AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Graphics Driver Now Available


AMD has just released the first version of its AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition graphics driver. This software is – more or less – AMD’s answer to NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience and comes with following features.

  • 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

Those interested can download it from here.

Here are some additional notes for AMD’s Radeon Software Crimson Edition’s features:

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.