AMD Radeon Crimson Edition Drivers

[Aquinus]

Look up how devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices works, then check in device manager if you have a ton of graphics cards devices (enable show hidden devices in menu), pm me if you have more questions.

The driver eventually installed. Showing hidden devices didn't include anything out of the ordinary but it took quite some time to install. It seems to work. Valley benchmark worked, Elite: Dangerous is next up because they removed the "poor frame shift mode performance" bug from the list of known issues.

Either way, driver installation took a lot longer for me than it had in the past.

 

[ShurikN]

Looks nice, i'll probably give it a try later this week. Besides, haven't updated graphics driver in 3 months at least.

 

[Basard]

I want to see them, but I recently "upgraded" to a Nvidia card.... My wife doesn't want to upgrade her old Catalyst drivers either cuz they work fine! What a party pooper. I wish framerate control worked on older cards--her 5870 starts howling when games run.

 

[Aquinus]

Elite: Dangerous is next up because they removed the "poor frame shift mode performance" bug from the list of known issues.

Unfortuntely even though they removed it from the "known issues" list, FSD performance has dropped another 50%. It's almost unplayable because it will drop as low as 15 FPS and the clock speeds on the GPU are so low, it's practically idling. AMD has to fix this problem...

I don't get it, it's like AMD just sucks at handling FSD mode or something. It's not like there is an apparently bottleneck either, it just runs slow.


Edit: full-screen or boarderless and disabling AA made zero difference.

 

[AlwaysHope]

Gotta give this a go.. got no choice now eh? lol...

Hmmm, wonder if I'll need frame pacing in DX9 skyrim? Its pretty smooth for me anyway on my old monitor...

 

[Llewen]

Ok, not to sound bitter, but it took me hours to install the Crimson drivers and apps package. This was after Avast blocked every step from downloading to installing the software, forcing me to disable it. Disabling antivirus software isn't that big a deal, but having the software take so long to install that I kept killing it thinking it had frozen is a big deal. Finally I just let it run and it took over a half an hour to install.

Then I get into the brave new world of the Crimson UI. It looks nice enough, it's snappy and clean, and not too hard to figure out, but what's this? "Additional Settings"? I guess AMD never got around to incorporating either colour profiles or presets into the new UI. And look at that, no more hotkeys. Now to change a colour profile I have to open the Crimson UI, then open the old CCC UI, and click on the preset. Can you say, "Awkward and Annoying"?

Presets and hotkeys are one thing, but why oh why has ATI/AMD never seen fit to do whatever is necessary to allow colour profiles and presets to be loaded on a per application basis? Yes, I know I can have a preset start an application for me, but why the heck do I have to recreate a preset for every single application I want to load? And now, of course, I have to open the Crimson UI, then find the option to Open the CCC UI, then navigate to the presets to start the app.

It's the details. It's the little things that AMD just doesn't seem to care about. For example, why doesn't the Crimson UI window save it's position and size when you close it? It's nice that you can resize the window now, but that isn't terribly exciting if you have to do it every freakin' time you open the blessed thing. Most of this crap could be fixed quickly and easily by a second year software engineer...

 

[Ujaan]

This new 'AMD Radeon Crimson Edition Drivers' is infuriating. I was quite happy about this new driver until I installed it... ALL CUSTOM/MANUAL VIDEO CONTROL/QUALITY settings are GONE!! What is left under custom video control is essentially a joke! Below are the missing options:

1. Basic Video Color
2. Color Vibrance + Slider => Replaced by three fixed levels!
3. Video Gamma + Slider
4. Flesh-tone Correction + Slider
5. Brighter Whites
6. Dynamic Range
7. Deinterlacing Setting
8. Pulldown detection
9. Edge enhancement + Slider => Again replaced by three fixed levels!
10. De-noise + Slider
11. Mosquito Noise Reduction + Slider
12. De-blocking + Slider
13. Dynamic Contrast

 

[scottz63]

Found the problem, AMD changed the name of some registry key, this will be fixed in next GPU-Z release

I had the same thing. Thanks.

