvidia graphics cards.

but anyways back to the point, I personally don't believe anything the poster who made this tiny rant on that pastebin thing. if that was an official Windows 10 driver THEN i would be on the fence. but even so i probably wouldn't believe it until i actually saw performance numbers. but other than that pssh.

I dunno I think the guy should stick to be being linus's camera guy.

Edzel didn't do anything wrong. all he did was post a link to someones rant.

1 Like

I have in the past stated that I am an AMD user and very much want to avoid nVidntel and I do like AMD, there is no hiding that. It just annoys me that the people that sway the influence of buyers do not provide all the facts, on both sides.

I did however have a look over in Guru3D and it seems like these are not some magic driver that was held back but rather some old driver with a newer version number and worse performance than the current ones, looks like an early 300 series driver so it is not yet up to par and also woks on 200 series. From the benches they did it seems worse than better. But I could be missing something here.

He did ask what we think of the downgrade, but it has yet to be proven if this is even a better driver. Jumping the gun at minimum.

Doubt it considering that at the same clocks, they perform the same.

He just asked what people are thinking of this, he didn't made those accusations of AMD gimping their old GPUs.

So it comes down to waiting for Windows 10 to be released with the official AMD drivers to see what's really going on with this. Kinda sucks, though.

The thing is, for me it does kinda make sense from a certain point of view/train of thought. Meaning that with the 300 series being mainly rebrands, people are already kinda disappointed not seeing a real improvement over the last generation and again being behind nVidia's cards performance-wise. So, to make the cards more attractive for people who already own a 200-series card, why not alter the drivers for different performance or at least to make them appear to perform better than their older GPUs?

I'm not saying that AMD is THAT desperate and heinous, but in a certain way it WOULD make some kind of sense. More like a "we're just not telling them upfront" just like nVidia did with the 3.5GB thing with the 970.

But since the drivers that guy on pastebin mentioned are not official we just have to wait and see what's up with that. Even IF it is true, AMD could still paddle back and change them.