AMD today launched the new AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition. AMD Radeon Software (Crimson Edition) will replace the good old Catalyst software. These new editions (Crimson as in a shade of red) will be renamed from time to time, every time named after a shade of red.
The new driver itself is called "AMD Radeon Software" and has been build from ground up in QT. Crimson replaces the Catalyst Control Center software with a faster, more diverse utility called Radeon Settings.
. It's fast in startup, has had a massive GUI change and introduces some new features including stuff from shader caching to DX9 frame pacing enhancements. AMD is committed to release up-to 6 major WHQL driver released per year with interim Beta and Hotfix releases as well.
AMD - We have been delivering graphics drivers for the past 20+ years, and during this time the graphics driver evolved way beyond the graphics device driver. It’s more than just a driver. It’s a whole range of software, and we know how important the software experience is to gamers, game developers, professionals, and others who use our products every day.
Now we have user interfaces, libraries, tools, applications, packaged as what we call drivers. This great set of software has evolved into a mini graphics Operating System. With the formation of Radeon Technologies Group, we have decided to call this mini graphics Operating System “Radeon Software”.
This means we will be retiring AMD Catalyst. This marks the end of an era, and the beginning of a new age of immersive computing where we will be surrounded by billions of brilliant pixels that enhance our daily lives in ways we have yet to fully comprehend. The new era is dawning as November 24th marks the release of Radeon Software Crimson Edition.
The change is all-encompassing. We’ve re-designed and re-architected what was previously known as AMD Catalyst Control Center (CCC), and named it Radeon/FirePro Settings. With the new design, we focused on experience, form and function. You’ll see how the new Radeon/FirePro Settings has a modern user interface that is simple and clean, is intuitive to use, and has a significantly faster start up than its predecessor. It also has new features:
- Game Manager
- Video Quality presets
- Social Media integration
- Simplified EF setup
- System notifications tab
Todays released AMD Radeon Software Will also add FreeSync support for DirectX 9 titles and a new feature called Low Framerate compensations. E.g. the second your FreeSync monitor falls outside of its maximum or minimum dynamic range, it'll VSYNC the monitor. For DirectX 9 titles there's some more candy as Frame Pacing has been improved here as well.
AMD claims up to six major WHQL Radeon Software releases in 2016, along with additional beta and hot-fix releases. Anyway, have a look at some slides and then download and trout the new software driver yourself I'd say.