 

[Llewen]

This new installer keeps crashing on me... Not a good way to get started, AMD...

Edit: 10 minutes later, it made progress. Do I have to wait an hour to install this thing?

I have to say, I haven't had such a bad experience with AMD's driver installation software ever in my life. This is just pathetic...

Edit: After several minutes of waiting (that is 20-25 minutes!!!) it eventually finished installing. Going to restart and do some tests...

I experienced exactly the same thing. Unbelievable. I already sent AMD feedback on that, and you can bet it wasn't positive...

This new 'AMD Radeon Crimson Edition Drivers' is infuriating. I was quite happy about this new driver until I installed it... ALL CUSTOM/MANUAL VIDEO CONTROL/QUALITY settings are GONE!! What is left under custom video control is essentially a joke!

Pretty easy to make something look clean and simple if you remove all the configuration options...

 

[progste]

If you go in the screen section and click additional settings it'll open the old window with the options you are looking for. The drivers installed immediately, I guess i must be lucky =)
I've tested a couple of games very quickly, I noticed a HUGE improvement in The Witcher 2 with ubersampling on, now it's completely smooth while it used to be a mess of stutters! I haven't tried witcher 3 yet.

 

[Llewen]

The additional settings is missing hotkeys, and all the video settings listed above. I'm seeing if I can go back to the old CCC and still keep the new drivers. I'm expecting a fail on that, but if that doesn't work I'll be reverting back to 15.7.1 until AMD get's it's **** together and releases a finished version of the new U.I....

But honestly, half an hour to install components, and now it's looking like it's going to take half an hour to uninstall components. This reminds me of when Steam was first released...

For those of you who don't remember what Steam's launch was like, or simply weren't around for the festivities, this gives you a hint of what it was like:

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-pc-game-launches/

 

[geon2k2]

I experienced exactly the same thing. Unbelievable. I already sent AMD feedback on that, and you can bet it wasn't positive...

Good idea I'll send feedback as well as for me what happen was so bad that I was thinking at the time that I'll never buy AMD again.
I was going to ask you how to report but found the link: http://www.amd.com/report

This looks like alpha driver, not even beta, not to mention that the whole application is a mess, moving menus, not only from top to botton, but also on expanding sub-menus they go on the same level, which is confusing, old CC for some options, crashes and totally incapacitating a system after uninstall, which has only licensed software and no overclock. This is absolutely pathetic.

 

[Steevo]

This new 'AMD Radeon Crimson Edition Drivers' is infuriating. I was quite happy about this new driver until I installed it... ALL CUSTOM/MANUAL VIDEO CONTROL/QUALITY settings are GONE!! What is left under custom video control is essentially a joke! Below are the missing options:

1. Basic Video Color
2. Color Vibrance + Slider => Replaced by three fixed levels!
3. Video Gamma + Slider
4. Flesh-tone Correction + Slider
5. Brighter Whites
6. Dynamic Range
7. Deinterlacing Setting
8. Pulldown detection
9. Edge enhancement + Slider => Again replaced by three fixed levels!
10. De-noise + Slider
11. Mosquito Noise Reduction + Slider
12. De-blocking + Slider
13. Dynamic Contrast

I dislike this too, custom only gives a single option, and judging by the values stored in the registry application of denoise/edge enhancement/deblock it will look like crap. Anything over about 25 on deblock and denoise makes the image look like soup, and edge enhancement was set at 10 instead of about 30, making it barely better than nothing. I edited the values manually to get them back to what I like and it looks fine after.

Say what you will about the old CCC, it had a shit ton of options in a very easy to understand layout for me, and I use the video acceleration part of my card as much or more than the gaming functions.

 

[vgchat]

Look up how devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices works, then check in device manager if you have a ton of graphics cards devices (enable show hidden devices in menu), pm me if you have more questions.

I posted the same thing about it being slow to install yesterday. Cherry picking posts?

