AMD first launched the Radeon Software Crimson Edition driver suite at the end of November last year. The new driver replaced the aged Catalyst Control Panel, and along with the new driver suite came a new philosophy from AMD regarding driver releases. The company vowed to have a new version of Radeon Software Crimson every month with updated game profiles and hotfixes to address known bugs. Version 16.2 was released today with profiles for three recent games and a list of bug fixes.
AMD said that Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 includes “performance and quality improvements” for Rise of the Tomb Raider. The company also said the new driver will help with performance in Oxide Games’ new Ashes of the Singularity Benchmark 2.0 tool that was released this week. Version 16.2 includes Crossfire profiles for recent titles, The Division and XCOM 2, too.
AMD’s latest hotfix also address a long list of bugs that were afflicting the previous Crimson versions. The new driver fixes five problems in Fallout 4, including flickering items and details, and screen tearing on Freesync displays paired with Crossfire configurations. AMD also said the driver addresses similar issues in Rise of the Tomb Raider.
The Edition 16.2 release notes also state that this version addresses an issue where“a black screen/TDR error may be encountered when booting a system with Intel + AMD graphics and an HDMI monitor connected.”
As with any driver release, along with corrected issues come more known issues, and Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 is no exception. With version 16.2 installed, you may encounter problems launching games while the Gaming Evolved overlay is enabled. AMD recommended disabling it if this occurs.
AMD said that Star Wars: Battlefront may experience corrupted ground textures in the Survival of Hoth mission, and XCOM 2 may experience flickering, as well. The company said that Rise of the Tomb Raider may crash at boot with tessellation on, and Fallout 4 may experience stuttering if launched while Crossfire is enabled.
Some slightly more serious problems include not being able to enable Crossfire on some AMD HD 59XX and HD 79XX series graphics cards. AMD also said that it’s possible that you could see “choppy” performance or screen corruption due to core clocks failing to sustain speeds.
You can see the full list of fixes and bugson the driver information page. If the benefits outweigh the perceived downsides to you, you can find the driver download links on the same page.
