AMD Radeon Software for Radeon Vid Cards

[Pudgie]

There's a new GPU driver software suite coming out soon for AMD Radeon vid cards called "Radeon Software Crimson" which isn't based on the MS .Net Framework 4.52 UI (which Catalyst was........was said to be the culprit why Catalyst Control Center's myriad of issues) but will be using QT.Framework UI (supposed to remedy the issues that CCC had).

Looks like Raja Koduri ain't wasting any time w/ revamping the AMD gaming side of products...........
I REALLY hope he went & paid John Maturi for the license to incorporate his coding for Radeon Pro's driver software suite into Crimson........if that happened then I'm gonna LOVE Crimson when it comes out.................

Here's hoping....................... ..

 

[38ruk]

Have you tried the 15.11 beta's yet?  I did, and it wasnt pretty for AH II, major FPS drop in all situations . I uninstalled them so quick that i didnt think to try the alpha lol.

[Pudgie]

Have you tried the 15.11 beta's yet?  I did, and it wasnt pretty for AH II, major FPS drop in all situations . I uninstalled them so quick that i didnt think to try the alpha lol.

Hi 38ruk,

No I haven't tried any other AMD drivers since 15.7.1 (currently using these) as w/ these drivers my Fury X is performing beautifully in both AHII & the Alpha......

Honestly I was waiting for the next Cat WHQL release but now I'll most likely wait for Crimson before I do...............

 

[38ruk]

The 15.7.1's are great with my 390, honestly I have no reason to change them other than curiosity lol.  Crimson looks interesting ,CCC has run it's course imho.

[1Canukk]

Have you tried the 15.11 beta's yet?  I did, and it wasnt pretty for AH II, major FPS drop in all situations . I uninstalled them so quick that i didnt think to try the alpha lol.

Same for myself it id not like Ah2 and Alpha and and rolled it back , using it with MSI Afterburner . Now I'm using Radeon 7950 3g  boost and using CCC for now getting great rame in both AH2 and Alpha , my problem also I like to tweak to d%^ much and get lot's of OH Oh's this not good . Restore 

[Gman]

WCCF tech has claimed today that the R9/Fury cards have surpassed the 980ti with their testing system/methods with the new AMD drivers.  Competition isn't a bad thing, I hope this trend continues. 

They also have a good article on the new Intel CPU specs leaked for the x99 platform - 10 cores!

http://wccftech.com/amd-r9-fury-x-performance-ahead-nvidia-980-ti-latest-drivers/

Another good article there on AMD aggressively pursuing the enthusiast PC market.  Great to see, they've been beaten by superior nVidia products for too long IMO, this will drive performance upward from both companies.

http://wccftech.com/amd-raja-koduri-promises-brand-gcn-gpus-2016-based-finfet-process-focusing-discrete-gpu-market-share-gains-2016-2017/

[Pudgie]

Thanks, Gman!

Good reads........................ .............

This may sound funny coming from me, but when I upgrade to Win 10 it won't be thru the free upgrade offer & not until SP1 release has fleshed itself out...................

 

[1Cane]

I downloaded crimson 15 .11 and I was unhappy with the results!

My frame rate in game dropped significantly, chat buffer was blurry.

Got to say by frame rate dropped into low teens, not what I would call a good experience

[Pudgie]

D'ld AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11..................

Blew off AMD Catalyst 15.7.1 drivers & the Catalyst Control Center then restarted................

Once all booted back up I then went into Safe Boot Minimal thru msconfig & when in opened DDU & cleaned all traces of AMD stuff then rebooted............

Once back up I then installed the new AMD graphics control software (Radeon Settings & the Radeon Crimson 15.11 drivers only.....unchecked the rest as I don't want or need any of it-no different than what I did w/ the CCC...) then rebooted once this was done. But before I rebooted I did catch the sly little checkbox that would've enabled Radeon Software to auto upload new drivers checked & UNCHECKED that..................sneaky AMD.........

When all was back up I then went into the software & used it & I have to say that Raja & the boys did a very good job of writing this control software......I like all aspects of this interface except 1 small thing...........they're still stuck on NOT providing the user access to ALL of the driver's individual graphics settings that really allow the user to fully customize how the graphics card is used w/ games.

Now this is the ONLY part of the new software that I find annoying.........but they also DID open up 1 graphics setting enhancement that AMD hasn't made available in the past & that is Shader Cache......this setting is a good setting to use w/ AMD vid cards that can take advantage of it (R9 series & Fury series in particular) that can make use of all the backend GPU capability that the R9 & Fury series have to help w/ older games that would technically run better on GPU's that normally have higher ROP's (such as Nvidia) to run better on these AMD cards. I used this exclusively on my Nvidia GTX 670 FTW, Titan & GTX 780Ti & IMHO it does make a noticeable difference in GPU performance............

