Following up on its promise from a couple of days back AMD has released a new graphics card driver to fix the PCI-e power draw issues people were reporting. AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1 is the new release and according to the release notes features the following highlights:
- The Radeon RX 480's power distribution has been improved for AMD reference boards, lowering the current drawn from the PCIe bus.
- A new 'compatibility mode' UI toggle has been made available in the Global Settings menu of Radeon Settings. This option is designed to reduce total power with minimal performance impact if end users experience any further issues. This toggle is 'off' by default.
- Performance improvements for the Polaris architecture that yield performance uplifts in popular game titles of up to 3%*. These optimizations are designed to improve the performance of the Radeon RX 480, and should substantially offset the performance impact for users who choose to activate the 'compatibility' toggle.
Many readers will be wondering about any performance implications to using the new driver and luckily AMD has provided *footnotes backing up its performance improvement claims. On a PC system consisting of an AMD Radeon RX 480, Core i7-5960X, 16GB DDR4-2666MHz, Gigabyte X99-UD4, and Windows 10 64-bit, the following performance changes were observed:
| Application |
Driver version 16.6.2 |
Driver Version 16.7.1 |
|
Total War: Warhammer, ultra settings, 1080p |
74.2 FPS |
78.3 FPS |
|
Metro Last Light, very high settings, 1080p |
80.9 FPS |
82.7 FPS |
|
The Witcher 3, ultra settings, 1440p |
31.5 FPS |
32.5 FPS |
|
Far Cry 4, ultra settings, 1440p |
54.65 FPS |
56.38 FPS |
|
3DMark11 Extreme benchmark |
22.8 FPS |
23.7 FPS |
The above is in line with AMD's statement of intention earlier in the week but the driver also fixes a range of issues including; stuttering problems using the RX 480 in GTA V, video corruption in DOOM in resolutions above 1080p, graphical corruption in Hitman using DX12 and the zoom on various weapons, and minor flickering on launch/exit using the RX 480 on a Freesync monitor. There's still a rather lengthy list of known issues to be worked upon by AMD.
For further in-depth analysis of the new AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1, PCPer has published a four page 'review' of the driver which includes looking at power consumption and performance in various gaming scenarios and charting comparisons between driver version 16.6.2 and 16.7.1.
HEXUS benchmarks
We've taken the time this morning to run both sets of drivers through our own benchmarks. The test system is exactly the same as for the original review.
| HEXUS Application |
Driver version 16.6.2 |
Driver Version 16.7.1 |
|
3DMark, 1080p |
10,218 marks |
10,571 marks |
|
3DMark, 1440p |
5,064 marks |
5,242 marks |
|
3DMark, 2160p |
2,648 marks |
2,749 marks |
|
Dirt Rally, 1080p |
79.7 fps | 81.5 fps |
|
Dirt Rally, 1440p |
58.3 fps | 59.6 fps |
|
Dirt Rally, 2160p |
31.9 fps | 32.6 fps |
|
Doom, 1080p |
99.3 fps | 102.0 fps |
|
Doom, 1440p |
62.7 fps | 65.8 fps |
|
Doom, 2160p |
31.3 fps | 32.7 fps |
|
Fallout 4, 1080p |
74.9 fps | 76.0 fps |
|
Fallout 4, 1440p |
49.1 fps | 50.0 fps |
|
Fallout 4, 2160p |
24.4 fps | 24.8 fps |
|
Hitman, 1080p |
74.5 fps | 76.6 fps |
|
Hitman, 1440p |
55.6 fps | 57.2 fps |
|
Hitman, 2160p |
32.0 fps | 33.3 fps |
|
Tomb Raider, 1080p |
61.8 fps | 62.1 fps |
|
Tomb Raider, 1440p |
43.4 fps | 43.7 fps |
|
Tomb Raider, 2160p |
23.9 fps | 24.4 fps |
|
The Division, 1080p |
63.6 fps | 63.2 fps |
|
The Division, 1440p |
45.8 fps | 45.8 fps |
|
The Divison, 2160p |
25.6 fps | 25.7 fps |
The performance is better in every benchmark apart from two resolutions in The Division. Power consumption is identical and temperature is within the standard deviation we expect when testing on a different day.
The driver also adds a compatibility mode, which reduces power consumption by pushing the power target down. We'll have a play with it and update the article accordingly.
