AMD to begin distributing Radeon Catalyst drivers through Steam

Ryan Wilsey 15 Sep, 2010 at 2:56am ET Article published in Tech

Feature image for Catalyst updates on Steam

Are you one of the many gamers who find that no matter how good you are at fragging your opponents or properly micro-managing your armies, your graphics card’s drivers remain left out in the cold? For Radeon owners, there may very well be a perfect solution for you on its way: AMD has announced that they will begin distributing their Radeon Catalyst drivers through Steam.

While the exact mechanics of the downloading and installing process is yet to be disclosed, it is speculated to be similar to how Steam already handles updates to its wide selection of games. Optimally, Steam should automatically download the latest Catalyst drivers, then alert the user when they are ready and ask when to install them.

Whether the new service will be useful or not will certainly vary from person to person. But either way, for those that will find it handy to stay up-to-date and frag worry-free will have yet another reason to love Steam very soon.

Comments

15 Sep 2010 ~ 8:24am Cliff_Forster Imagine if it could apply hot fixes for titles that you own on the fly. Just speculation, but that would be pretty awesome.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 8:40am mertesn I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully this will extend to the mobile drivers as well.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 9:04am pragtastic I like it, I always forget to update my drivers on a timely basis.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 9:39am mirage I always wait 1-2 weeks to update my drivers. I have skipped driver updates many times because of bugs in the new drivers. A useless gimmick from AMD.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 10:13am Tushon I'd hardly call it useless, especially for enthusiasts who have late gen hardware. Recent patches often give performance increases, especially in SLI or CrossFire configurations and having your system recently patched can help that. This may also help the casual gamer who loves Plants Vs Zombies but doesn't really know what graphics drivers do to keep their system more up to date.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 10:59am Cliff_Forster Mirage,

As someone that builds and supports systems on the side, automatic driver updates would be an absolute god send. It would cut out allot of work for me.

I do agree, for the non gamer, allot of times "if it ain't broke don't fix it" applies, but for gamers, regular driver updates are really necessary, and most of my customers want to play games without the fuss.

How much better has Steam made the experience of patching your games? Would you want to go back to searching for patches on gamershell.com.... Hell no.... Once you can have steam update your video driver, you will never, ever want to go back.

Its a nice innovation. I have no doubt that Nvidia will follow AMD's lead here.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 11:15am TiberiusLazarus I'm sure it can be useful to a good amount of people, but its also going to cause some problems. As Mirage mentioned I many times skip new driver releases because while they may increase performance in some games, I've many times had an update cause problems in other games (most recent being one that caused frequent crashes with Borderlands).

Really depends how they do it I guess. We'll see.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 12:41pm mirage Updating applications (i.e. games) in Steam can be acceptable and useful. But drivers are a part of operating system and it is not acceptable to me that Steam starts changing my operating system files as well. I wonder what Microsoft thinks about this; they will also be answering the support calls for OS problems after all (BSODs, etc). I wonder if AMD's main concern is increasing their hardware share in Steam hardware survey. I will keep getting my drivers from either Microsoft or WHQL certified ones from the manufacturer, nowhere else.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 12:51pm primesuspect What's the difference between Steam updating your system files or Windows Update updating your system files?
15 Sep 2010 ~ 12:52pm mirage Prime, are you seriously asking this question?

Suppose I am Windows got a BSOD while trying to answer your question, who would help Microsoft or Steam?
15 Sep 2010 ~ 12:57pm mertesn

primesuspect wrote:

What's the difference between Steam updating your system files or Windows Update updating your system files?

Visibility. Most people don't do anything other than an automatic Windows update. They never bother with recommended updates, and thus miss driver updates.

I prefer the Steam route of notifications because it's more likely to be a timely release. Microsoft waits until "Patch Tuesday" to release anything but emergency fixes, so the driver version could be a full release behind by then.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 1:16pm Cliff_Forster Also, I think Windows update only includes their tested drivers, maybe twice a year tops.

For non gamers, its fine, for gamers, it does not cut it.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 1:19pm Winfrey As long as steam asks you before installing the drivers then I don't see a problem.

Also just ask Drasnor about automatic windows updates being a problem. His computer got bricked for a while because of a bad patch.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 1:24pm Linc

pragtastic wrote:

I like it, I always forget to update my drivers on a timely basis.

Heh, I update my drivers when I reformat.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 1:29pm MAGIC

Lincoln wrote:

Heh, I update my drivers when I reformat.

I'll update my drivers when I'm dead.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 2:18pm fatcat yea, update my video drivers maybe twice a year. 5fps isnt even worth an extra = on the 8===D epeen scale

I can also see joe six pack playing some steam game, "oh hey new drivers okay i'll download them, wait, WTF, why is barnyard beer bonaza crashing all the time now, FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU"
15 Sep 2010 ~ 4:17pm Snarkasm I feel compelled to bring up the nV driver update that roasted cards. Or the four consecutive ATi driver updates that were supposed to fix the corrupted cursor issue but instead broke other things.

