AMD debuts new 15.7 Catalyst drivers for Windows 10

With the official launch of Windows 10 coming towards the end of this month, many different technology companies are updating their drivers and systems to have everything ready for the big switchover. That includes AMD, which has just released its new Catalyst GPU and APU drivers with full Windows 10 compatibility for older hardware.

On top of making everything AMD work on the new operating system, the 15.7 drivers support DirectX and improve various existing aspects of its hardware. The new drivers also support AMD's anti-screen-tearing feature, Freesync, which it continues to promote.

Frame Rate Target Control, which lets users set a maximum frame rate for their gaming experiences, has had its support extended to older cards from the R7 range and just about everything newer or better than that too. That means that those with weaker GPUs won't be wasting GPU power – and therefore electricity – playing old games at hundreds of frames per second when their monitor can't deliver even close to that.

Those same R7 260 or newer GPUs – including AMD's 7400K and above APUs – now support Virtual Super Resolution too. Acting like super-sample anti-aliasing, VSR allows for rendering at a higher resolution than the display can handle, before down-scaling it. This should deliver a crisper Windows desktop experience, as well as higher quality in-game visuals for those with older cards.

AMD wasn't the only one excited by this release, with Microsoft also keen to talk up the new driver's benefits: “We are very excited about what AMD is bringing to gaming with the new capabilities in the latest AMD Catalyst Driver,” said Kam VedBrat, principal group program manager, Microsoft Corp. “With full support for DirectX 12 and WDDM 2.0 in this latest AMD Catalyst driver for AMD APU and Radeon Graphics processors, customers can benefit from improved multithreaded scaling and CPU utilization; reduced GPU overhead; and ultimately richer, smoother, more compelling games.”

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KitGuru Says: Although I quality for the upgrade, I'm not planning to update to Windows 10 for a little while as I'd rather wait and make sure everything will work correctly before I do. That and I'll probably want to format and start fresh and I just can't be bothered to back everything up right now. 

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