Today marks the beginning of a new era for AMD, as the Catalyst Control Centre is being put to rest and we push forward with Radeon Software: Crimson Edition, the first step in AMD’s plan to double its driver support efforts. Provided with the driver package is also a new Clean Uninstall Utility that removes every driver and registry entry, making it easier to clean up your system. AMD has also continued the community-driven approach to bug fixes and stability issues that we saw with Catalyst Omega, developing and then fixing a list of bugs prioritised by their prevalence in the feedback it receives from the PC community.
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Built entirely on Linux based Qt framework instead of Microsoft’s.Net framework, the new control panel features a redesigned interface that is not only faster but also easier to use even for those new to AMD. Quality assurance is obviously a major factor in the success of any large-scale driver launch, and AMD says it has upped its QA on all fronts for the Radeon Software launch. This allows you to have the workspace of a 1440p display on a 1080p montior, for example. Whereas G-Sync is capable of staying synchronised even when the frame rate drops below a given monitor’s minimum refresh rate, FreeSync has, until now, simply had to revert to the panel’s default behaviour. Specifically, frame pacing now supports DirectX 9 titles.
Support for dynamic contrast, increasing image contrast in videos and images through an algorithm (if you have the setting enabled). Well you won’t be disappointed with the Radeon Software Crimson driver, as there are tons of improvements AMD has made in a range of important areas. This release offers 12 new or improved features, up to 20% higher performance, and tools to eke more efficiency out of AMD graphics cards. The Crimson drivers can make use of only a single frame buffer in games where the additional input lag generated by triple-buffering doesn’t make sense, like League of Legends or Dota 2.
But what about performance improvements? AMD says Crimson enables 23 percent better performance per watt and 33 percent faster game load times. As the graph above shows, AMD is touting a 20W power saving for the entire system between Radeon Software and Catalyst Control Centre while watching a 1080p video on YouTube.
Efficiency is another major theme of the Crimson release, and the road to AMD’s claimed efficiency increases is Frame Rate Target Control, or FRTC. FRTC is supposed to help reduce power consumption when frame rates would otherwise rocket into the multiple hundreds of FPS, like menus and loading screens.
The Crimson software is a bit of a big deal for AMD, and there are a tonne of features that AMD users should care an terrible lot about. The driver should be available to download now from AMD’s driver website.
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As for the future, AMD has promised to release WHQL-certified drivers more frequently in 2016, with the company hoping to go from three releases this year, to six next year. There will be “additional beta releases” as well, most likely to coincide with game launches.
