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AMD's new Radeon Crimson software crushes Catalyst, boosts performance

AMD has launched a complete overhaul of its driver stack today, with new performance boosting features, per-game overclocking, shader cache support, better FreeSync implementations, and improved Linux performance.
By Joel Hruska
RadeonCrimson

When it comes to control panels and user interfaces, both AMD and Nvidia have taken an incremental approach to adding features or changing the basic UI. Today, Team Red is shaking that trend up, with a brand-new driver stack that offers an entirely different UI -- and a host of other improvements as well. It's a huge jump forward on multiple fronts for AMD and an encouraging sign to see the company taking multiple aspects of support more seriously. The images below can be clicked for enlarged versions.

Evolution of CatalystEvolution of Catalyst

Here's the evolution of AMD's UI from 2002 to the present day. The original Catalyst Control Center debuted in 2002 and the major themes were established by 2006. The 2015 UI is a clear evolution of the 2006 design rather than a wholesale revamp. Today's Radeon Crimson Software Edition (Crimson for short) breaks with this trend in favor of a Metro-like interface -- but we actually mean that in a good way.

CatalystCurrent

Here's an example of the old layout, which required some scaling or resizing to make elements fit, as compared to the new global profile page:

GlobalOverview

I'm not normally someone who likes change, but I like the new design. Click on each option, and you're presented with drop-down dialog boxes to change settings. The UI is designed for widescreen 16:9 monitors, which offer more horizontal space but less vertical. The color scheme is opposite from AMD's traditional, but it works for me (personal opinions may vary, of course).

Side-By-Side Much like Windows 10 itself, elements of the "traditional" Catalyst UI are still buried in the system. AMD hasn't clarified when it'll be excising these, but hopefully the company will transition entirely over to one standard at some point in 2016.

The Improvements

The new UI is interesting, but it's scarcely the only goodie packed into this software. AMD claims to have fixed a number of bugs, as shown below:

Bugfixes

Other significant features include much faster start-up times (verified -- Radeon Crimson is lighting-fast to open compared to the older Catalyst Control Center), a new clean uninstall utility that should obviate the need for products like DisplayDriverUninstaller when swapping video cards, a new LiquidVR driver, FreeSync support in DirectX 9, a new low frame rate compensation method, frame pacing support for multi-GPU configurations in DirectX 9, and a new shader cache to improve game performance and load times, up to 20% improved performance in certain title (Fable Legends is called out here), and substantially better power consumption when watching video.

That's quite a bit, so let's unpack some of it. The improvements to FreeSync are a major issue, since they're intended to address one of the areas where AMD was perceived as lagging Nvidia. Last year, PC Perspective ran a story on the difference between G-Sync and FreeSync, as shown below:

gsync2Image by

Originally, G-Sync ran at much lower frame rates than FreeSync by artificially doubling up frames to keep the effective refresh rate higher. Our own testing on mobile hardware showed that there was an effective limit to this capability (skipping became visible around the 25 FPS mark, even with doubled frames), but it allowed G-Sync to work at much lower frame rate targets. FreeSync, in contrast, switched off at or below 40 FPS.

FreeSync's new behavior at lower frame ratesFreeSync's new behavior at lower frame rates Now, AMD has made a number of software changes that should improve FreeSync perfomance in scenarios where the frame rate drops below the refresh rate. This should close the gap with Nvidia's G-Sync, though we'll need to test to find out if the difference has been eliminated.

Shader caches, improved performance

Early last year, Nvidia began offering a shader cache driver setting as a means of boosting game performance and reducing lag spikes. Shaders are programs that run within a video game and compiling them for execution is part of what a GPU is typically doing during a game's initial load cycle. One reason why subsequent game loads or repeatedly entering and exiting the same area is faster than it was the first time is because the requisite shaders are still saved in memory.

ShaderCache

Having a local shader cache on a drive can smooth out performance dips when the GPU realizes it needs certain data. Without a shader cache, those shaders must be compiled on the fly. With one, they can be read from the drive again. This isn't a setting that the user should need to tweak, and it ought to use a relatively small amount of space. `

AMD is pitching this as a feature that can help improve its overall frame consistency, and since that's one area where it has lagged Nvidia, it's a welcome sight. With frame pacing coming to DX9 as well as FreeSync improvements, AMD should move closer to parity with Team Green on the driver front.

