Some sources pointed out that Vega's design of integrating high bandwidth memory (HBM) into the GPU has significantly raised the difficulty of the related packaging process and hence resulted in low yield rates. However, some other sources claimed that the issue may be down to problems with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering's (ASE) packaging technology.

Since the beginning of PC graphics, one of the biggest problems on this front has been synchronization between the game’s animation and the display’s update rate. Most displays update themselves at a fixed rate, typically at 60Hz or 60 times per second, in fixed steps. Meanwhile, games and other 3D graphics applications can produce new frames of animation at different rates, and those frame rates tend to vary over time. Often, much of what we perceive as slowdowns or sluggishness when gaming involves poor interactions between these two timing loops.

In fact, on a 60Hz display, animation can look more uneven when a game is running at 40 FPS than at 30 FPS, because at 40 FPS, the display is updated in an elliptical pattern:

You’re seeing a less pleasing pattern of animation, even though the GPU is cranking out frames at a higher rate, thanks to a timing sync issue between the game and the display.

We’ve come up with some outstanding technology to address this problem, most notably Radeon™ FreeSync technology for compatible monitors with variable refresh rates. I could talk about the theory all day, but you have to see FreeSync in action in order to appreciate it properly. Once you’ve experienced it, you won’t ever want to go back to gaming on a fixed-refresh display.

Other Changes in Version 384.94 WHQL update include:

    [SLI][GeForce GTX 980][IL2-Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad]: There is no performance improvement under DirectX 11 after enabling SLI. [1903543]
    [Star Ruler 2]: The game crashes within minutes of gameplay. [1945976]
    [Titan Xp][Mass Effect – Andromeda]: After launching the game in full-screen mode, HDR cannot be enabled from the in-game HDR settings. [200315052]
    [GeForce TX 1070/1080][Shadow Warrior 2]: Windows HDR settings conflict with in-game HDR settings, resulting in color over-saturation. [1882582]
    [GeForce GTX 970][Gears of War 4]: The game may freeze with Release 384 drivers. [1954654]
    [GeForce GTX 780/780 Ti][NieR:Automata]: The screen may freeze during gameplay. [1892334]
    [Titan X][Watch Dogs 2]: The game may crash when launched. [1952270]
    [GeForce GTX][DNF]: Poor game performance. [1936955]
    [Windows Store – Channel 9 / rPlay]: In full-screen mode, the application playback becomes choppy and then the application crashes. [1953090]
    [GeForce GTX 980][DisplayPort]: There is no signal on the monitor after turning the monitor off and then back on. [1904801

Starting in October of this year, we will begin the process of ending support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm.

Microsoft ceased mainstream support for these versions of Windows in 2009 and 2012, respectively, but since a decent portion of our audience was still using them at the time, we continued supporting them. However, there have been three major Windows releases since Vista, and at this point, the vast majority of our audience has upgraded to one of the newer versions.

The games will not run on these older operating systems once they are no longer supported, so we encourage any players who are still using one of the older OSes to upgrade to a newer version. We'll be rolling out this change on a staggered schedule, and will post further notices as we get closer to making the change for each game.