Now if AMD would just give up on the pride & image thing & just write into this software full access to the individual driver settings as Nvidia has done this would go a LONG way into AMD getting some market share back......... You now have a good software platform w/ this new graphics control software so PLEASE stop sucking your thumb & just do it. Sometimes your COMPETITION does have a better idea & this one can't be patented so you have NO excuse, AMD..................

 

Ok now that I've got that out of the way  , I did go into AHII after I got all my game profiles set up (AHII, Alpha & WB 2015) & flew around to test the Crimson 15.11 drivers & so far the drivers are performing just as good for me as the Cat 15.7.1 drivers were.......the graphics were beautiful, gameplay was smooth & stutter-free holding FPS at 59-60 FPS & I was loving what I was seeing.............

As I always do, when I did shut down the game I open up MSI AB (glad to see that the new Radeon control software doesn't interfere at all w/ this 3rd party software hooking the Crimson drivers) & check my Fury X's vitals to see how all was performing & I saw a VERY pleasant stat line..........GPU clocks were not pegged under this driver as before (GPU clocks were running in the 400 Mhz-600 Mhz range instead of the full 1050 Mhz range)..........this tells me that AMD has done a MUCH better job of tuning the drivers for performance (1 of those driver optimizations that AMD did was concerning Flip Queue Size performance) & PowerTune 2.0 & the results seem to show me this on my Fury X................

Went in the Alpha to check all out & all looks really good but I didn't fly...........that's coming later.

So far I'm very pleased w/ what I've seen so far..........but it seems that AMD is making sure that you can't use anything else (found Radeon Pro won't work w/ Radeon Crimson due to the new drivers using the MS QT Framework (Radeon Pro was written to work w/ MS .Net Framework 4.52 & so I had to delete it) so I reall hope they will provide more driver access in the future.

So far, so good..............

 

 

[Pudgie]

I wasn't having any issues w/ my Fury X getting hot at all (was running @ 34*C while playing AHII on min fan speed of 40% @ 1912 RPM's) but I went & updated to the new beta drivers w/ the hot fix anyway & all went w\o a hitch, went very clean & I must say rather quickly as well & so I'm liking this......................... .

I ran some tests w/ Crimson 15.11.1 drivers & made the following notes........................ .....

The new AMD GPU Frame Pacing incorporated to work w/ Dx9 games & work w/ single as well as Crossfire GPU's actually works really well & where I can really see this working is when the game gets really busy graphically.........this made a very noticeable improvement in the gameplay & I could also see it in the FPS trends that I record in MSI AB. 

The new AMD Shader Cache also does work as intended as I noted that AHII loads up much faster & the game has the same feel now as I could detect when I was running my 780Ti card so bravo for that...............

Now for the Frame Rate Target control..........you need to work on this some more as from my testing using this actually made the game stability slightly worse than not using this.........w/ this enabled it appeared that the control is not tuned well enough to keep up w/ the game changes & tends to oscillate the frame rate of the GPU too much & I can see that in the FPS graphs on MSI AB. I just got done reading a Tom's Hardware article on their testing of this setting in Crimson & came away w/ the same conclusion & the graphs that they showed demonstrated this as well.....so I don't use this setting. May be more useful on monitors that can display faster than 60 Hz................

The "new" AMD Optimized Flip Queue Size is in reality AMD realizing that they were behind the times as even their GPU's & drivers have been good enough for the last 4-5 yrs that this driver setting should have been reduced from the default setting of 3 that Nvidia had gotten off of since Kepler to 1 to reduce input lag (Nvidia defaults to Use Application Settings now in Maximum Pre-rendered Frames as later games now set this but the user can also set this as well thru NVCP). This I can accept for now as when I could access this driver setting thru Radeon Pro I set it to 1 myself (as I also did w/ my 780Ti thru NVCP as AH doesn't have settings to set to control input lag response.........). Please give up AMD & make all these & the rest of your driver settings available to be accessed thru Radeon Settings, please?

 

The new power control algorithms written into Radeon Software (assuming a retune of PowerTune) also show to work really well & my MSI AB graphs show this well.......my Fury X dropped from running full tilt GPU clocks of 1050 Mhz to avg of 500 Mhz-700 Mhz while actually upping the GPU utilization % approx. 10%-15% over the normal line of approx. 35%-45%.............. This went a LONG way into my Fury X GPU operating temps dropping down from an avg of 42*C to 34*C under load (running AHII). This is good stuff here as this will most certainly open up some extra overclocking overhead w\ this Fiji GPU if desired...............

All in all it's about time AMD.........won't hurt you to sometimes mimic the competition, especially where AMD already had the same capabilities to offer..................just let us choose how we want to use them!