AMD Releases Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.5.2.1

btarunr · May 18, 2016

AMD today released its third Radeon Software Crimson Edition update for this month. Version 16.5.2.1 provides a massive 35 percent performance increase for Radeon R9 390 series graphics cards (R9 390, R9 390X) on "Doom" (2016), compared to version 16.5.2, released earlier this month. The change-log does not mention whether this is also applicable to the nearly identical Radeon R9 290 series (R9 290, R9 290X, and R9 295X2). Not much else has changed, which explains the version numbering.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.5.2.1 for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

Fabio Pisco · May 18, 2016

Well, now Nvidia fanboys cant say AMD is not constantly working on drivers. Nvidia is still better, but AMD drivers are turning very good recently, and the update frequency is getting higher.

It is good to have fixed drivers since AMD has good hardware. Well, i am just here waiting for polaris, cause i want 390x performance on a 480x with less power usage.

Best Regards,
Fábio Pisco

djisas · May 18, 2016

Fabio Pisco said:
Well, now Nvidia fanboys cant say AMD is not constantly working on drivers. Nvidia is still better, but AMD drivers are turning very good recently, and the update frequency is getting higher.

It is good to have fixed drivers since AMD has good hardware. Well, i am just here waiting for polaris, cause i want 390x performance on a 480x with less power usage.

Best Regards,
Fábio Pisco

With 380 pricing...

Eroticus · May 18, 2016

16.5.2 vs 16.5.2.1 - lol almost double fps gain.

GreiverBlade · May 18, 2016

Fabio Pisco said:
Well, now Nvidia fanboys cant say AMD is not constantly working on drivers.

i prefer as they are ... since we see how it is when nvidia is "constantly" working on their driver

Fabio Pisco said:
Nvidia is still better

Nope.

i had way more drivers issues (CTD, TDR, textures bug etc.) with nvidia than i had with AMD, and i had less unstable driver with AMD than i had with nvidia.

the only par where nvidia is/was better is/was multigpu support.

regular often botched release, is not better than slow update with way less often botched release

funny ... those enterprise who update on a over regular basis, i.e.:apple nvidia, either brick some of their device, or add more bug than they solve it cripple previous gen card, and those who update slowly like AMD get a major issue once in a while (i.e.: the fan profile issue) and are highly criticized

Fabio Pisco said:
It is good to have fixed drivers since AMD has good hardware. Well, i am just here waiting for polaris, cause i want 390x performance on a 480x with less power usage.o

yep AMD need support they do good ... and for now nvidia is trying to fool customer with the founder edition

i would gladly swap my GTX980 for a R9 480 instead of a GTX1080

Enzarch · May 18, 2016

Huge gains on my 290 as well, (390x vBIOS, but driver recognizes it as 290 still)

Any rumors as to when the Vulkan patch is coming for Doom, and if there will be any new features along with it? (fingers crossed for explicit multi-GPU)

ZoneDymo · May 18, 2016

Fabio Pisco said:
Well, now Nvidia fanboys cant say AMD is not constantly working on drivers. Nvidia is still better, but AMD drivers are turning very good recently, and the update frequency is getting higher.

It is good to have fixed drivers since AMD has good hardware. Well, i am just here waiting for polaris, cause i want 390x performance on a 480x with less power usage.

Best Regards,
Fábio Pisco

Nvidia still better? have you been asleep during the last constant amount of driver updates from Nvidia to fix flaws presented in the release before it?

On the article, great that the fixed the problems with the game, atleast for that card.

Nokiron · May 18, 2016

GreiverBlade said:
Nope.

i had way more drivers issues (CTD, TDR, textures bug etc.) with nvidia than i had with AMD, and i had less unstable driver with AMD than i had with nvidia.

the only par where nvidia is/was better is/was multigpu support.

regular often botched release, is not better than slow update with way less often botched release

Yeah, that really depends. I myself have no luck whatsoever with my AMD cards. Both my 7970 and R9 Nano has some serious issues.
The 7970 is by far the worst, it gets that stupid atikmdag.sys bluescreen on 70% of the computers I try it on.

