AMD Releases 16.8.1 Crimson Driver Update

With the every increasing complexity of software and hardware, it’s standard now for both new games and new graphics card to require new drivers. After launching the RX 470 and RX 460 over the past week, AMD has released a new version of their Crimson Edition drivers for the 2 Polaris GPUs. As the first release for August, 16.8.1 is the latest hotfix that builds on top of last months 16.7.3 WHQL release.

While the headline features are the support for the RX 470 and RX 460, there are also a number of other important fixes. One major one is that limit of maximum memory overclock on the RX 480 while using the Radeon WattMan tool. The issue was a disappointment for those hoping to push their card to the limit using what AMD described as their best overclocking tool yet.

Crossfire also gets some fixes in DOTA 2 and The Division while F1 2016 gets a new profile. For the RX 480, Overwatch and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood get a number of performance fixes while Firefox will be more stable with hardware acceleration enabled. There is still a large list of known issue for AMD to tackle so hopefully we’ll see more fixes later in the month. You can find the full release notes below or download the drivers here.

Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.8.1 Highlights

• Support for:
  • Radeon RX 470 Graphics
  • Radeon RX 460 Graphics

• New AMD Crossfire profile available for:
  • F1 2016

Fixed Issues

• Max memory overclock available on Radeon RX 480 being too low in Radeon WattMan has been resolved.
• Overwatch™ may experience an application crash on some Radeon™ RX 480 configurations when using AMD Crossfire technology mode.
• The Division poor Crossfire scaling may be experienced in some low resolution configurations when using AMD Crossfire technology mode.
• DOTA2™ may experience lower than expected performance when in AMD Crossfire mode.
• Radeon Settings may not report the correct Vulkan™ driver or API version information.
• Firefox™ may experience an application crash when hardware acceleration is enabled for content playback.
• Low frame rate or stutter may be experienced Wolfenstein®: The Old Blood™ on Radeon™ RX 480.
• Updating drivers through Radeon Settings may sometimes fail with an error message.

Known Issues

• A few game titles may fail to launch or crash if the AMD Gaming Evolved overlay is enabled. A temporary workaround is to disable the AMD Gaming Evolved “In Game Overlay”.
• Ark Survival Evolved™ may experience an error message when trying to launch the game in some configurations.
• DOTA2™ may experience an application hang when using the Vulkan™ API and changing resolution or game/quality settings.
• Corruption may be experienced in Rise of the Tomb Raider using the DirectX®12 API on some Hybrid Graphics configurations when performing a task switch.
• Shader Cache may remain be enabled when set to “off” in Radeon Settings on some Hybrid Graphics configurations.
• Radeon RX 480 graphics may experience intermittent stuttering in The Division™ when high game settings are used and vsync is enabled.
• Battlefield™ 4 may experience intermittent crashes when using Mantle. As a work around users are suggested to switch to DirectX®11.
• Radeon Pro Duo may experience a black screen in Total War™: Warhammer with the games API set to DirectX®12 and V-Sync enabled.
• World of Tanks™ may experience stuttering after performing a task switch in AMD Crossfire mode.
• Rocket League™ may experience flickering when in AMD Crossfire mode.
• Ashes of the Singularity™ may experience an application crash with “crazy” in game settings and Multi-GPU enabled.