14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has just released a revision of their latest Catalyst Driver 14.4 for the Linux platform, with just one fix, for the newly released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition.
The Linux users received with great enthusiasm the port of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition, but that joy was short lived. It turns out that the performance of the game was really poor on the platforms that were actually able to run it. AMD was not even one of those platforms.
Users have flooded the Steam forums complaining about the performance on the NVIDIA video cards, but at least the game worked. Right from the start, the developers said that AMD owners would not be able to enjoy it, at least not until some of the problems are fixed.
AMD is not releasing driver updates for Linux too often and the company just made available a new major update a few weeks ago. Now, the AMD developers have released a second revision of their Catalyst 14.4 driver for Linux, fixing the compatibility with The Witcher 2.
Unfortunately, the new driver only takes care of a limited number of issues and it’s expected that users with AMD hardware will still encounter some problems. The same is true for the NVIDIA owners, but that is not the company’s fault.
The listing on the Steam website hasn’t been updated yet to reflect the fact that AMD users will be able to play the game, but it usually takes a while.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition was met with some critics because the developers from CD Projeckt RED didn't actually port the game to the Linux platform. Instead, they used a compatibility layer, similar with Wine, to make the game work on the open source platform.
The main problem that stems from this kind of solution is the poor performance that usually accompanies such ports. The Witcher 2 uses some technologies that are not available on Linux, so it’s very likely that the devs didn't really have a choice.
AMD has yet to publish details about the second revision for Catalyst Driver 14.4 and it will take a while to see them online. Nothing seems to have changed from the initial release that was made a few weeks ago, with the exception of this particular fix.
You can check the official AMD website, but for now only the old release notes are available. The download link, on the other hand, is very recent.