Included Highlights: Visit the Features section below to learn more about the following:
Radeon Settings
New Install UI
Liquid VR
Asynchronous Shaders
Shader Cache
Optimized Flip Queue Size
Freesync™ Enhancements
Custom Resolution Support
Frame Pacing Enhancements
Frame Rate Target Control Enhancements
Updated Video Feature support for 'Carrizo' products
Power Optimization
Directional Scaling
Dynamic Contrast Update
DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 support
Radeon Settings:
Radeon Settings is the new, streamlined user interface, engineered to bring out the best of AMD graphics hardware. User-friendly and feature-rich, Radeon Settings is lightning fast and starts upto 10x times faster1 than the previous AMD Catalyst™ Control Center. Radeon Settings provides a brand new game manager, improved AMD Overdrive options per game and new video, display and Eyefinity tabs.
New Install UI:
The driver installer now provides a brand new, streamlined user experience with a reduced number of clicks required, providing better usability and an easy to install user experience.
Liquid VR:
The AMD Radeon Software Crimson edition is the first publicly available driver that enables all LiquidVR features, which are currently being validated and tested by VR headset manufacturers and ecosystem partners.
Asynchronous Shaders:
A feature that has been extensively used by game console developers is now available to PC Gamers. Asychronous Shaders break complex serial workloads into smaller parallel tasks, thereby allowing idle GPU resources to be used more efficiently and parallel workloads allow taskes to be completed much faster.
Shader Cache:
The shader cache feature allows complex shaders to be cached, thereby resulting in reduced game load times, lower CPU usage and reduced stuttering and latency during gameplay2.
Optimized Flip Queue Size:
The optimized Flip Queue Size provides users with the very latest keyboard and mouse positional information during gameplay to reduce input latency on DirectX 9® , DirectX® 10 and DirectX® 11 applications. This feature is a driver optimization, therefore it is automatically enabled and requires no user configuration or setup.
Freesync™ Enhancements:
Minimum/Maximum display rate is now listed in Radeon Settings
Low framerate compensation to reduce or eliminate judder when application FPS falls below the minimum refresh rate of an AMD Freesync™ enabled display
New support for AMD Freesync™ with AMD Crossfire™ in DirectX 9® titles
Custom Resolution Support:
This feature provides users more control over display capabilities allowing the user to create custom display profiles to attempt to drive their display with chosen resolution, timings, refresh rates and pixel clocks.
Frame Pacing Enhancements:
Frame pacing support is now extended to DirectX® 9 titles.
Frame Rate Target Control Enhancements:
FRTC enhancements include: power saving capabilty, support for DirectX® 9 titles and an extended range for target control (30 - 200 FPS).
Updated Video Feature support for 'Carrizo' products:
FluidMotion for smoothing playback of 24/30 FPS video using Cyberlink PowerDVD 15 for Blu‐Ray playback
Improved edge enhancement for sharper images
Improved de‐interlacing for interlaced content
Power Optimization:
Improved power optimizations for video, gaming and FRTC enabled gaming environments (AMD Radeon™ R7 360, AMD Radeon™ R9 380, AMD Radeon™ R9 390 series and AMD Radeon™ Fury series).
Directional Scaling:
Enhanced image quality for 1080p media content scaled to 4K resolution using adaptive directional filtering technology (AMD Radeon™ Fury products).
Dynamic Contrast Update:
Qualative changes are now content adaptive and provides video enthusiasts with improved video quality and contrast settings (AMD Radeon™ R8 285, AMD Radeon™ R9 380 and AMD Radeon™ Fury products).
DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 support:
Provides full support for DisplayPort to HDMI® 2.0 connections via certified dongles.
Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs on October 26, 2015 using a HP Pavilion DM1 with AMD E-350 with AMD Radeon HD 6310 Graphics, 3GB (1GB+2GB) DDR3, Windows 10 64bit. With AMD Catalyst 15.8, the system took 8 seconds on average to load the control panel (AMD Catalyst Control Center). With Radeon Software Crimson Edition, the system took 0.6 seconds on average to load the control panel (Radeon Settings).
AMD Internal Lab testing as of Nov 2, 2015 with an Intel Core i7 5960X with 2x8GB DDR4-2666 MHz memory, Gigabyte X99-UD4, AMD Radeon™ R9 380, Windows 10 64bit. PC manufacturers may vary configurations yielding different results. Star Wars Battlefront took an average of 16.9 seconds to load the EndorSurvival level with AMD Catalyst 15.7.1 Driver and 11.2 seconds with Radeon Software Crimson Edition
This driver is not intended for use on AMD products running in Apple Boot Camp platforms. Users of these platforms should contact their manufacturer for driver support.
