AMD Radeon Software Crimson slides leaked *Official driver released

[Notional]

An extension of this news thread: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/477691-goodbye-catalyst-control-center-hello-radeon-sofware/

 

Videocardz has gotten a hold of the slides for the new RadeOn Crimson drivers

 

And man does it look good! Here are some of the highlights

 

 

 

Overview of all the content of the slides. Here are my personal picks for some of the most interesting features:

 

• Low Framerate Compensation:

 

PCPer had an interesting video showing how GSync operates, when going below 30hz (no LCD can go below 30hz as the liquid crystals cannot hold its charge for more than 30ms).

 

 

Freesync has so far just shut off or used VSYNC, when going below the minimum framerate of the Adaptive Sync window of the monitor. This introduced the same issues as not having freesync enabled, which voids the point. With Crimson, AMD introduces a new feature called Low Framerate Compensation. Nothing concrete about the practical workings has been leaked yet, so how it works is still up in the air.

 

I have long spoken for the introduction of a frame buffer, that could get repeated by the GPU, similar to how the GSync module behaves, as seen in the PCPer video.

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• Shader Cache

 

 

Shader cache is better caching of a games shaders. Better driver management of shaders can result in lower load times and better shader streaming (like we see in open world games). Again, the inner workings are not disclosed, so we will have to wait and see.

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• Something something something dark side..erh I mean Flip Queue Size Optimized

 

 

The general theme of the Crimson driver seems to be massive lowering of latency, be it LiquidVR, Async compute or shader chache. Flip queue size optimization should mate the latency between you performing an action on the mouse or keyboard, to a reaction on the screen be significantly shorter.

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• Frame Rate Target Control

 

Not new, but much better. Now with a larger window of 30-200 fps. I personally enjoy and use FRTC a lot, but the arbitrary 95 fps limit in Catalyst made little sense. Setting this to the max of your panel makes all kinds of sense, both with and without a freesync panel. Set it to your monitors max hz and enjoy.

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The Crimson driver software seems to be very promising. Faster startup, completely new graphical user interface, better performance all around and lower latency for better fps and user input reaction.

I personally think this will launch tomorrow when AMD holds their interview with PCPerspective live. Either that or the day after.

 

Watch all the slides here: http://videocardz.com/57776/amd-launches-radeon-software-crimson-driver

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Update: Official driver has been released on AMD's webpage

 

Here the Windows 10 64 bit version http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+10+-+64

[SurvivorNVL]

Wow.. that's a lot of stuff, and it looks good all the same.  I like this.

[Nineshadow]

Because AMD sure has never used crimson as their color ever before.

 

Anyway, that's pretty cool , I guess.

[Bouzoo]

And this is the biggest highlight.

 

[Whorax]

Looks neat. I'm excited about this. Hopefully this proves to be better than that garbage loaf CCC.

[captain cactus]

All this DirectX talk and not a single mention of Vulkan...

[don_svetlio]

so is AMD the driver/software king now?

[mvitkun]

And this is the biggest highlight.

Much more interested in FreeSync low framerate compensation.

All this DirectX talk and not a single mention of Vulkan...

Because the DirectX 12 spec has been finalized, which basically means it exists, while the Vulkan spec has yet to be finalized.

I'm sure once Vulkan has its spec finalized that there will be just as much talk of it if not more.

[grayperview]

looking forward to this, picked a up fury last week.

[Paranoid Kami]

Improved responsiveness on keyboard and mouse alone is something that would make me switch to AMD from Nvidia. Does anyone know if Nvidia already does this?

[Curufinwe_wins]

Ok... so a lot of smoke and perhaps one interesting application (looks similar in end result to nvidia's dota rendering, but perhaps applied to more games).

 

Com'on out AMD lets see what happens.

 

Also please for the love of god stop comparing to ancient shit (both you and Nvidia)... Go figure the driver that predates Battlefront (and the last 3 months of AoS builds) is worse than the up-to-date one. Wow....

[suicidalfranco]

holy guacamole! pls bring all this features to linux AMD!

[SubTract]

So much cool stuff here. The best feature as far as I'm concerned is the built in monitor overclocking.

 

[dimitriianghelov]

All this DirectX talk and not a single mention of Vulkan...

 

dead api is dead

[Humbug]

All this DirectX talk and not a single mention of Vulkan...

-They are on NDA until the Vulkan release next month.

-until then only Khorons members have access to the Vulkan drivers from AMD,Nvidia and Intel + test applications.

-Crimson release is not the Vulkan enabling driver, and even if it was there is no previous publicly available Vuklan driver to compare performance and boast

[RagnarokDel]

The only reason I dont have a Fury X is because of the 4gb of vram on it. It makes me afraid of the future. If they had  a 8 gb version, I would be all over that.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Improved responsiveness on keyboard and mouse alone is something that would make me switch to AMD from Nvidia. Does anyone know if Nvidia already does this?

It's something nvidia showed off when they revealed the gtx 950. Not sure if its exclusive to just the 950 or dota.

[grayperview]

The only reason I dont have a Fury X is because of the 4gb of vram on it. It makes me afraid of the future. If they had  a 8 gb version, I would be all over that.

 

You don't really need more than 4GB with HBM at the moment as the bus is that wide, a huge frame buffer is not needed, as the data travels far more efficiently than GDDR5

 

Its like cars travelling on a motorway, GDDR5 = 4 lanes.....lots of traffic = grid lock   HBM = 16 lanes lots traffic flows more freely.

