AMD Releases Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Hotfix

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By Kevin Carbotte
published

AMD first launched the Radeon Software Crimson Edition driver suite at the end of November last year. The new driver replaced the aged Catalyst Control Panel, and along with the new driver suite came a new philosophy from AMD regarding driver releases. The company vowed to have a new version of Radeon Software Crimson every month with updated game profiles and hotfixes to address known bugs. Version 16.2 was released today with profiles for three recent games and a list of bug fixes.

AMD said that Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 includes “performance and quality improvements” for Rise of the Tomb Raider. The company also said the new driver will help with performance in Oxide Games’ new Ashes of the Singularity Benchmark 2.0 tool that was released this week. Version 16.2 includes Crossfire profiles for recent titles, The Division and XCOM 2, too.

AMD’s latest hotfix also address a long list of bugs that were afflicting the previous Crimson versions. The new driver fixes five problems in Fallout 4, including flickering items and details, and screen tearing on Freesync displays paired with Crossfire configurations. AMD also said the driver addresses similar issues in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

The Edition 16.2 release notes also state that this version addresses an issue where“a black screen/TDR error may be encountered when booting a system with Intel + AMD graphics and an HDMI monitor connected.”

As with any driver release, along with corrected issues come more known issues, and Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 is no exception. With version 16.2 installed, you may encounter problems launching games while the Gaming Evolved overlay is enabled. AMD recommended disabling it if this occurs.

AMD said that Star Wars: Battlefront may experience corrupted ground textures in the Survival of Hoth mission, and XCOM 2 may experience flickering, as well. The company said that Rise of the Tomb Raider may crash at boot with tessellation on, and Fallout 4 may experience stuttering if launched while Crossfire is enabled.

Some slightly more serious problems include not being able to enable Crossfire on some AMD HD 59XX and HD 79XX series graphics cards. AMD also said that it’s possible that you could see "choppy" performance or screen corruption due to core clocks failing to sustain speeds.

You can see the full list of fixes and bugson the driver information page. If the benefits outweigh the perceived downsides to you, you can find the driver download links on the same page.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

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25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thor220
    Just as a note, AMD always released a "known issues" section with all of their driver releases. The author of this article makes it seem like this hotfix driver introduces all sorts of new issues when some of them have existed far before even crimson came out or from new games that have performance issue because the devs are lazy. I'm not saying AMD if fault free it just seems like the author is trying to paint AMD as the bad guy here when they are really releasing a driver dedicated to fixing issues.
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    17567039 said:
    Just as a note, AMD always released a "known issues" section with all of their driver releases. The author of this article makes it seem like this hotfix driver introduces all sorts of new issues when some of them have existed far before even crimson came out or from new games that have performance issue because the devs are lazy. I'm not saying AMD if fault free it just seems like the author is trying to paint AMD as the bad guy here when they are really releasing a driver dedicated to fixing issues.

    wasn't trying to paint a AMD in a bad light at all.
    The driver page indicated that these were newly introduced issues, so I pointed them out.
    Reply
  • Sublime1027
    Love Crimson. Catalyst control center was super slow and had a terrible interface. Now it is a pleasure using it. Now AMD please for the love of everything gaming, make your Linux driver as good as Windows. Make Vulkan a priority since it is the future. I would drop windows in a heartbeat
    Reply
  • ohim
    17567039 said:
    Just as a note, AMD always released a "known issues" section with all of their driver releases. The author of this article makes it seem like this hotfix driver introduces all sorts of new issues when some of them have existed far before even crimson came out or from new games that have performance issue because the devs are lazy. I'm not saying AMD if fault free it just seems like the author is trying to paint AMD as the bad guy here when they are really releasing a driver dedicated to fixing issues.

    wasn't trying to paint a AMD in a bad light at all.
    The driver page indicated that these were newly introduced issues, so I pointed them out.
    The driver doesn`t introduce these issues, they are just known issues, while on the green side they hide anything like this, to make a happy bubble around the user thinking there is nothing wrong with the drivers, they even recently made a game ready WHQL driver that was so bad they immediately pulled it out, at least AMD is sincere about their stuff.
    Reply
  • blppt
    "at least AMD is sincere about their stuff."

    And yet, here we are nearly 4 months in without a working Fallout 4 CFX profile.

    But thats ok, because they are 'sincere'.

    Nevermind that people like myself may have spent $1000 for a product (crossfired 290x) that doesnt seem to be a high priority for the company to support.
    Reply
  • Fallout 4 CFX profile works on my R9 390x setup since day one. Crimson 16.1 are great drivers and I have no problems playing anything. Haven't tried 16.2.
    Reply
  • I did try Windows 10 with same CFX R9 390x setup and Crimson 16.1 and it was terrible experience but again i had terrible experience with Nvidia under Windows 10 as well. As soon as i got rid of Windows 10 garbage and went back to Windows 7, all the shit works and it works awesome. Having said that, if you really want good gaming experience stick with Windows 7.
    Reply
  • Uri___Pisarev
    I did try Windows 10 with same CFX R9 390x setup and Crimson 16.1 and it was terrible experience but again i had terrible experience with Nvidia under Windows 10 as well. As soon as i got rid of Windows 10 garbage and went back to Windows 7, all the shit works and it works awesome. Having said that, if you really want good gaming experience stick with Windows 7.

    How do you people come up with this stuff. I have W10, have GTX960, there are no issue. Just open the game and 99.9% of the time it runs.

    I have not run into any sort of an issue with W10 in months, and i had a preview version.
    Reply
  • cptnjarhead
    My windows 10 gaming has been excellent. GTA V plays much better in win10 than 7 for me. FO4 plays great, zero problems, but im not running CF either. I did do a clean install of 10, not sure if that makes any difference.
    Reply
  • blppt
    Fallout 4 CFX profile works on my R9 390x setup since day one. Crimson 16.1 are great drivers and I have no problems playing anything. Haven't tried 16.2.

    Granted I dont have a 390, but the drivers for my 290x should be the same since the 390 is a slightly improved/upclocked version of the 290 series. And I played FO4 from the day it unlocked on steam. CFX has not worked properly since launch. And there wasnt even a profile available until the 16.1.1 hotfix on Feb. 1st. Look at AMD's own driver page: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-16.1.1-Hotfix-Release-Notes.aspx


    At one time, late last year after launch, occasionally people reported decent results using the Crysis3 CFX profile for FO4, but it didnt really help me.

    Then, at some point, AMD actively DISABLED CFX until the 16.1 hotfix at the driver level, so you simply could not even force enable the 2nd card if you tried, so there was at the very least a time where you could not have been playing with the 2nd card fully enabled. You may have thought it was working, but it actually wasnt, even if you forced AFR friendly or something along those lines. That is certainly not flawless.

    The 16.1 Hotfix came along and like the next day, Bethesda pushed out their 1.3 update to FO4 which rendered CFX practically unusable again. I suppose thats not entirely AMD's fault, but if they kept in contact with Bethesda, they wouldve known the mandatory update was imminent.

    Finally, even with the latest 16.2 Hotfix, performance remains awful for me with details cranked and CFX enabled. Disable CFX and performance improves remarkably.

    Oh, and my Titan Blacks in my other box have worked great in SLI since the first driver release after FO4's launch. I didnt rag on AMD back then because FO4 does have some Gameworks stuff in it, so I expected problems for a little while with CFX, but its getting sad now that they still havent fixed the problem.
    Reply