AMD Radeon Crimson Driver

[Silent_Buddha]

Can't speak from personal experience, but a friend of mine with a 290 only had one significant problem with the Crimson drivers so far.

During Installation it appears to hang at 2% and then around 20%. We retried installing it multiple times before going to the internet for help. Apparently this is happening with a lot of people, and the solution is just to walk away from the computer and come back in about 20 or minutes. That's an awful long time for the driver to take to install. But at least we finally got it installed on his system.

Other than that he likes it. And whether it's a placebo effect or not, his games seem to load slightly faster and run slightly smoother.

The FRTC also seems to be quite nice. It was very noticeable in StarCraft 2 which for some reason, even with Vsync enabled, would have the GPU cranked up and the fan going full bore at the menu screen. With FRTC set to 60, it was nice and quiet with the GPU not getting stressed. I'm guessing there must be a bug where the SC2 menu is still sometimes ignoring the Vsync setting.

What of the promised performance increases? Any benches yet to demonstrate?

I built my brother a new cost-optimized gaming rig a few months ago, along with a few purchased parts I also gave him some of my gaming rig parts that were getting upgraded. One such example was the Sapphire 7970 OC card that he now has, which is perfect for the Dell U2007 1680x1050 monitor that I gave him I'm wondering if this driver helps him out at all...

I linked to one that showed some decent gains a page back. The tested on a variety of cards with

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/amd-radeon-crimson-driver.57370/page-2#post-1883229

Anandtech didn't have nearly as good of results. But tested a different selection of games. With an unknown system and settings. Differences in the system and settings chosen could explain the discrepancy in the games that are in both. In BF4 and GTAV, Anandtech had worse performance to WCCFTech. While in Crysis 3, performance was relatively similar on the Radeon Fury (the only card Anandtech tested on).

My friend that I spoke about above seems to like it.

Regards,
SB

 

[thatdude90210]

What happened to my keyboard shortcuts. I used to be able to just set some keys like "alt-ctrl-whatever" and switch to dual monitor from a single monitor, and a different set of keys to go back to single monitor. This no longer works and can't even try to set them anymore.

And Radeon settings & another panel for additional Radeon setting, what the hell?

 

[Grall]

With FRTC set to 60, it was nice and quiet with the GPU not getting stressed.

I'm testing to turn FRTC on now; haven't bothered with it before, but it might be as you say that in some cases it could be useful even if vsynch is supposed to be on. Good tip, thanks!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm testing to turn FRTC on now; haven't bothered with it before, but it might be as you say that in some cases it could be useful even if vsynch is supposed to be on. Good tip, thanks!

I imagine where FRTC really shines is if you have an adaptive-sync monitor. At that point you don't need to double or triple buffer anything, in theory, since you wouldn't need to use v-sync as the only purpose in that case would be to prevent your frame rate from going above X number. That will in turn decrease input lag.

Regards,
SB

 

[Ryan Smith]

Anandtech didn't have nearly as good of results. But tested a different selection of games. With an unknown system and settings.

FWIW, it was our standard GPU testbed (e.g. 4960X) running our 2560x1440p high settings.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

FWIW, it was our standard GPU testbed (e.g. 4960X) running our 2560x1440p high settings.

Thanks. I was surprised not to see that information in the article. So high compared to ultra settings. That may explain some of the difference.

Regards,
SB

 

[Ryan Smith]

Thanks. I was surprised not to see that information in the article. So high compared to ultra settings. That may explain some of the difference.

Regards,
SB

Well high as in high, medium, and low. Generally speaking it's the highest settings available in most of these games, other than the fact that we don't use 8x MSAA.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well high as in high, medium, and low. Generally speaking it's the highest settings available in most of these games, other than the fact that we don't use 8x MSAA.

Ah, gotcha. I was just going by the fact that many games nowadays have a High and an Ultra graphics preset.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

At that point you don't need to double or triple buffer anything, in theory

Yes, theoretically... In real life, keeping the front buffer around would always be advisable I think in case you hit a frame rate snag and the FPS drops under the minimum level supported by the monitor; otherwise you'd either experience strobing, or that the monitor displays a partially complete new frame... Not sure which would be worse, heh!

Double buffer without vsynch shouldn't introduce any extra lag. Triple buffer shouldn't either, as long as the game/driver doesn't run all three buffers in strict rotation all the time, but instead only uses the third on an as-needed basis. Unfortunately this does not seem the case, particularly with Valve's Source engine games...

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Radeon Software Crimson Driver (15.11) WHQL Driver Performance Analysis
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-page...-11-beta-7-driver-performance-analysis,1.html

 

[jakobx]

I really dont like the fact that it automatically detects games. I have tons of them and even though the detection algorithm is very bad it seems a lot of games really slows down the GUI. It would be great if we had different views available. I would prefer one game per line.

Ive only played with FRTC and it seems a bit buggy. Ive set it to 75hz (my monitors max) and tried it in counterstrike GO. It kinda works but i see a horizontal line. Kinda like vsync off but much thicker. If i set the limit higher (100fps for example) this problem seems to mostly disappear. Ive tried only setting a higher limit for counterstrike but its using the global setting no matter what. Are individual settings even working?

VSR is also still not working on 21:9 monitors.

 

[Dave Baumann]

... Does it really take 10 programmers to display sharp text?

I'm not aware of this being a generic issue, and my home install seems to be fine to me - granted I'm running 4K so I'm not necessarily representative of the masses. Isn't this more likely to be QA rather than "developer" - i.e. some combination of display resolution/DPI/clear type settings?

 

[swaaye]

I installed it on my 6970 and noticed that Overdrive doesn't remember settings after reboot. But I can use MSI Afterburner instead.

