[eteknix] GoodBye Catalyst Control Center – Hello Radeon Software Crimson Edition!

[Despoiler]

Installed this morning. Didn't get a lot of time to test. Love the new Radeon software. It's a bit odd that additional settings dumps back to CCC. I'm guessing that will be completely integrated in a new release.

Only tested Star Wars Battlefield. It was always fast. It seems even faster and smoother than 15.11.1 beta. Unfortunately, I'm getting some corruption on the Walker Assault desert map. The rocks that are laying on the ground look like they have very overzealous motion blur. The rest of the textures are fine. I disabled motion blur and it's not quite as pronounced, but still there. This wasn't happening in 15.11.1 beta. Note this is with an Gigabyte r9 290 Windforce. The Fury card in my sig is getting delivered today.

 

[Azix]

seems to give a little more stable OC. though now I get driver crashes when pushed too hard instead of artifacts.

couldn't do 3Mark without artifacts in firestrike at 1080Mhz on my vapor X with no voltage. Now it completely regular firestrike with no artifacts at that overclock with 0 voltage. But crashes eventually in extreme firestrike. Still an improvement.

 

[ZGR]

I like it. It looks modern and the UI is intuitive and easy to use. Really wish Overdrive had a way to unlock voltage control for the GPU, but that isn't terribly important.
The old CCC is still alive with Desktop presets, monitor calibration and audio settings. I bet those settings will be integrated into the new UI eventually.

The only bug I notice is when I click the AMD logo at the top left. It should open a link to AMD.com right? Nothing happens for me with Firefox. How will I ever find a way to get to AMD.com??

edit: Link is now working. Idk why it wasn't opening.

 

[Tohtori]

Aaargh! Radeon settings seems such a nice piece of software but but damn... There is a REASON why I have english version of windows even though I am not a native speaker, I have never used computer software with my native language and this damn piece of software decided on its own to install a translated version for me :thumbsdown: and for the love of all that is holy I cannot find a way to change it.

 

[.vodka]

The installer has finally been streamlined. I was done by three clicks, quite the improvement over the classic CCC installer (and it also finished quicker). The radeon settings app loads insanely fast, 1-2s. Damn. It's easy to use, intuitive. Games seem to load faster.

A few more releases when everything that's still on CCC gets moved to the new radeon settings app, it'll be perfect. Quite the change! I like it.

 

[laamanaator]

Aaargh! Radeon settings seems such a nice piece of software but but damn... There is a REASON why I have english version of windows even though I am not a native speaker, I have never used computer software with my native language and this damn piece of software decided on its own to install a translated version for me :thumbsdown: and for the love of all that is holy I cannot find a way to change it.

Based on your forum name you are a fellow finn? Just kill Radeon settings : Host process, Then find your crimson install folder(mine is C: \Program Files\AMD\CNext\CNext) then find localisation folder and from there, delete fi_FI folder. Now launch radeon settings, and it should be english and not some crappy translation. This works for other languages too, but you must delete the correct folder for your language.

E: You're welcome, Tohtori, glad i could help. Couldn't answer your PM, because i don't have enough posts to do that(you got to have 25 post to have full acces to all forum features. )

 

[Final8ty]

I like it. It looks modern and the UI is intuitive and easy to use. Really wish Overdrive had a way to unlock voltage control for the GPU, but that isn't terribly important.
The old CCC is still alive with Desktop presets, monitor calibration and audio settings. I bet those settings will be integrated into the new UI eventually.

The only bug I notice is when I click the AMD logo at the top left. It should open a link to AMD.com right? Nothing happens for me with Firefox. How will I ever find a way to get to AMD.com??

Works fine for me with FF.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

A huge oversight is there is no way to switch between resolutions and refresh rates in either the new application nor the old slimmed down application.

I have to use the Windows control panel, which is more cumbersome.

What a pain in the butt for 144 hz users.

 

[crisium]

What the hell? I can't install it. Every time it stops responding during install.

Edit: just had to wait for it to unfreeze. Took a looong time.

 

[Ackmed]

What the hell? I can't install it. Every time it stops responding during install.

Mine did this with the last set of drivers. But my 6850 just got moved to "legacy" :/ Could be an issue.

 

[n0x1ous]

does the clean install option allow for uninstalling Catalyst right from this driver install or does that need to be done first?

 

[Azix]

DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 support:
Provides full support for DisplayPort to HDMI® 2.0 connections via certified dongles.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows 10 - 64

Cool. Sounds like incoming dongles.

 

[tential]

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows 10 - 64

Cool. Sounds like incoming dongles.

So no review... dude AMD needs to have gotten this driver to reviewers Monday so we could have a review of this.

Edit: Booo looks like I didn't read the thread correctly!

 

[SPBHM]

today they also moved all the DX11 non GCN Radeons to "Legacy" status support, and released a Beta version of Crimson software for them, so it's kind of goodbye also for the 2009-2011 Radeons (or up to 2013/2014 if you consider Richland and some OEM Rebrands) support,

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-Beta.aspx

the legacy cards Crimson didn't seem to add new features on a first look compared to the last Catalyst, apart from being faster to load and perhaps the overdrive profile

 

[Spjut]

today they also moved all the DX11 non GCN Radeons to "Legacy" status support, and released a Beta version of Crimson software for them, so it's kind of goodbye also for the 2009-2011 Radeons (or up to 2013/2014 if you consider Richland and some OEM Rebrands) support,

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-Beta.aspx

the legacy cards Crimson didn't seem to add new features on a first look compared to the last Catalyst, apart from being faster to load and perhaps the overdrive profile

This is in line with AMD's previous timeframes for mainline support

IMO, the Legacy status for HD 5000 and 6000 is more "fair" than it was for AMD's DX9 and DX10 products.
Right now, these cards are indeed below the official minimum requirements for many newer games, and they have proper support for the latest Windows. Neither were true for the older Legacy moves.

