Skip to main content

AMD’s latest Radeon driver doesn’t support 32-bit version of Windows 8.1

AMD Radeon RX 470
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The latest driver for AMD’s Radeon graphics cards is out and the big news surrounding its release is its lack of support for the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1. This doesn’t appear to be an error on AMD’s part or whoever posted the release notes, as a search for a new 32-bit Windows 8.1 driver only leads to Crimson ReLive Edition 17.1.2 released on February 8 and not the 17.2.1 driver released on Thursday.

Crimson ReLive Edition 17.2.1 is optimized for Sniper Elite 4 and For Honor. According to AMD, the new driver boosts the performance of For Honor by up to four percent on the Radeon RX 480 8GB card compared to the previous 17.1.2 driver. The company also claims up to five percent better performance in Sniper Elite 4 running on the same card. Multi-GPU DirectX 11-based profiles were added for these two games as well.

As for the fixed issues presented with this new driver, Crimson ReLive Edition 17.2.1 addresses five specific game-related problems:

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
For Honor: PCs using multiple AMD graphics cards experienced game crashes when switching to fullscreen or accessing menus during gameplay.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: With Radeon Chill enabled, the game provided incorrect default slider values.
DayZ: When Radeon ReLive Instant Replay/Recording was active, the game would crash. DayZ also caused the feature to work incorrectly.
Grid Autosport: The game would hang when players enabled the advanced lighting graphics option.
Civilization VI: Disabling shadows in the game on Radeon HD 7900 products would corrupt shadows.

As for other fixes, there are three that address DXVA H.264 encoded video corruption (Radeon GCN products), locked memory clocks (Radeon R9 380 Series), and the AMD FreeSync technology mode’s inability to enable itself (all products). Two other fixes attack problems with Radeon ReLive — one that addresses flickering when recording in full screen with Windows Media Player or Power DVD and one that returns GPU information back to captured videos.

On the known issues front, there are seven outstanding general and game-specific problems and seven issues stemming from Radeon ReLive. Here are the game-related issues AMD still needs to fix:

For Honor: In systems with four Radeon cards installed, the game’s menu may experience flickering or will fail to render after performing a task switch.
Sniper Elite 4: AMD FreeSync technology mode may not work with this game.
Sniper Elite 4: Image cropping may occur when supersampling is enabled.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and
World of Warcraft:
These games may experience flickering or performance issues the first time they are launched with AMD FreeSync enabled.

For customers using Radeon ReLive, the issues they may encounter could include conflicts with the Xbox DVR application, a failure to install on systems using an auxiliary power unit, and game freezes if recording with Radeon ReLive while the Vulkan API is in use. The Hyper-V feature in Windows may need to be disabled too.

Here are the links to the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.2.1 driver downloads:

Windows 10: 64-bit 32-bit
Windows 8.1: 64-bit Not available
Windows 7: 64-bit 32-bit

Editors' Recommendations

Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
4 CPUs you should buy instead of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D sitting on a motherboard.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is one of the best gaming processors you can buy, and it's easy to see why. It's easily the fastest gaming CPU on the market, it's reasonably priced, and it's available on a platform that AMD says it will support for several years. But it's not the right chip for everyone.

Although the Ryzen 7 7800X3D ticks all the right boxes, there are several alternatives available. Some are cheaper while still offering great performance, while others are more powerful in applications outside of gaming. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a great CPU, but if you want to do a little more shopping, these are the other processors you should consider.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D

Read more
Even the new mid-tier Snapdragon X Plus beats Apple’s M3
A photo of the Snapdragon X Plus CPU in the die

You might have already heard of the Snapdragon X Elite, the upcoming chips from Qualcomm that everyone's excited about. They're not out yet, but Qualcomm is already announcing another configuration to live alongside it: the Snapdragon X Plus.

The Snapdragon X Plus is pretty similar to the flagship Snapdragon X Elite in terms of everyday performance but, as a new chip tier, aims to bring AI capabilities to a wider portfolio of ARM-powered laptops. To be clear, though, this one is a step down from the flagship Snapdragon X Elite, in the same way that an Intel Core Ultra 7 is a step down from Core Ultra 9.

Read more
Gigabyte just confirmed AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs
Pads on the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

Gigabyte spoiled AMD's surprise a bit by confirming the company's next-gen CPUs. In a press release announcing a new BIOS for X670, B650, and A620 motherboards, Gigabyte not only confirmed that support has been added for next-gen AMD CPUs, but specifically referred to them as "AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors."

We've already seen MSI and Asus add support for next-gen AMD CPUs through BIOS updates, but neither of them called the CPUs Ryzen 9000. They didn't put out a dedicated press release for the updates, either. It should go without saying, but we don't often see a press release for new BIOS versions, suggesting Gigabyte wanted to make a splash with its support.

Read more