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AMD's Major Radeon Software Graphics Driver Update Goes Live With Gameplay Capture, More (venturebeat.com)
Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD is launching an update for its Radeon graphics drivers that will help PC gamers enjoy more power-efficient gameplay during the holiday season. Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition offers high-performance gaming and better stability for consumers, professionals, and developers. From a report on VentureBeat: The new edition enables power-efficient gameplay with Radeon Chill and seamless in-game screen capture and streaming with Radeon ReLive. For designers, content creators, and game developers, Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition delivers productivity and stability with up to 30 percent performance improvements in key applications. With Radeon ReLive, gamers can "relive" their gameplay by capturing, streaming, and sharing recorded gaming sessions. Highly efficient with minimal impact to gameplay, Radeon ReLive enables seamless playback of ReLive recordings via an easily accessible in-game toolbar, and offers quick and convenient customizable settings, custom scene layouts, and more, AMD said. With Radeon ReLive, gamers now have a way to capture gaming highlights, and share their gaming exploits and conquests with online friends and competitors -- all integrated within Radeon Software.
What year it is, you fucking paid shill?!!
As of 2016, AMD drivers are better than nVidias.
Crimson is rock solid and we'll see how Crimson ReLive will go.
Oh yeah, nVidia drivers:
Install 'nVidia Experience' to download them smoothly, but have to sign up with nVidia to use it and then get your privacy shredded as they harvest pretty much anything they want (seemingly) from your computer and its activity to do (seemingly) whatever they want with your data.
Or don't install the nVidia Experience software and download the drivers yourself (searching their website for the right version and installing it manually ... in 2016!!) and have to hunt around your computer to turn off their spyware telemetry ... just to get the harware you bought (and when you thought nVidia weren't pulling shady shit) to function.
Oh yeah. That smooth as silk nVidia experience. Must be the lube they use as they probe your private areas.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
In this day and age, any hardware causing a BSOD or freeze, I will assume faulty and remove.
I can't honestly remember the last time I saw one that wasn't caused by that.
The last BSOD I saw was 3 years ago while building a set of IBM BladeCenter blades. Their RAID card crashes if the default MS driver loads on 2012R2. 2012R2 wasn't officially supported at that point, so it was fair enough, but even then all I had to do was create an install disk with the IBM-supplied drivers (many YEARS ahead of the default MS ones) and it's worked flawlessly for years since on a number of BladeCenters without a problem under 2012R2 and heavy load.
As a programmer, I can justify that - literally the MS driver is so out of date it can't have been written when that hardware was made, and it's not as "compatible" as the 2012 driver, or the 2008 driver but advertises itself to be and the vanilla Windows Setup (which has nothing else compatible with that hardware) tries to load it but BSOD because the hardware isn't what it was expecting. It was instant (on loading the driver via Windows Setup), reproducible, and obvious.
Slipstream the Windows install and supplement the MS driver with anything written SINCE then and it picks the better driver and just works. That's fine by me. And an issue you'd only experience when doing major system upgrades or first-installs.
But a BSOD other than that? I can't even remember. Had a couple of client drive failures and still no BSOD (wouldn't boot, but you'd expect problems beforehand). I would have to say it's been probably 8-9 years since any BSOD that wasn't obviously explainable (hardware obviously failing, computer overheating, or problems like the above).
But a BSOD just because you updated a driver and reboot? No way. Why would you tolerate that on even a personal machine? That's data loss just waiting to happen.
BSOD my machine without an obvious reason why (and not just "it's a new driver" or "it's not the latest driver") and your hardware will be replaced.
I have a gaming laptop. I update the nVidia drivers precisely "when required" (i.e. a new game literally won't load without an update). That means I'm miles behind on versions. I kill all the taskbar apps and get rid of the dual-driver junk and whatever else, in any way I can. Still no BSOD. And when I update, the worst I expect is - very briefly - running on the internal Intel graphics until the new driver kicks in after a reboot.
BSOD died with Windows XP, and those were mainly because it was hard to isolate processes from each other etc. If you have ANY piece of kit that still gives you them in anything even approaching a reproducible or frequent way, ditch it and buy something else.
Same for kernel dumps (unless you've been fiddling with the kernel, they shouldn't happen) or whatever equivalent on Mac.