 

[SPBHM]

This is in line with AMD's previous timeframes for mainline support

IMO, the Legacy status for HD 5000 and 6000 is more "fair" than it was for AMD's DX9 and DX10 products.
Right now, these cards are indeed below the official minimum requirements for many newer games, and they have proper support for the latest Windows.

this it OT but
a lot of GCN cards are bellow minimum requirements
most games have requirements bellow some of the DX11 Radeons.

the best I can do is to compare with Nvidia, and the difference seems obvious, but OK (Fermi from 2010 is getting WDDM 2.0 DX12 drivers this year as far as I know, unless Nvidia was lying/changed their mind)

Richland is a 2013 product on legacy support that you can buy new everywhere.

they have a working (WDDM 1.3) driver for windows 10 for the DX11 Radeons, but so does the 8800GTX (while the HD 4890 doesn't, it lacks any sort of control panel and runs drivers from 2012), but I think the "legacy support" started a while back, I've been seeing some bugs that I shouldn't and as far as I know were not being fixed anyway.

back more on topic, at least they released this Crimson beta for legacy cards, it could be worse, but, as I said most of the features are not included anyway, still it loads faster!

 

[Spjut]

I won't argue about Nvidia's better long-term support, that's awesome.
I still think users of the HD 5000/6000 series aren't getting the same painful blow that the DX9 and DX10 series did though.

 

[SPBHM]

I won't argue about Nvidia's better long-term support, that's awesome.
I still think users of the HD 5000/6000 series aren't getting the same painful blow that the DX9 and DX10 series did though.

for 5 years+ old cards it's probably to be expected (unless they are from Nvidia?), but the implications for Richland (check newegg and amazon these are still being sold new everywhere) and maybe the rebranded non GCN HD7000/8000s and even the some low end "R" series stuff (OEM only I guess?) it seems worse, but as you said, it kind of happened before.

 

[Silverforce11]

I had a laptop with a HD 5770 VLIW in it, the drivers are ancient but it ran all the modern titles I threw at it well (lowering details), so while its moved to legacy status, it does not mean it doesn't work.

It just wont receive optimizations with new driver updates. You can see it as either VLIW is optimized already or AMD is neglecting their older uarch.

 

[SPBHM]

I had a laptop with a HD 5770 VLIW in it, the drivers are ancient but it ran all the modern titles I threw at it well (lowering details), so while its moved to legacy status, it does not mean it doesn't work.

It just wont receive optimizations with new driver updates. You can see it as either VLIW is optimized already or AMD is neglecting their older uarch.

it's not just about performance, they simply don't fix serious bugs preventing games from running properly, Battlefront was pretty bad on DX11 Radeons when I tested it (framerate was ok. it's not about GPU power), fallout 4 also have some obvious bugs specific to the DX11 Radeons (that were not fixed by the fallout optimized catalyst which included them as supported), I guess Bethesda listed as minimum a Fermi card (550 TI) from the Nvidia side and from the AMD side a GCN card for a reason, and it was not GPU performance... a 6970 destroys a 550 ti, but have some bugs that AMD is not going to be working on.

 

[guskline]

so far so good

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Anyone know where the shader cache files are stored? I'd like to move them off my ssd.

 

[Silverforce11]

fallout 4 also have some obvious bugs specific to the DX11 Radeons (that were not fixed by the fallout optimized catalyst which included them as supported), I guess Bethesda listed as minimum a Fermi card (550 TI) from the Nvidia side and from the AMD side a GCN card for a reason, and it was not GPU performance... a 6970 destroys a 550 ti, but have some bugs that AMD is not going to be working on.

The Fallout 4 issues aren't related to VLWI being legacy...

It's GameWorks.

At this point we don't know whether Bethesda even tried to support older GPUs, they obviously didn't bother optimizing for GCN at all so expecting them to optimize for VLIW is a bit of a stretch.

My old laptop with 5770 has played every game I threw at it for the past 2 years. I haven't bought Fallout 4 yet though.

 

[Silverforce11]

Anyone know where the shader cache files are stored? I'd like to move them off my ssd.

AppsData/Local/AMD

The cache themselves are really tiny. It's the on the fly shader compiling that hogs CPU/GPU delaying level loading etc.

This was a really good move on AMD, a novel feature that gives everyone a free performance upgrade.

 

[Elixer]

today they also moved all the DX11 non GCN Radeons to "Legacy" status support, and released a Beta version of Crimson software for them, so it's kind of goodbye also for the 2009-2011 Radeons (or up to 2013/2014 if you consider Richland and some OEM Rebrands) support,

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-Beta.aspx

the legacy cards Crimson didn't seem to add new features on a first look compared to the last Catalyst, apart from being faster to load and perhaps the overdrive profile

I am not going to argue (much) about moving non GCN to legacy, however,
AMD really should have released a final WHQL certified driver for these cards.
WHQL has the encryption keys & DRM turned on for those that need this, and it is a shame that to get programs that require DRM working, your only choice is to use that last WHQL release from July.