 

Hope you get what i mean is 3.40am here and i can't think straight.

[ApolloEleven]

I wish they include voltage control in their Overdrive setting because I am having trouble running MSI afterburner or Sapphire TriXX in a standard, non-admin Windows account. But AMD Overdrive I have no issues at all, it does not ask for admin permission but the only thing I can adjust is the GPU clock speed, Memory speed, fan profile and Power limit but no voltage control.

[TechGod]

This looks great!

[Paranoid Kami]

 

Improved responsiveness on keyboard and mouse alone is something that would make me switch to AMD from Nvidia. Does anyone know if Nvidia already does this?

 

It's something nvidia showed off when they revealed the gtx 950. Not sure if its exclusive to just the 950 or dota.

 

Looked that up and there's an article on Pcper basically saying that it's just changing some settings in their control panel. They never actually did anything  <_<

 

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-950-2GB-Review-Maxwell-MOBA/GM206-Maxwell-MOBAs

 

Took a look at both their slides and AMD is claiming 17ms compared to the 45ms that Nvidia is saying. Nvidia was using their "reduced" vsync option(that's still vsync), so maybe that added to the delay.

[Prysin]

I wish they include voltage control in their Overdrive setting because I am having trouble running MSI afterburner or Sapphire TriXX in a standard, non-admin Windows account. But AMD Overdrive I have no issues at all, it does not ask for admin permission but the only thing I can adjust is the GPU clock speed, Memory speed, fan profile and Power limit but no voltage control.

the reason AMD AND NVIDIA doesnt give you voltage control, is that it would open a whole world of hurt with them, as users could fry their cards both intentionally and unintentionally and then just claim they never used the OC feature.

the only way you could combat this as a GPU manufacturer would be to have a tiny say 2MB flash memory embedded on the PCB, designed to store a log file on when the OC utility was activated and the settings you have used...

however, that would prolly cause a few legal issues in and of itself.

[ApolloEleven]

the reason AMD AND NVIDIA doesnt give you voltage control, is that it would open a whole world of hurt with them, as users could fry their cards both intentionally and unintentionally and then just claim they never used the OC feature.

the only way you could combat this as a GPU manufacturer would be to have a tiny say 2MB flash memory embedded on the PCB, designed to store a log file on when the OC utility was activated and the settings you have used...

however, that would prolly cause a few legal issues in and of itself

They should have a legal disclaimer that says "...when you enable both Overdrive AND voltage control you will void your warranty" or something like that, I am fine with that. Because at the moment MSI Afterburner or Sapphire TriXX runs absolutely fine with an admin account but the overclock settings never stays intact in a standard user account, when I have friends or family member who I trust, wants to overclock my GPU they have to call me over, get my ass on my computer, run the program, it then asks for admin password, set manual overclock profile again. 

 

When they logout/shutdown the overclock setting is set to default so I have to repeat the same process when they want to overclock my GPU again and sometimes I am not at home.....

 

Which is funny because AMD Overdrive never asks for admin permission even on a Standard User account and the settings I changed in Overdrive are saved in the standard user account and I do not need to touch it again even after shutdown, but with MSI Afterburner and other OC utility I have to always run as admin which prompts "ask admin for permission UAC" on a Standard User account and I have to do this everytime they logout/shutdown. My situation would be completely resolved if they have that voltage control so that I will only use Overdrive instead of MSI Afterburner, this is the only thing I want in life right now

 

People say I should use the program RunAsAdmin, I'll look into it.

[Prysin]

They should have a legal disclaimer that says "...when you enable both Overdrive AND voltage control you will void your warranty" or something like that, I am fine with that. Because at the moment MSI Afterburner or Sapphire TriXX runs absolutely fine with an admin account but the overclock settings never stays intact in a standard user account, when I have friends or family member who I trust, wants to overclock my GPU they have to call me over, get my ass on my computer, run the program, it then asks for admin password, set manual overclock profile again. 

 

When they logout/shutdown the overclock setting is set to default so I have to repeat the same process when they want to overclock my GPU again and sometimes I am not at home.....

 

Which is funny because AMD Overdrive never asks for admin permission even on a Standard User account and the settings I changed in Overdrive are saved in the standard user account and I do not need to touch it again even after shutdown, but with MSI Afterburner and other OC utility I have to always run as admin which prompts "ask admin for permission UAC" on a Standard User account and I have to do this everytime they logout/shutdown. My situation would be completely resolved if they have that voltage control so that I will only use Overdrive instead of MSI Afterburner, this is the only thing I want in life right now

 

People say I should use the program RunAsAdmin, I'll look into it.

AMD already have that in Overdrive.

when you first try to activate it, it prompts you with a disclaimer saying you will void your warranty and AMD takes no responsibility for whatever happens to your PC when you OC.

This has been a thing for at minimum 3,5 years (thats how long ive been using AMD parts and OCd them).

The thing is, ATM, there is no log files or telemetry PROVING you hit yes or no on that button. SO atm, AMD relies on people being dumb enough to admitt having clicked YES.... most doesnt even read the disclaimer and simply ignores what it says and clicks yes....

[Ridska]

This has never happened to me being hyped about a software....

 

This feeling is so new.