14 DAY TRIAL // Drivers are something that Advanced Micro Devices could have been spending more resources on, but for a while, it felt like it didn't need to.
Now, though, it is faced with a rather delicate situation: NVIDIA advantage in getting the frames to the displays.
AMD has just released the Radeon HD 7990 Malta dual-GPU graphics card. Paradoxically, it is purported as the faster video board, and yet it loses to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 in frame time in many titles.
While frame rate is the number of frames drawn per second, frame time determines how fast said frames reach the display.
Many feel frame time is as important as frame rates, and the latency in AMD cards has not gone by unnoticed.
This is the problem: AMD's Radeon boards lag behind NVIDIA's GeForce in terms of frame times, even in some cases where AMD's board has higher FPS.
AMD maintains that it's not because of the hardware though, which means it needs better drivers.
It is now reported that the Sunnyvale, California-based company had the first prototype driver ready, but in pre-alpha stage, so only some industry partners can get them. Beta drivers will follow once feedback comes in.
UPDATE April 24: Clarified the difference between frame rates and frame times.