Many sites are reporting on the release of AMD's Crimson driver, which replaces Catalyst, features a redesigned interface and gives DirectX 9 applications access to variable framerates:
AMD’s first tease of Crimson was a run-through of the slick new Radeon Settings hub designed to replace Catalyst Control Center. (R.I.P.) At the time, AMD revealed some of the overt new features in Radeon Settings, such as per-game OverDrive overclocking settings and one-click Eyefinity multi-monitor configuration. On Tuesday, AMD’s unwrapping the deeper-level goodies in Radeon Software Crimson—with handy features for new and old graphics cards alike—and pushing the drivers live so you can try them out for yourself.
Crimson officially supports Windows 7—10. Linux users can expect a new, partially-open-source driver (AMDGPU) sometime in the future, but only for the latest, shiniest of graphics cards. The current driver's performance has been improved somewhat.
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Today a number of AMD GPUs entered end of life, including the * series (8400 and below), 7 series (7600 and below) and all of the 6000 and 5000 series.
As a last gift to these card owners AMD has also released a beta of the new Crimson software that supports these cards and of course the previous release will continue to work for these cards now that they have been moved to legacy status.
We covered Radeon Software Crimson just a short while ago.
Following the recent reorganization of AMD's (Advanced Micro Devices) GPU assets under the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), AMD is talking about its 2016 GPU plans.
2016 Radeon GPUs will support DisplayPort 1.3 & HDMI 2.0a. DisplayPort 1.3 will allow for 5K and even 8K resolution over a single cable, as well as 4K at the higher refresh rates (75+ Hz) needed for AMD's FreeSync Low Framerate Compensation to work. FreeSync will also work over HDMI (which is cheaper and more commonly used than DisplayPort):
Implemented over a customized version of HDMI 1.4a and utilizing a prototype Realtek timing controller, AMD was able to demonstrate variable refresh rate technology running over HDMI. At the time of the presentation AMD was very clear that the purpose of the presentation was to shop around the concept and to influence the various members of the HDMI consortium, but they were also clear that bringing variable refresh rate tech to HDMI was something the company wanted to bring to retail sooner than later. Sooner, as it turns out, was the operative word there. As part of their presentation last week, RTG has announced that FreeSync over HDMI will be heading to retail, and that it will be doing so very soon: Q1'16. This is just a year after the first DisplayPort adaptive sync monitors hit retail, which for a display technology is a rather speedy turnaround from proof of concept to retail product.
The first FreeSync-capable laptop, the Lenovo Y700, was announced by the RTG, however it only supports a small range from 40 Hz to 60 Hz.
[More after the break.]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday November 26 2015, @04:31AM
It seems like this post and mine on the end of the AMD VLIW cards support would have worked well as one article, this has links to the new Crimson and mine has the link to the Crimson beta which is the last driver that will be made for all the older VLIW AMD CPUs and APUs.
I'm currently using both drivers, the new Crimson on my R9 280 and the Crimson Beta on my E350...conclusion? Its a pretty damned big improvement, especially in video as the new video tab gives you pretty fine grain control of post processing as well as several presets that work REALLY well, and with both it seems hardware acceleration has improved. Its most noticeable on the E350 of course as its a netbook chip but running CPUMeter I can say both have had their CPU usage when playing video drop,from 15%-25% to 8%-14% on the E350 and from 7%-9% on the FX8320E to so low I honestly cannot separate video playing from minor background tasks. All in all it seems to be a pretty solid driver but as always I would recommend using the AMD Clean Uninstall Utility after removing the old drivers, just to make sure there isn't any remnants of the old driver left when you install Crimson.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday November 26 2015, @05:09AM
Heh, and here I was becoming complacent and comfortable with the Community opensource drivers for AMD cards in Linux, content to live comfortably to the rear of the bleeding edge in graphic cards. I haven't worried about card compatibility problems for the last several linux releases. It must be time to buy a new machine and rejoin the battle of bitching and gnashing of teeth.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday November 26 2015, @04:51AM
Pay your tribute to your undead master, AMD! The Land of Redmond, where the shadows lie, will not let you get away with decent, free, unencumbered software to run your hardware by the likes of elves, or hobbits, or neckbeards. We are doomed, Micro$oft because it is what it is, and the rest of us, because we let it be what it is. Time to chose. If a company makes a driver for Windows 10, they do no service to their customers, but instead enslave them to telemetry. Am I not right, this time, Hairyfeet?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday November 26 2015, @07:32PM
DaFuq are you babbling about? You DO know AMD has opened all their docs, just as the Linux community asked, yes? And that they actually PAY for extra devs to work at both Coreboot and the Opensource AMD GPU drivers so that they will be able to get drivers for their new releases quicker, right?
As far as Windows 10 goes? As soon as I get a chance (just found out I'm getting a palette and a half of desktops dropped off in the next few weeks so I should have plenty for experiments) I'm gonna run a traffic analysis of a Windows 10 desktop after running those "kill WinSpy" programs and if it works? I'll be recommending Windows 10 to my customers, as its speed and performance is impressive, if it fails? Well unlike Linux one can stay with the previous version for a solid decade without having to worry about no longer getting security updates and Windows 7 (supported until 2020) and Windows 8.1 (supported until 2023) are both really solid OSes and has both driver and software support that I'm sorry to inform you but Linux just doesn't come anywhere close to. As we have seen with the recent SteamOS benches even when Linux supports the hardware? Your performance suffers compared to Windows. I wish it wasn't so, having a free OS with the same level of performance and support would save me a pretty penny at the shop but Linux is simply not in the same league as Windows and OSX when it comes to ease of use, support, and range of software and hardware you can choose from. Linux is great for a server or embedded OS, for desktops? Yeah not so much.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday November 26 2015, @05:27AM
so it's easier to reverse engineer. ;)