Ferrum Master · May 18, 2016

Nokiron said:
Y
The 7970 is by far the worst, it gets that stupid atikmdag.sys bluescreen

It is a hardware fault not a driver fault!

medi01 · May 18, 2016

Fabio Pisco said:
Nvidia is still

Lovely.
Remember those times, when 549$ 290X was slower than 699$ 780Ti?
Nvidia is still Lovely, you wanted to say.
As lovely as it gets, I would add:

the54thvoid · May 18, 2016

medi01 said:
Lovely.
Remember those times, when 549$ 290X was slower than 699$ 780Ti?
Nvidia is still Lovely, you wanted to say.
As lovely as it gets, I would add:

That chip on your shoulder must be giving you sciatica.

But on a serious note, these forums are getting worse and worse for blind, one sided idiocy from both morons that think AMD make crap drivers or ones that take great revelry when an older card starts to show some performance loss to the competition.

Such utter, infantile behaviour.

Let's makes TPU great again (to steal a Trumpism) and stop being so feverishly determined to attack one side or the other.

AMD driver releases have been great recently (by most accounts). Not without fault though. My own experience with Nvidia drivers was flawless until 364 branch. And that didn't affect everyone.

Drivers are always going to work for most and bring grief to some, red or green.

It's only the ignorant fanaticism that makes it seem like a huge problem.

G33k2Fr34k · May 18, 2016

Fabio Pisco said:
Well, now Nvidia fanboys cant say AMD is not constantly working on drivers. Nvidia is still better, but AMD drivers are turning very good recently, and the update frequency is getting higher.

It is good to have fixed drivers since AMD has good hardware. Well, i am just here waiting for polaris, cause i want 390x performance on a 480x with less power usage.

Best Regards,
Fábio Pisco

AMD's drivers have been solid for as long as I've been using their cards. They have indeed been releasing WHQL drivers more frequently recently instead of hotfixes/beta drivers, but the quality of their drivers hasn't changed in my experience.

I haven't used an Nvidia GFX in years so I can't comment on the quality of their drivers. How do you know Nvidia's drivers are better?

We have no idea what Polaris is at this point. AMD is supposed to give an inside look at Polaris today.

RejZoR · May 18, 2016

I never had problems with AMD drivers, though there weren't any OpenGL (now Vulkan) games being released either (AMD has always been great with DX but not so much with OGL). Considering R9 390 was 50% slower than GTX 970 in the above video and they needed whole week to fix it, how do you think gamers who wanted to play Doom felt? Must be shit to run a brand new game with such poor framerate. I mean, my GTX 980 ain't all that much faster (R9 390X range anyway) and the experience was flawless from day one. I did update ForceWare that was released for Doom, but I really don't see any difference. It was flawless from launch day.

Eroticus · May 18, 2016

RejZoR said:
I never had problems with AMD drivers, though there weren't any OpenGL (now Vulkan) games being released either (AMD has always been great with DX but not so much with OGL). Considering R9 390 was 50% slower than GTX 970 in the above video and they needed whole week to fix it, how do you think gamers who wanted to play Doom felt? Must be shit to run a brand new game with such poor framerate. I mean, my GTX 980 ain't all that much faster (R9 390X range anyway) and the experience was flawless from day one. I did update ForceWare that was released for Doom, but I really don't see any difference. It was flawless from launch day.

3 Days*, and as I know Doom was build on OpenGL4.3 bcuz nvidia doesn't fully support OpenGL4.5, so nvidia isn't perfect to.

Bjorn_Of_Iceland · May 18, 2016

Took me a while to scroll down to the bottom from all those graphs. I thought I was going to scroll for ages, much like how we wait for AMD driver releases

Just kidding bro

medi01 · May 18, 2016

The only worrying bit about Polaris, for me, is about:

Samsung 14nm vs TSMC 16nm

The only thing I heard in the context was that Apple used both and TSMC chips were superior, despite being bigger.

Now, that might screw things up for AMD big time.

the54thvoid said:
Let's makes TPU great again

Let me start with that chart being rather useful.
(Barring the fact, it's all CGN in AMD case =)) you see how old kings fare 3 years into market.

But that's not all.
Certain things, need explanation.

