Tech Guides

4 things AMD’s new Radeon Software Crimson Edition does better than Catalyst

By Koh Wanzi - 21 Feb 2016

A newer, more stable driver

Placing users front and center

AMD’s new Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers have been available for download since late November. AMD’s decision to ditch its Catalyst drivers and go for a complete rebranding with the new Crimson Edition drivers was motivated primarily by its goal of pushing software as a product in its own right. No longer will software take a backseat to hardware, and AMD wants to create the slickest and most stable software solution possible that will bring out the best in its Graphics Core Next (GCN) graphics cards.

From this point forward, all new major driver versions to come under the Radeon Software label will be branded a shade of red. But Crimson hasn’t been without its hitches. For instance, reports emerged in early December about a bug that caused erratic issues with fan speeds that resulted in users’ GPUs overheating in some cases. AMD has since released a hotfix for the problem, but that might have been enough to lead you to hold off on updating your drivers.

Nevertheless, Crimson is touting enhancements in four key areas – stability, user experienceperformance, and power efficiency. Here’s a broad overview of some of the highlights of AMD’s newest driver package (hopefully, it’ll help you decide if you want to upgrade, if you haven’t already).


A renewed focus on stability

AMD has placed a strong emphasis on stability in its Crimson Edition drivers. It essentially comprises the foundation of the new drivers on which all the other improvements are built.

According to AMD, Radeon Software Crimson Edition has undergone far more rigorous quality and stability testing than any of the previous Catalyst drivers. This is to the tune of twice the number of automated test cases, 25% manual test cases and 15% more test system configurations. AMD has also tested the new drivers with all the latest technology and hardware to minimize hiccups with even the newest systems.

AMD says it is taking a more rigorous approach to stability testing with Crimson.

What this all means is that AMD has covered more scenarios and system configurations in testing than before, which translates into a higher chance of identifying and stamping out more bugs and instabilities.

AMD didn’t do all this work in a bubble though, and it also reached out to the user community to gather feedback on the problems they’d most like to see fixed. The result was a list of the top 10 problems that were plaguing users, which AMD promptly set out to address. In Radeon Software Crimson Edition, the company says it has solved every single issue on the list, which you can see for yourself below:

AMD has made an effort to listen to the community.

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