Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AMD To Retire Catalyst Control Center Drivers, Rolling Out New Crimson Platform (hothardware.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the playing-catchup-a-bit-faster dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD has gone through significant changes as a company over the last few months. Recently, we've seen them enter into a joint venture with Nantong Fujitsu for final assembly and test operations. They've also formed the new Radeon Technologies Group, led by longtime graphics guru Raja Koduri. Today, AMD is announcing another big change, and this one affects a piece of software that you may have running on your systems right now, if there's a Radeon graphics card on board. AMD is ditching Catalyst Control Center in favor of software dubbed Radeon Settings, which is a critical part of what AMD is calling the Radeon Software Crimson Edition. Radeon Software Crimson Edition is completely re-architected and is claimed to offer new features, improvements to stability and responsiveness, and performance improvements as well. The update will include a new Game Manager, video quality presets, social media integration, simplified EF setup, a system notifications tab, and more. It looks as though the first version of the software will be out this month.

22 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. A friggen video driver... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A friggen video driver with 'social integration' and 'system notification' - and then they cannot understand why their driver runs slow, is full of bugs and users prefer the Free driver.

    1. Re:A friggen video driver... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I want my Facebook and Twitter account full of "Doug's Radeon Driver has successfully been restarted after an error."

    2. Re:A friggen video driver... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      you can't even get an Nvidia driver without handing over a working email address and creating an account.

      You're absolutely full of shit.

      I went to nvidia.co.uk just now, clicked on 'Drivers > All NVIDIA Drivers'. There are five boxes that list type of card (GeForce, etc), series (9xx, etc) and card (950, etc), operating system and language. You click the 'Search' button and it brings you to a clickthrough license agreement page, where if you click 'AGREE & DOWNLOAD', you get the (288mb) install file as a normal http download.

      I don't know what you're doing, but whatever it is, you're doing it wrong.

    3. Re:A friggen video driver... by FictionPimp · · Score: 3, Informative

      I just went to nvidia.com and downloaded their drivers and installed them without giving them an email address or creating an account.

    4. Re:A friggen video driver... by SQLGuru · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're also missing the other side of it.......

      While you're playing COD, rendered right on top of the guy you're trying to kill is a notification because your mom wants you to send her another Candy Crush ticket. And because of that --- BOOM, headshot.....only you're the recipient, not the giver.

    5. Re:A friggen video driver... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's coming soon: http://www.extremetech.com/gam...

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:A friggen video driver... by spire3661 · · Score: 2

      While true, if you want to use shadowplay, you have to install Geforce Experience, which will soon require a login. Nvidia has no high ground here and in fact im betting AMD is just following the green team. For reference, i own a 570GTX, 770 GTX and 980ti GTX

      --
      Good-bye
    7. Re:A friggen video driver... by IMightB · · Score: 2

      Who the fuck cares? you'll respawn in 30 seconds either way. If you really care about not having notifications popup, how about logging the fuck off of facebook before you start playing. Are you really going to be playing a serious game, and expect Social media notifications at the same time?

      I say let drivers be drivers, let social media be social media and never should the two meet.

    8. Re:A friggen video driver... by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

      LOL. It's COD. It's Important dammnit!

    9. Re:A friggen video driver... by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Can no one disagree in a civil manner and speak to each other like grown men?

      That was a civil manner between men, you cock gurgling mother fucker.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  2. Just the driver, thanks by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    I don't want a control center, and I certainly don't want a "game manager". Tell your marketing critters to focus on the bitmaps on the cardboard carton the hardware ships in.

    I just want a driver. Hint: that's not a 100 Mb downloaded installer.

  3. Just another thing to delete... by FatRichie · · Score: 2

    I've always removed CCC from my startups, I'm sure I'll do the same with Crimson.

  4. Wow. by cloud.pt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Game Manager, social media integration, system notifications tab...

    Seems to be ticking all the right boxes on my graphic driver customization shit list. Please bring more clutter to an already confusing piece of software that should have as main focus its simplicity, transparency, and not meddling in tasks my OS and Browser are supposed to be doing...

  5. Social media, game center? by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 2

    Why can't they just provide a working graphics card driver and a simple, straightforward and working settings manager for it? What is wrong with AMD?

    My next graphics card will be an Nvidia for sure.

    1. Re:Social media, game center? by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hate to break it to you, but even as a fully signed up supporter of the green team, I have to admit their driver-bloat situation is no better. It's around 170mb for a set of Nvidia drivers these days, most of which is for their ludicrously over-engineered "Geforce Experience" crap. Oh, plus all of the Nvidia Shield intergration, which I'm sure is of huge interest to both of the people who've bought a Shield tablet.

      There are valid reasons to go for an Nvidia card - heat, power consumption, general stability - but a lack of driver-bloat sadly isn't one of them.

    2. Re:Social media, game center? by ADRA · · Score: 2

      Whine much? Really, if 170 MB is spilled milk, look at your NV driver download directory to see every copy of your installer every downloaded.

      I think Geforce experience is great. I optimize to play games, and they seem to do their darnedest to 'optimize' the gameplay graphics experience. I couldn't be more happy wasting some bits on making my life easier.

      --
      Bye!
    3. Re:Social media, game center? by Xenx · · Score: 2

      It's entirely possible to opt out of Raptr during install, as long as you do custom install. I've been doing it for years when updating the driver.

  6. But does it have an email client? by xtal · · Score: 2

    /emacs

    Seriously WTF. I never forgave AMD/ATI for the OpenGL Rage driver debacle in the late 90s. Haven't looked back. nVidia, for their sins, at least have decent and timely driver updates.

    --
    ..don't panic
  7. Re-architected by Overzeetop · · Score: 2

    Re-Archtitected? Architected isn't even a word.

    No. Just....no.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  8. Re:Facebook by Dracos · · Score: 2

    What the fuck, right?

    I just want to get the drivers installed on my Mint system that will allow me to use my R280X for rendering in Blender. No games, just Blender.

  9. Back in my day... by Voyager529 · · Score: 2

    In the days of yore, ATI Radeon drivers were easy to work with - a simple, clearly labeled set of tabs that allowed monitors and GPU settings to be manipulated in the least amount of time possible...and the files were >50MB.

    The latest iterations of the Catalyst Control Center are highly convoluted, poorly labeled, oversized, and just generally terrible to work with. If the interface from the Radeon 9000 series made a comeback with nothing but the required INF/CAT/CAB files for the new cards, that would be the single greatest thing they could do, and I see no reason why this isn't completely possible.

    I'm unopposed to there being a "Radeon Studio", where other functionality can be used. If they made it a place to use their hardware accelerated video transcoder and allowed the creation of a RAM disk (and provided a place to put a Twitter feed, I guess...), that would be wonderful. There is not, however, a need for these functions in the drivers.

    This really isn't that complicated.

  10. Re:why the hate with social media? by dinfinity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That would actually be useful, but considering that one of the screenshots shows 'Follow AMD' with the mandatory shitload of social media icons in the main overview of the settings interface of a fucking driver makes me think that this has marketing department vomit sauce all over it.
    You know: "We need to raise the profile of AMD and generate buzz on social media' or whatever the fuck it is they say.

    I'm betting that in the overview where you can change clock settings there's going to be a share button which automatically posts a Twitter message and Facebook status update saying: "Just overclocked my AMD Radeon 1234XX to 1000Mhz, bitches! #AMDrulez #overclockingBoss #beastmode #caturday"