Radeon Software Crimson; The Review (Comment Thread)

[SKYMTL]

After finally getting some hands-on time with AMD's new Radeon Software Crimson, we have come to respect it in a big way. Could this be the one thing that makes people rethink AMD's drivers?

Read more here: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ews/70769-radeon-software-crimson-review.html

All I can say is: FINALLY!!! :thumb:

 

[sswilson]

Well... as much as I hate to poop in their cornflakes... I'm less than impressed with their attempting to pull some political style "release bad news in the shadow of good news" wool over our eyes.....

Legacy

Seems to me my AM1 proc is less than a couple of years old and yet the graphics in it are now going to be considered "legacy" without any driver support going forward???????

Am I misreading that?

 

[Vittra]

Pre-GCN stuff is now legacy. Everything GCN is supported. Your chip has GCN.

 

[sa seba]

Well... as much as I hate to poop in their cornflakes... I'm less than impressed with their attempting to pull some political style "release bad news in the shadow of good news" wool over our eyes.....

Legacy

Seems to me my AM1 proc is less than a couple of years old and yet the graphics in it are now going to be considered "legacy" without any driver support going forward???????

Am I misreading that?

You got me worried there, but after going through the find your driver thing at the AMD site (for an Athlon 5350, Win 7-64Bit in my case), the Crimson Software came up:

Radeon Software Crimson Edition Graphics Driver Installer for Windows 7 64-Bit

AMD A-Series APUs with Radeon™ R3 Graphics is listed in Supported Products.​

 

[Vittra]

As I said above, it's GCN, so it's supported. It's the pre-GCN stuff that's being moved to legacy, and rightly so. Time to kill that stuff. If AMDs going to get this right moving forward, they have to let go.

I'll delve through this article in depth shortly. I'm really curious about this Crimson release. Unfortunately I returned an R9 Nano this morning due to insane coil whine, the likes of which I've never experienced on a GPU before. I was hoping the HWC review unit was an aberration, though it wasn't the only review to make mention of it.

I'm still willing to revisit AMD come Arctic Islands, especially with Freesync refinements, but a monitor that better utilizes it still needs to come out. That could be the Eizo Foris FS2735, but they are very vague about how Freesync works and ETA is "Winter".

 

[sswilson]

Pre-GCN stuff is now legacy. Everything GCN is supported. Your chip has GCN.

You got me worried there, but after going through the find your driver thing at the AMD site (for an Athlon 5350, Win 7-64Bit in my case), the Crimson Software came up:

Radeon Software Crimson Edition Graphics Driver Installer for Windows 7 64-Bit

AMD A-Series APUs with Radeon™ R3 Graphics is listed in Supported Products.​

So the R3 variant isn't considered an HD 8400 in this circumstance? That's not clear in the legacy statement. Maybe I can put my pitchfork(s) away.....

 

[SKYMTL]

Llano, Trinity, and Richland have moved to legacy status as well. That's pretty brutal since it is a relatively "new" APU, being launched less than 3 years ago.

All pre-GCN architectures receive Crimson as ONE FINAL driver rollout and then that's it.

 

[sswilson]

Llano, Trinity, and Richland have moved to legacy status as well. That's pretty brutal since it is a relatively "new" APU, being launched less than 3 years ago.

All pre-GCN architectures receive Crimson as ONE FINAL driver rollout and then that's it.

So what's your take then... is the R3 HD8400 support being dropped? If so, that quite frankly might be the final nail in the coffin for me.

Is this just new development or (like my HD5XXX/4XXX switchable graphics laptop) will new versions of cats not even recognize the card(s)? If they can't provide driver support for at least 5+ years on hardware they sold pretty heavy (the a10s) they don't belong in the business.

 

[CTA]

yeah finally!


i am awesome that software can make a difference... seriously... if there is a genius programmers then there is a good chance to enhance the performance like this.... i always thought hardware is hardware... firmware is firmware... well i will see...


anyway... i am check the software for the legacy hd6900... too bad... its not stable yet...

Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta	312 MB	Crimson Edition Beta	11/23/2015

i guess i will be waiting for a stable version...

 

[SKYMTL]

I have contacted AMD for clarification but I believe I know what they will say: all pre-GCN are now legacy. That means every APU up to Kaveri. Kaveri onwards was GCN.

Essentially, if you have an APU or even ULV-based part that has an integrated GPU with a four-digit product code you are SOL.