The new Radeon Software suite is also expected to deliver straight-up performance improvements in a number of titles.

Optimizations

Fable Legends, Ashes of the Singularity, Black Ops, Rainbow Six Siege, and Battlefront all see gains of between 5% - 15%. Some of these are simply timely, but AMD and Nvidia have been trading shots in DirectX 12 with increased frequency since that API debuted, and 4K resolutions are where AMD's Fury and Fury X cards shine most compared to the competition. Anything that helps the company's top-end compete more effectively against Nvidia is going to be well-received.

Linux

Linux is also getting its own performance improvements, with gains of 12% - 55% in select titles. AMD has taken heat recently for poor performance in that OS compared with other graphics cards, and it looks like Team Red has made a serious effort to improve its game, particularly in Source-based titles. We know Valve is pushing for game developers to take Linux more seriously, particularly where the next-gen Vulkan API is concerned.

Finally, AMD is implementing Frame Rate Target Control as a major driver feature. This appears analogous to at least part of what Nvidia does with its Battery Boost technology -- by limiting the game's frame rate, you can reduce power consumption and heat while playing. Nvidia also claims to perform some other optimizations, probably related to frequency and voltage optimization, so we can't claim that the two implementations are identical, but pulling down your frame rate to reduce heat and power consumption is a well-established tactic.

PowerSaving AMD is demoing this capability on a Fury X, which likely produces the largest gains, but its a technique that's most useful in mobile systems. If you're gaming in a chassis or system that simply can't handle the heat output of the video card at full blast, we'd typically recommend you upgrade cooling rather than limiting performance. Similarly, the best way to reduce your system's power consumption over time is to sleep/hibernate it. A computer at idle draws between 50 - 150W depending on the age of your components and what you leave running in the background. It doesn't take much time in sleep mode to offset the higher power consumption of gaming a few hours a day.

A complex, multi-faceted leap forward

For years, users have complained -- with some justification -- that AMD's drivers just weren't as good as Nvidia's. Multi-GPU support took longer to appear. Profile settings weren't available on a per-game basis. Microstutter and frame pacing in Crossfire setups just wasn't quite as polished.

AMD has been slowly ramping up its software game for the last few years. No, it's not perfect -- license agreements and GameWorks support still means there are aspects of titles that AMD can't optimize, and some low-level hardware differences between GeForce and Radeon cards has given Nvidia an edge in DX11 multi-GPU comparisons. With the new Radeon Crimson software, AMD is signaling that it wants to categorically address these issues, and it's taken a very solid shot at doing so.

It's a positive step for the company to take and a critical time to take it. With Zen delayed until very late 2016 or early 2017, AMD's success in 2016 is going to be riding on Radeon. The company's upcoming 14/16nm hardware should show marked improvements over the old 28nm equipment we've seen to date, but great hardware performance is just the first step to a superior GPU solution. AMD's corporate HQ finally seems to understand that -- hopefully we'll see this trend continue.

One final note: Today marks the official end of driver support for the HD 5000 & 6000 family of cards, as well as those HD 7000 and 8000 cards that were based on pre-GCN hardware. Anything in the Radeon HD 7700 family or above is safe, but if you're still rocking an HD 5000 era GPU, there won't be any future driver updates after Radeon Crimson. To be clear: GPUs from the 40nm period are eligible for today's Radeon Crimson release, but they won't receive future updates.

AMD's decision to move pre-GCN hardware out to pasture makes sense given the rise of DX12 and the fact that pre-GCN GPUs aren't compatible with that API. Nvidia continues to support its Fermi and Kepler cards with updated drivers, though some readers have complained that the launch of Maxwell took focus off Kepler and resulted in less-than-great performance scaling for older cards. If you're still rocking an older GPU, hopefully you'll be upgrading in the next 6-12 months as next-gen 14/16nm cards finally roll out.

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Catalyst Control Center Catalyst AMD Crimson Nvidia

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