AMD recently announced that they are teaming up with Valve to release driver updates for their ATI Catalyst graphics drivers through steam. Steam users will now be able to automatically detect and install driver updates from the Steam client.
According to Steams most recent hardware survey ATI commands 87% of the DirectX 11 gaming market and the Radeon 4800 series cards hold the highest percentage of users surveyed.
Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve said, "Valve is extremely pleased to be working with AMD to provide automatic driver updates for AMD's leading edge products on Steam. PC gamers demand the most of their gaming hardware and providing these updates automatically will help ensure those playing via Steam are playing at optimal performance."
AMD has been working hard to improve their image in the gaming market and have labeled this project part of their AMD Gaming Evolved initiative which they say ,"represents our deep commitment to PC gamers, PC game developers, and the PC gaming industry to deliver innovative technologies, nurture open industry standards, and to help the gaming industry create the best possible gaming experience on the world’s best gaming platform—the PC."
This is the first time Steam will be used to distribute drivers, if the project goes successfully hopefully other manufacturers will start working with Steam as well. Using an application most gamers already have installed as a centralized application to keep track of driver updates stands to benefit everyone greatly.
Comments (44)
Replymakes sense.... sounds like a handy addon. me likes
I agree, pretty useful!
Its a great idea that valve has been fighting for for some time, except amd/nvidia/intel treated graphics card drivers as something you should only update if you are having issues. NOW ati(amd) has seen the light and understands that having the most up to date drivers along with the most up to date version of a game usually yields the best performance.
great addon
First time i tried this it crashed the installer ^.^ but worked fine 2nd time, nice feature, saves me manualy downloading from the site
oh yeah? I didn't try again after the first crash...huh
Worked fine for me the first time I tried it, worked quite well too
Used this with the latest catalyst drivers, worked good, but unfortunately it only does the express install. However it doesn't install demo games.
This is a very good idea and I hope that more manufacturers besides AMD uses this to deploy their updated system software.
Now if only they could team up with good programmers to actually make good drivers (especially for people with crossfire).
"AMD recently announced that they will are teaming up with Valve to release driver updates for their ATI Catalyst"
and I thought the ATI brand was removed in favor of the AMD one (:
will they or are they?
will they or are they?
It installs as AMD.
will they or are they?
Thanks, fixed the will are sentence.
Nice! Would rather have the support all their mobile cards instead of relying on the computer manufacturers for that...
The computer manufacturers have forced AMD to do it, not the other way around.
The computer manufacturers have forced AMD to do it, not the other way around.
If that is the case then why can Nvidia release mobile drivers on their own?
If that is the case then why can Nvidia release mobile drivers on their own?
They have support for mobility GPU's and the drivers can be downloaded via mobility download tool. This tool performs a check if the notebook belongs to the Vendors who have agreed and let AMD release drivers for their notebooks.
As far as I remember an OEM manufacturer MUST allow them to post drivers independently.
Good examples of locked driver manufacturers is for example : S**y.
Of course the using of tool can be evaded if someone post direct download links to the driver packages.
this is probably a good idea for the average joe PC user who don't know much about PC's but me personally i still prefer to manually get the driver updates.
Good for you. I personally keep forgetting to update my drivers on a regular basis. Heck, if my Windows hadn't decided to take a hike a couple of days ago and forced me to reinstall, I'd still be running some 5-6 month old drivers. As such, I find such a tool rather useful.
Didn't work for me on my laptop (5650 mobility card), all it did was take me to the AMD Driver download page.
Mobile variants are always going to be problematic for a system like this. The reason being OEMs tend to customize the chips to the point that the vanilla drivers from AMD or NVidia do not recognize them.
Mobile variants are always going to be problematic for a system like this. The reason being OEMs tend to customize the chips to the point that the vanilla drivers from AMD or NVidia do not recognize them.
In before "Steam sux, its so bloated, wtf why they do this".
I personally think its a great idea. I personally use Nvidia, but I love the idea of it. At least when I click it, it goes straight to the nvidia download site.
I personally think its a great idea. I personally use Nvidia, but I love the idea of it. At least when I click it, it goes straight to the nvidia download site.
I think steams 'bloat' is fine since everything is integrated so well, and makes sense as an extension most of the time.
"ATI commands 87% of the DirectX 11 gaming market"
Yet Nvidia powered cards power almost 60% of steam powered computers
Yet Nvidia powered cards power almost 60% of steam powered computers
In other words, 87% of video cards that support Direct X 11 are ATi cards..
In other words, 87% of video cards that support Direct X 11 are ATi cards..
Yes. Nvidia is a little behind there but DirectX 11 games are only a very small fraction of the market. They will get there.
Yet Nvidia powered cards power almost 60% of steam powered computers
Steam powered computers are the future
Steam powered computers are the future
Indeed they are. I recently upgraded mine and couldn't be happier. Heck, I don't even need to run a heater in my room anymore with the amount of heat generated by the combustion.
YES YES YES. This is a brilliant idea!
This is great, but it doesn't give me a custom install option.
excellent idea.
Great idea... =D
I like this idea very much. Beats having to manually download and install the drivers. Windows Update takes forever to get the most recent drivers. When is this delivery method going to be made available on Steam?
I don't use steam but have an ATI graphic card. Does this mean Ill have to install steam to get driver updates? If so, can it be gotten round.
No it doesn't, this is like an extra steam service
No it doesn't, this is like an extra steam service
Thanks. The idea of installing a 3rd party app to get em was buggin me.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/4355/
It is included in the September 15 Steam client update.
I'm pretty sure apps can get that info from Windows.
I too have tried it however it fails to download with an ambiguous error message ... Not that I'm giving up up on it as I would love to see this work.
Can someone post an image of this working?
Would be nice if they offered the most recent drivers..
I had to reinstall the sept 15 one after finding out they offered the august driver as the "new driver".