AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3 Out, Improves Performance In Gears of War: Ultimate Edition


AMD has released a new driver for its graphics cards. According to its changelog, the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3 improves performance in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, comes with official support for the Vulkan API, and fixes various downclocking issues that have been reported.

Those interested can download this new driver from here.

And here are the release notes for the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3:

Updated Crossfire Profiles available for:
Hitman™
The Park

Support for:
Hitman™

Performance and Quality improvements for:

Rise of the Tomb Raider™
Up to 16% on AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury X Series vs AMD Radeon™ Software Crimson Edition 16.2.
Gears of War Ultimate Edition
Up to 60% on AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury X series vs AMD Radeon™ Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1
Up to 44% on AMD Radeon™ R9 380 series vs AMD Radeon™ Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1

Vulkan™ Support: Vulkan™ is the successor to OpenGL and a descendant of AMD’s Mantle. Vulkan™ is a powerful “low-overhead” graphics API that gives software developers deep control over the performance, efficiency, and capabilities of Radeon™ GPUs and multi-core CPUs. More information on Vulkan™ can be found at https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/.

Per-Game Display Scaling: A new feature introduced in Radeon™ Settings that allows per game Display Scaling to be set within the Radeon™ Settings Gaming tab under “Profile Options”.

Language Menu: A new feature introduced in Radeon™ Settings that allows the end user to select their preferred language from a drop down menu under the “Preferences -> Language” tab.

Two Display Eyefinity: Two Display Eyefinity is now an available option under the Eyefinity tab in Radeon™ Settings.
AMD Crossfire™ Status Indicator: A new feature in Radeon™ Settings that allows users to toggle an AMD Crossfire™ status indicator on their screen when running in AMD Crossfire™ mode.

Updated Social Links: New Social links are now available for Radeon™ Settings home page and have also updated based on geographical region.

Power Efficiency Toggle: A new feature introduced in the Radeon™ Settings Gaming tab for select AMD Radeon™ 300 series and AMD Radeon™ Fury X available under “Global Options”. This allows the user to disable some power efficiency optimizations.

AMD XConnect™ technology: This driver provides initial support for external GPU enclosures configured with Radeon™ R9 300 Series GPUs are now supported over Thunderbolt™ 3 (USB-C) connections. AMD XConnect™ technology additionally provides plug’n’play support and an integrated management interface. Base system must have BIOS support for external GPUs (e.g. Razer Blade Stealth).

RESOLVED ISSUES

Core clocks may not maintain sustained clock speeds resulting in choppy performance and or screen corruption (Fixed with new Power Efficiency feature toggled to off)
Gears of War Ultimate Edition – Random freezes may be experienced during gameplay
Ashes of the Singularity 2.0 Benchmark now supports DirectFlip
XCOM 2 flickering textures may be experienced at various game locations
Rise of the Tomb Raider™ – The game may randomly crash on launch if Tessellation is enabled

KNOWN ISSUES

A few game titles may fail to launch or crash if the Gaming Evolved overlay is enabled. A temporary workaround is to disable the AMD Gaming Evolved “In Game Overlay”
Installing via command line may not work for some users. As a workaround please use the default GUI installer
League of Legends may experience some graphical corruption on characters death animation in AMD Crossfire™ mode
Rift may experience a hang when playing with FRTC and V-Sync enabled. As a work around users are suggested to disable V-Sync
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 may experience some flickering in AMD Crossfire™ mode
Rise of the Tomb Raider may experience graphical corruption in some cinematics
The Division may experience flickering in AMD Crossfire™ mode
Star Wars Battlefront users may experience flicker in AMD Crossfire™ mode on battle and tutorial loading screens
Star Wars Battlefront users may experience ground texture issues in certain locations on Survival Hoth missions