It'd be all right if they ask, but it seems like it's just asking for trouble. Even gamers should be updating drivers when they have issues or when they get dissatisfied with performance, not as soon as the updater comes out.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 5:59pm pigflipper I think some of y'all (though some get this point) are missing the point: this is not mandatory if you own Steam and Steam is not going to go update your video drivers without asking you. This is for power users that want the latest drivers as soon as they come out and for that, this will be a great service.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 6:05pm mirage

pigflipper wrote:

This is for power users

Oh, I see.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 6:07pm Snarkasm Won't power users that want the latest drivers know when the latest drivers are released? I mean, I guess it's not like ATi's drivers come out on a sched- oh, wait. They do.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 6:11pm fatcat

Snarkasm wrote:

Won't power users that want the latest drivers know when the latest drivers are released? I mean, I guess it's not like ATi's drivers come out on a sched- oh, wait. They do.

yea Video drivers on Steam is for the stupid nation, not us Icrontians
15 Sep 2010 ~ 6:25pm Cliff_Forster A reduced headache is a reduced headache. Once again, I can go to Gamershell and find my own game patches, but Steam does it for me. I can go to AMD.com and update my driver, but Steam is going to do it for me so......
15 Sep 2010 ~ 7:06pm Ryder blahblahsemanticblahblahpedanticblahblahblah

That is what I see so far here.

This wouldn't be Steams updater, it would still be AMD's, so who would help if it borked your system? AMD, just like they would help now if you manually selected to install. Which, I am sure, you will still have to do.

Either I missed something in the article or there are some huge assumptions in this thread, wow.
My opinion is that this will be a use it if you want, don't if you don't feature. After all not all Steam users have AMD video cards, do they? (in b4 rhetorical question )
15 Sep 2010 ~ 9:04pm Thrax Aaaand /thread.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 9:36pm primesuspect I just did it.

Basically, you can download install.exe through Steam. What is the big deal? It's the same as going to game.amd.com and downloading it; instead Steam downloads the right version for you and clicks SETUP.EXE for you.

Alot of FUD going on here. For once, I agree with Cliff. This is nothing more than a convenience. I'm a fan.
15 Sep 2010 ~ 9:56pm Tushon

That is all. Just go ahead and lock the thread
15 Sep 2010 ~ 11:05pm Cliff_Forster You know your reputation for obstinance preceedes you when people agree, they preface it with "for once"
16 Sep 2010 ~ 9:15am BuddyJ Same boat as Brian, but either I wasn't paying attention or the updater it downloads is simplified and doesn't give you the option to select what packages to install. I didn't want to really install the AMD video transcoder, "opt-in" communications feature, and Catalyst Control Center but it did that anyways. Hope they change it so users have more control, but at least they didn't go so far as to install the game demos that usually come with the full package you get off game.amd.com.

Pros: Convenience. It gets the right version automatically. Speed.

Cons: Dumbed down install.
16 Sep 2010 ~ 3:09pm UPSLynx I understand you do not have to restart after installation. Can anyone confirm that?
16 Sep 2010 ~ 3:11pm primesuspect I did not have to restart (Win7 64)
16 Sep 2010 ~ 3:36pm shwaip I haven't had to restart after installing AMD drivers for a while.
16 Sep 2010 ~ 3:48pm TiberiusLazarus

shwaip wrote:

I haven't had to restart after installing AMD drivers for a while.
16 Sep 2010 ~ 9:23pm UPSLynx well, you don't have to, but it is recommended, not that it means anything. Wasn't sure if the behavior had changed for Steam or not.
16 Sep 2010 ~ 9:33pm ardichoke Can anyone point me in the direction of HOW to grab the drivers through Steam? I did the whole "Steam > Check for video card updates" bit but it just sent me to the Radeon website. Then again.... this is on my laptop.
16 Sep 2010 ~ 10:05pm mertesn

ardichoke wrote:

Can anyone point me in the direction of HOW to grab the drivers through Steam? I did the whole "Steam > Check for video card updates" bit but it just sent me to the Radeon website. Then again.... this is on my laptop.

That could be your problem. The Mobility drivers are usually "hidden" behind a program that checks for an eligible card first, then that program does the download for you.
16 Sep 2010 ~ 11:01pm ardichoke Bah, I've already installed the base Radeon drivers from AMD for my laptop anyway. Now that I check their site though, they haven't released 10.9 for the Mobility Radeon cards yet.
20 Sep 2010 ~ 12:27pm mertesn

ardichoke wrote:

Bah, I've already installed the base Radeon drivers from AMD for my laptop anyway. Now that I check their site though, they haven't released 10.9 for the Mobility Radeon cards yet.

IIRC, the Mobility line gets updated every other update, so the next one should be 10.10. Could be wrong on this, can't remember where I saw it.