AMD has been much quicker of late with their driver updates. Just over a week ago, AMD released Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.21 and they are now following it up with Edition 16.3 with more features and fixes. Befitting a full .x release, 16.3 updates not only the driver part but also new features for Radeon Settings, AMD’s Catalyst Control Center replacement.
First off are a number of resolved support and performance issues. Upcoming AAA release Hitman gets specific driver support and Crossfire Profile support. This is expected as the game is bundled with certain Radeon GPUs and AMD is involved in the development. The Park also gains Crossfire support as well.
For performance improvements, AMD is focusing heavily on the Fury lineup, with performance jumping 16% and 60% in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Gears of War Ultimate Edition respectively. The only other notable performance boost is for the R9 380(X) series with a 40% improvement in Gears of War Ultimate Edition. The improvements in Gears of War Ultimate Edition will be welcome as the game has been performing erratically and we hope other cards see some love as well.
In terms of new features, Vulkan support has been added along with Per-Game Display Scaling, a Language Menu and Two Display Eyefinity. Notably, AMD Crossfire Status Indicator has been added along with a Power Efficiency Toggle to turn off some power savings features. Furthermore, AMD XConnect technology, AMD’s external GPU enclosure over Thunderbolt 3 solution has received preliminary support.
In terms of fixes, the most notable one is choppy core clocks which is fixed at the cost of turning off power efficiency. Rise of the Tomb Raider also won’t crash anymore if tessellation is turned on. There still remains a known of known issues as well. Hopefully, we will see a driver to remedy those problems shortly. You can find the full release notes here and driver here.