When installing the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition for the Windows® operating system, the user must be logged on as Administrator, or have Administrator rights to complete the installation of the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition.
The AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition requires Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to be installed.
Resolved Issues:
[83112] Radeon Settings driver update check is not available for minor driver versions
[83111] System has higher idle power usage on Windows® 7 when running with Radeon Settings
[82050] Star Wars™: Battlefront - Snow flickers in a few locations in the game
[82240] Star Wars™: Battlefront - Sky rendering may be broken in some game locations
[82645] Fallout 4 - The compass may flicker during gameplay on AMD Radeon R9 390 series products. We continue to investigate the issue with AMD Radeon R9 290 and AMD Radeon R9 295X2 series products
[82667] Star Wars™: Battlefront - Shadowy textures are visible around hills/structures/caves
[81890] Just Cause 3 - Texture corruption may be experienced during gameplay
[54874] Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Poor AMD Crossfire™ performance may be experienced
[82338] The driver installation may fail while installing the ACP component
[82426] The font size in Chinese language installations may be too small
[82438] The label range values in some AMD Freesync™ installations may be incorrect
[82536] The Radeon Settings dropbox does not close when it is clicked on a second time
[82603] The AMD Overdrive™ fan settings is always set to ON after first edit on reboot
[82586] Language shows up as Chinese Simplified when Chinese Traditional is selected in Windows® 7
[82656] Radeon Settings crashes on the Display tab when cloning a display via HDMI on some notebooks
[82671] Overdrive™ fan speed is reset to Manual on exiting from a 3D game or application
[82766] Radeon Settings does not get upgraded in some install scenarios
[82691] AMD Overdrive™ cannot revert to default settings in some situations
Known Issues:
[82789] Total War™ : Rome II : Choppy gameplay may be experienced
[82788] Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Frame freezing during gameplay may be experienced
[82794] Just Cause 3 - The system may hang when task switching on systems with AMD CPUs and GPUs
[82775] Just Cause 3 - Flickering may be experienced during gameplay and on menu screens
[82778] Anno 2205 - Water splatter may flicker during in Ultra high mode on 4K displays
[82779] Fallout 4 - Gameplay may be choppy in AMD Freesync™ mode in Ultra mode at 1440p resolution
[58978] Dirt Rally - A crash may be experienced starting a new race with AMD Crossfire™ and AMD Freesync™ enabled
[59475] Elite: Dangerous - Poor performance may be experienced in SuperCruise mode under Windows® 10
[78139] PowerDVD - 3D playback may fail on some configurations using an HDMI 2.0 dongle
[79428] Starcraft 2: Flickering may be observed in the 'Episode 3' campaign
[80251] Fable Legends: The DirectX® 12 benchmark may fail to launch on some configurations
[80836] Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Flickering or poor performance may be experienced when running in AMD Crossfire™ mode
[81402] Assassin's Creed Syndicate - A crash may be experienced when setting game to Ultra-High graphics mode
[81403] Flickering may be observed on some Freesync monitors while playing Wolfenstein - The New Order and Battlefield™: Hardline with Vsync disabled
[81448] A system restart may be experience when waking the system from sleep mode on some systems with Intel processors
[81489] Unable to create 4x1 or 2.1 portrait mode SLS with 4K displays
[81651] Star Wars™: Battlefront - texture corruption may be experienced if the game "Field of View" setting is > 100
[81736] Call of Duty Online - the game may crash if the Printscreen key is pressed on a 4K monitor
[81777] Launching a game from the Game Manager may launch on a single display after enabling and disabling AMD Crossfire™ in a 3x1 AMD Eyefinity™ setup
[81809] A crash may be experienced if an HDMI™ display is a cloned display device on an HP Envy 15 notebook
[81844] Unable to change resolution if a wireless display is the only connected display
[81856] Marginally increased power consumption may be observed during video playback
[81859] Flickering may be experienced on some monitors when AMD Freesync™ is enabled
[81915] Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Building textures may be missing on some AMD Freesync™ displays with Vsync enabled
[82083] Ark Survival Evolved - Poor performance may be experienced when running in AMD Crossfire™ mode
[82093] Star Wars™ : Battlefront - Some flickering may be experienced in shaded areas of the screen while game levels are loading
[82213] Star Wars™ : Battlefront - Some users may experience minor flickering or corruption at different game location or while viewing the in-game cinematics
[82387] Assassin's Creed Syndicate - The game may crash if the Gaming Evolved "In Game Overlay" is enabled. A temporary workaround is to disable the AMD Gaming Evolved "In Game Overlay"