 

[Ujaan]

I dislike this too, custom only gives a single option, and judging by the values stored in the registry application of denoise/edge enhancement/deblock it will look like crap. Anything over about 25 on deblock and denoise makes the image look like soup, and edge enhancement was set at 10 instead of about 30, making it barely better than nothing. I edited the values manually to get them back to what I like and it looks fine after.

Say what you will about the old CCC, it had a shit ton of options in a very easy to understand layout for me, and I use the video acceleration part of my card as much or more than the gaming functions.

Old CCC really had very good options for fine tuning and I used those video controls regularly. Which registry values you are changing -> currentcontrolset001 -> 0000 or currentcontrolset -> 0000 ? I tried changing those but there was no change that I could notice. Also those registry settings affect custom video profile or other presets too?

 

[Llewen]

I didn't read the entire thread before I posted—should have done. But anyway, I've been pretty diligent about removing old devices from my device manager, and devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices didn't show anything new. At least one of my fussy old games won't even start with the new drivers. I've rolled back.

 

[vgchat]

I didn't read the entire thread before I posted—should have done. But anyway, I've been pretty diligent about removing old devices from my device manager, and devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices didn't show anything new. At least one of my fussy old games won't even start with the new drivers. I've rolled back.

Which game was that?

 

[Tatty_Two]

I posted the same thing about it being slow to install yesterday. Cherry picking posts?

Did it require a reply? You said so far so good so there was no indication that you were not happy, simply that it was taking longer than previous installs.

 

[Llewen]

Civilization IV - Beyond the Sword. It's a notoriously fussy game, and if anything is slightly off or unstable, it'll show it. It's still my gold standard for telling me if my system is working properly.

 

[vgchat]

Did it require a reply? You said so far so good so there was no indication that you were not happy, simply that it was taking longer than previous installs.

Well in my case, the cpu, disk & memory would go to zero in the taskmanager for it installing, going up a small percentage for a few seconds as it installed stuff. Near the end it kindof straightened up & went at about the same speed as the previous CCC installs. Weird but yes I was expecting a reply of sorts.

So far so good stability & performance wise for gaming that is. No weird stutter or lag or any of the sort while gaming yet.

Also Llewen, you may want to report this issue to the AMD community, they're listening to feedback & more than likely will work on a fix for your game. Here's the link to their community.
https://community.amd.com/community/support-forums

 

[W1zzard]

I posted the same thing about it being slow to install yesterday. Cherry picking posts?

Didn't intend to cherry pick anything, I just scan through the posts quickly and might have missed yours.

 

[Steevo]

Old CCC really had very good options for fine tuning and I used those video controls regularly. Which registry values you are changing -> currentcontrolset001 -> 0000 or currentcontrolset -> 0000 ? I tried changing those but there was no change that I could notice. Also those registry settings affect custom video profile or other presets too?

You need to see which path the 2D driver is using to pull values from, and then enable Demo mode to be sure its actually hardware accelerated, and as always, reboot after changing the registry settings to get them to apply. Mine was CurrentControlSet1. I have had to go through Shark007 settings and a few other settings to make sure that DXVA isn't disabled during new driver installs. AMD/ATI seems to have issues like they did years ago of defaulting everything to off and breaking shit during driver updates.

The driver path shows it as Cat 15.8 in the registry.

 

[Ujaan]

Can you please confirm if setting DynamicContrast_ENABLE_DEF = 1/0 is working with crimson via registry?

 

[95Viper]

Installed perfectly for me... took about same time as previous CCC installs.

Not, really, fond of this new interface; sorta, gotta get use to it, I guess.

And, this driver seems to have fixed the screen tear I use to get when scrolling.
Smooth scrolling is nice now.

 

[Steevo]

Acceleration, color control and all else seems to be working normally with registry edits.


EDIT** FYI I overdid the settings to show the effects, the native is on the left, this is 4K media and with tuning and turning down the brightness and other effects it looks better than the left pane**