AMD Releases Catalyst 14.9 Drivers

It seems like it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a WHQL driver release from AMD… and it has been. The previous WHQL driver dates back to April, the Catalyst 14.4 drivers, so we’re close to five months between updates. In the interim, AMD has had beta/release candidate drivers for 14.6 and 14.7, along with the initial driver release for the R9 285 Tonga GPU. The new 14.9 drivers appear to be the official release of the R9 285 drivers, with version numbering of 14.301 (compared to 14.300 for the launch driver).

As usual, there are quite a few updates listed in the release notes, with minor to moderate performance improvements noted for 3DMark Sky Diver and Fire Strike, 3DMark11, Bioshock Infinite, Company of Heroes 2, Crysis 3, GRID Autosport, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare, Batman: Arkham Origins, Wildstar, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed IV, Lichdom, and StarCraft II. There’s no mention made of any of the upcoming games, so it looks like we’ll mostly be looking for hotfixes to address any issues with yet-to-be-released games. Other changes include Mantle support for AMD mobile products with Enduro technology.

The drivers are available at the usual place, and support is specifically listed for the R9/R7/R5 series of desktop and mobile GPUs, along with the earlier HD 5000/6000/7000/8000 series of desktop and mobile GPUs. APU support is also included for the R7/R6/R5/R3 products and all APUs with HD 6000D/G or newer graphics (which basically means all of AMD’s APUs). In other words, if you have a Direct3D 11 enabled GPU from AMD, the drivers should be available (though there are likely mobile products where that may not be the case).

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA

Last week we took a look at NVIDIA’s newest consumer flagship video card, the GeForce GTX 980. Today in the second part of our series on the GTX 900 series we’re taking a look at its lower-tier, lower priced counterpart, the GeForce GTX 970. With a price of just $329, GTX 970 is just as interesting (if not more interesting overall) than its bigger sibling. The performance decrease from the reduced clock speeds and fewer SMMs that comes with being a GTX x70 part is going to be tangible, but then so is a $220 savings to the pocketbook. With GTX 980 already topping our charts, if GTX 970 can stay relatively close then it would be a very tantalizing value proposition for enthusiast gamers who want to buy in to GM204 at a lower price.

PayPal Announces Bitcoin Support

It’s been a long time in coming, but PayPal announced in a blog post today that they have partnered with BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin. This comes just a few weeks after the announcement that businesses working with Braintree would be able to accept Bitcoin, and this is a more direct use of Bitcoin. The support will come via integration in the PayPal Payments Hub, and there is one significant catch: for now this is only supported for merchants in North America. Still, it’s at least one small step towards further acceptance of virtual currencies. There are other qualifications to using Bitcoin with PayPal as well.

The blog notes, “To be clear, today’s news does not mean that PayPal has added Bitcoin as a currency in our digital wallet or that Bitcoin payments will be processed on our secure payments platform. PayPal has always embraced innovation, but always in ways that make payments safer and more reliable for our customers. Our approach to Bitcoin is no different. That’s why we’re proceeding gradually, supporting Bitcoin in some ways today and holding off on other ways until we see how things develop.”

Interestingly, this comes at a time when the mining phase of Bitcoins and other virtual currencies has largely moved beyond GPUs and onto dedicated SHA256 and Scrypt ASICs. That’s good news for gamers and graphics gurus like our own Ryan Smith, as it means we hopefully won’t see quite as many GPUs that should be playing games sacrificed in pursuit of cryptocurrency mining. (And yes, I know there are many alt-coins that use other Proof of Work algorithms that haven’t been ported to ASICs, but few if any are actually profitable to mine with GPUs at this point.) Scott Ellison of PayPal also notes that PayPal has worked with many merchants selling cryptocurrency mining hardware, but they do not work with pre-orders/pre-sales (i.e. early funding of hardware that has not yet shipped).

Today’s announcement and the earlier Braintree announcement mark a clear change in tone from PayPal regarding Bitcoin, as the history of PayPal and Bitcoin has been a bit rocky up until now. Going back a few years, in the early days of Bitcoin PayPal actively took steps to prevent people from using their service to purchase Bitcoins. Others have reported bans from PayPal and closed accounts for dealing in Bitcoins. Obviously the inability to roll back purchases made via Bitcoin is a risk, and companies like Coinbase and BitPay now have services in place to mitigate some of the risks. Regardless, with sites like Newegg.com, TigerDirect.com, Overstock.com, and others all beginning to accept Bitcoin as a viable method of payment, it looks like PayPal has decided to join the club.

While there are still plenty of naysayers when it comes to Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in general, this is great news for Bitcoin proponents as integration with PayPal opens the doors for thousands of small shops to begin working with Bitcoin.