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AMD Radeon Software Crimson 16.7.1 released, benchmarked

by Mark Tyson on 8 July 2016, 09:31

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qac4d2

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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.



HEXUS Forums :: 28 Comments

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Better, but shouldn't have been up to a software fix after launch.
I have a complete set of performance numbers, on our benchmarks, of this driver versus the press driver used in the original review. Will update this article with a table in the next hour or so.
Can't wait ti see your update Tarinder.
Still its a Barfed card with power consuption issues at an hardware level and according to whats being read on other forums poeple have suffered hardware failures due to this issue…

Whats the comment on this AMD ….. Rembursment for hardware damages due to lack of Due diligence on your part…
Tarinder
I have a complete set of performance numbers, on our benchmarks, of this driver versus the press driver used in the original review. Will update this article with a table in the next hour or so.

RotTR was just patched for better DX12 performance, you might like to see what that does for 480 and 1070/80 as well :)

https://steamcommunity.com/app/391220/discussions/0/358417008720278827/