Had it been AMD GPUs scoring more, it wouldn't be a problem. (they could optimize drivers more, after all, older cards are on the same architecture, also, CPUs got faster and we know AMD drivers consume more CPU power).

But nope, same nVidia GPUs suddenly scoring LESS in the same games (yep, on TPU too).

And I'm not buying "oh, we changed settings", sorry.
8Gb of RAM being listed in "cons" section is sad too.

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:
Just kidding bro

Challenge accepted.
PS
JK, will put it into "spoiler".

GhostRyder · May 18, 2016

Eroticus said:
16.5.2 vs 16.5.2.1 - lol almost double fps gain.

Wow that's a pretty big performance increase!

Huh, have not downloaded this one yet and I don't have Doom yet unfortunately. Have to try these drivers when I get home.

RejZoR · May 18, 2016

Eroticus said:
3 Days*, and as I know Doom was build on OpenGL4.3 bcuz nvidia doesn't fully support OpenGL4.5, so nvidia isn't perfect to.

Maybe so, but as far as I know, Doom is running on Vulcan. Which explains why such a new game that looks absolutely amazing and runs at super speeds. I mean, getting over 100fps at 1080p on Ultra using single mid-high end graphic card from last year it has to be something more than just OpenGL. OpenGL was never this well performing no matter what. I don't think it's just the engine that's so well optimized.

ShurikN · May 18, 2016

medi01 said:
Lovely.
Remember those times, when 549$ 290X was slower than 699$ 780Ti?
Nvidia is still Lovely, you wanted to say.
As lovely as it gets, I would add:

It's really not a secret that Nvidia is intentionally gimping older hardware through driver updates. Its been happening since 500 series i think.

Eroticus · May 18, 2016

RejZoR said:
Maybe so, but as far as I know, Doom is running on Vulcan. Which explains why such a new game that looks absolutely amazing and runs at super speeds. I mean, getting over 100fps at 1080p on Ultra using single mid-high end graphic card from last year it has to be something more than just OpenGL. OpenGL was never this well performing no matter what. I don't think it's just the engine that's so well optimized.

Doom is running on OpenGL, they didn't released Vulkan Yet. =]

NVIDIA about Mantle 2 years ago "Will Not Support It, No Real Benefit Using It"

Nvidia 2 years later "WOW LOOK Vulkan is AMAZING, UR 1K SERIES Running Doom on Vulkan API UP TO 200Fps."

WaroDaBeast · May 18, 2016

People who claim that AMD drivers are bad are like people who still think all BIOS passwords can be reset with a clear CMOS: really outdated.

NeoGalaxy · May 18, 2016

Ferrum Master said:
It is a hardware fault not a driver fault!

Also that problems appears due to Microsoft not being able to fix the flash updates for the Edge browser, but since I am not using that, I have no idea why Microsoft is forcing me to upgrade its Flash

So go change the card matey, the software is not to blame here.

NeoGalaxy · May 18, 2016

RejZoR said:
Maybe so, but as far as I know, Doom is running on Vulcan. Which explains why such a new game that looks absolutely amazing and runs at super speeds. I mean, getting over 100fps at 1080p on Ultra using single mid-high end graphic card from last year it has to be something more than just OpenGL. OpenGL was never this well performing no matter what. I don't think it's just the engine that's so well optimized.

Yes, Nvidia presentation was running on Vulkan, but Doom is not working on it in this moment. It works on OpenGL, also AMD will have a small advantage at least since the Vulkan API is based on Mantle API. OpenGL works quite well, I am not sure what running on Vulkan will bring but at least it's better than being on DX 12 lol

Ferrum Master · May 18, 2016

NeoGalaxy said:
So go change the card matey,

Who? What?

ensabrenoir · May 18, 2016

the54thvoid said:
Such utter, infantile behaviour.
snip
Let's makes TPU great again (to steal a Trumpism) and stop being so feverishly determined to attack one side or the other.
snip
It's only the ignorant fanaticism that makes it seem like a huge problem.

start rant:

......ah....thats all that trumps has got to say. He has truly taught America to HATE again. The Amd vs Nvdia vs Intel vs common sense is way more fun.... just as infantile mind you but more like sports team rivalries......

end rant:

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AMD Releases Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.5.2.1

btarunr

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