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AMD's 'Crimson' Driver Software Released (anandtech.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the gee-i-hope-it-integrates-with-social-media dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday marked the launch of AMD's 'Crimson' driver software. It replaces the old Catalyst driver software, and represents a change in how AMD develops bug fixes, improves performance, and adds features. AnandTech took a detailed look at the new driver software. They say, "By focusing feature releases around the end of the year driver, AMD is able to cut down on what parts of the driver they change (and thereby can possibly break) at other times of the year, and try to knock out all of their feature-related bugs at once. At the same time it makes the annual driver release a significant event, as AMD releases a number of new features all at once. However on the other hand this means that AMD has few features launching any other time of the year, which can make it look like they're not heavily invested in feature development at those points." On a more positive note, the article adds, "Looking under the hood there's no single feature that's going to blow every Radeon user away at once, but overall there are a number of neat features here that should be welcomed by various user groups. ... Meanwhile AMD's radical overhaul of their control panel via the new Radeon Settings application will be quickly noticed by everyone."

2 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. I'll believe it when I see it by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not the driver, that's out, but that they are going to change how they do drivers. They've said that numerous times before, and always the situation is the same. They are very slow at getting actual release drivers out (they are forever beta versions) and their OpenGL performance and support is garbage (to the point that HFSS would fail to run on systems with AMD cards).

    So AMD: Less talk, more good drivers. I want to support you, I really do, but I've been burned too many times.

  2. I think it is safe to say that AMD employs monkeys by dinfinity · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What a terrible clusterfuck this 'revamp' is.
    1. Only half of the settings are 'ported'. The other half (including Crossfire) can only be found when pressing 'additional settings', which opens (a stripped version of) the old AMD Catalyst Control Center. Shit, I get that some projects require having legacy code and new code next to each other, but for a tool that does fuck-all and is produced by a multinational company it is inexcusable.
    2. The UI is a classic 'looks shiny, works like crap' with a myriad of 100% custom touch sized interface elements in grey and grey strewn across an anemically small window with multiple navigational blocks and random bits of hidden functionality. I'm surprised they didn't replace all text buttons with grey meaningless icons.
    3. It is unstable as fuck.
    4. It has fucking ad banners and social media crap rammed in there.
    5. It has custom fucking animations of UI elements and weird 'read more...' links.

    The only good thing about this bit of software is that they actually named it AMD Settings (and/or Radeon Settings), which at the very least reflects its function. Other than that it is a downgrade (which is saying a lot, considering that the previous version was the CCC!).