 

[egoless]

During Installation it appears to hang at 2% and then around 20%. We retried installing it multiple times before going to the internet for help. Apparently this is happening with a lot of people, and the solution is just to walk away from the computer and come back in about 20 or minutes.

For me the solution was to select custom installation and uncheck hdmi audio (and the amd evolved app). The drivers then installed quickly. Then after a reboot, run custom install again and put the checkbox back on hdmi audio.

Edit: If you're still having problems, like I did on another machine, here's the nuclear option. Uninstall your AV software (in this case it was Bitdefender Internet Security 2016). No amount of turning off modules would allow the driver install to proceed normally so I uninstalled it. Use the AMD uninstall utility without rebooting. Go into msconfig and set boot to safe boot. After safe booting use the DDU utility to truly clean uninstall. Now restart so that windows starts normally. Now you should be able to install the drivers quickly. After a reboot re-install your AV software.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

AMD Crimson Software Might Cause locked fan RPM at 20% (overheats cards)

Yesterday the news broke that some users have reported that their AMD Radeon graphics cards have died, likely due to the new Crimson Driver software. AMD now acknowledges a software issue and is preparing a hotfix for a potentially serious fan-bug.

A small group of users have been claiming that the new driver locked their fans at low speeds (~20%) in certain conditions (overclocking), and as such during a hefty gaming session if the GPU isn't cooled enough, that can cause significant issues. AMD’s sub-reddit is full of posts from users claiming and reporting this.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-crimson-software-might-cause-locked-fan-rpm-at-20.html

Moderators: Shouldn't this thread be in the Software forum?

 

[3dilettante]

If the reports of actual physical damage are substantiated, that could be worrisome.
The GPU silicon should be advanced enough to handle a slow fan, at least in theory. CPUs have been able to handle having the cooler physically ripped of while under load for years, and AMD's implementation is way beyond a mere thermal trip.
Could something else be escaping the fail-safe measures, even with a significantly more forgiving 20% fan setting versus 0 RPM?

 

[Albuquerque]

@3dilettante I was thinking the same thing; my understanding is that AMD's power regulation is probably the most advanced system available in discrete graphics today, mostly because they've been doing it for so long. It seems unlikely (albeit, not impossible) to damage one of their GPU's simply because of runaway thermal load while still placed under any sort of heat sink. There's always some thermal reserve capacity in a heat sink; I can't imagine a temperature swing could happen fast enough for PowerTune to miss it.

I was thinking about maybe the VRM's being the weak link, maybe in cases where the card manufacturer didn't do the proper job of thermally monitoring them?

 

[3dilettante]

I suppose it could be somewhere in the power delivery portion. The VRMs do get hot, and that has been noted before.
I thought it was the case that there was a similar emergency shutdown tied to VRM temps, at least personally I was pretty sure I have a card that shut down due to that.

VRMs do tolerate high temperatures, given their function, so it would be unfortunate that a tolerant device could still hit a failure point when there is still airflow. I do see mentions of overclocking possibly figuring into some of the reports, but I would hope that AMD or one of the board partners are looking to tear apart some of the RMA'ed boards in order to design in countermeasures in future products. I really don't like it when survivability becomes something up for grabs due to a driver update.

 

[Kaotik]

The "hotfix" drivers are out, and are in fact quite a bit more than just an hotfix, they also fix bunch of game bugs etc
https://community.amd.com/community...s?hootPostID=72bd6db61138565786c1ede4e066996a

Resolved Issues with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.1 Update:

• [82050] Star Wars™: Battlefront - Snow flickers in a few locations in the game
• [82240] Star Wars™: Battlefront - Sky rendering may be broken in some game locations
• [82645] Fallout 4 - The compass may flicker during gameplay on AMD Radeon R9 390 Series products. We continue to investigate the issue with AMD Radeon R9 290 and AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Series products
• [82667] Star Wars™: Battlefront - Shadowy textures are visible around hills/structures/caves
• [81890] Just Cause 3 - Texture corruption may be experienced during gameplay
• [54874] Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Poor AMD Crossfire™ technology performance may be experienced
• [82338] The driver installation may fail while installing the ACP component
• [82426] The font size in Chinese language installations may be too small
• [82438] The label range values in some AMD Freesync™ technology installations may be incorrect
• [82536] The Radeon Settings dropbox does not close when it is clicked on a second time
• [82603] The AMD OverDrive™ fan settings is always set to ON after first edit on reboot
• [82586] Language shows up as Chinese Simplified when Chinese Traditional is selected in Windows® 7
• [82656] Radeon Settings crashes on the Display tab when cloning a display via HDMI on some notebooks
• [82671] AMD OverDrive fan speed is reset to Manual on exiting from a 3D game or application. Users will have to reset their AMD OverDrive pages to ensure issue is fixed
• [82766] Radeon Settings does not get upgraded in some install scenarios
• [82691] AMD Overdrive™ cannot revert to default settings in some situations

32-bit:
https://community.amd.com/external-link.jspa?url=https://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-15.11.1-Beta-32Bit-Win10-Win8.1-Win7-Nov30.exe

The 64-bit link is dead, here's fixed one:
https://community.amd.com/external-link.jspa?url=https://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-15.11.1-Beta-64Bit-Win10-Win8.1-Win7-Nov30.exe

 

[Grall]

I thought it was the case that there was a similar emergency shutdown tied to VRM temps, at least personally I was pretty sure I have a card that shut down due to that.

At least on my ASUS boards, I can read a set of general VRM temps in GPUz - one for GPU power, one for GDDR power I assume. There's no individual VRM temp readout like there was for the now ancient 4890 series cards for example. I have no idea if the card's thermal regulation even looks at these values though - however I sincerely hope it does!

Not experienced any fan shenanigans myself I must say, running crimson on a whopping two boxes...