Set up amd catalyst control center for games. Laptop setup for gaming (low FPS in combat) - Prime World Customer Support. Enabling Smooth Playback and Adjusting Video Quality

Even the most powerful graphics card will not be able to reach its potential without being properly configured. Almost all video card manufacturers provide specialized control panels for driver control, and today we will get acquainted with such a panel from ATI - the so-called CATALYST Control Center (hereinafter referred to as CCC). The article will cover both basic and advanced driver settings, which can be accessed from the control center.

If you are just starting to explore the world of three-dimensional graphics, first read the article Educational program on 3D. Many issues are covered there in much more detail than the scope of this article allows.

Please note that the settings available in the control center are generated dynamically. This means that if a feature is not supported by your video card, then you will not see it in CCC. If the setting is there, but not available, look for another setting related to it. As a rule, in the CCC prompts it is clearly written: for the parameter to be available X, enable or configure the setting first. Y.

In cases where any settings apply to any type of display device (such as a monitor or TV), we will refer to them as displays.

Architecture

The control center has an architecture client-server based on. NET Framework. This architecture allows third-party developers to create and integrate their own software modules into CCC:

The control center consists of several components. The CCC run-time acts as a server, providing communication between the display driver and the user interface.

NET Framework communicates components through localhost. This is full-fledged network activity, and although it does not leave the system, some firewalls react to it quite nervously.

Installation

Installing CCC is extremely simple: download the latest version and start the installation by double-clicking on the downloaded file (for CATALYST 7.1 it is 7-1_ccc_en_40211.exe). Upon completion, the computer must be restarted.

ATI CATALYST Control Center requires the presence of Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1, 2.0 or 3.0 . Without it, the installation will be aborted with the following message:

Please note that .NET 1.1 and 2.0 are quite different and can live in the system together. But .NET 3.0 is fully compatible with 2.0, so there is no need to install the second version if you have the third one.

First start

When you launch CCC for the first time, you will be prompted to select the CCC operating mode - Basic or Advanced:

Basic mode

When you launch CCC, you will see a window with three tabs:

The first tab will allow you to make some adjustments using the wizard, but its options are rather limited. The third tab will provide information about the hardware and software components your video card.

But on the second tab - "Quick Setup" We'll take a closer look...

On this tab, you have access to three basic groups of settings: display, 3D graphics, and video. Each of them contains one or more parameters that can be changed.

AT "Display settings" you can change the desktop resolution, select its mode, configure the extended desktop, or expand the image:

3D graphics quality can only be configured in the most general terms, i.e. slider better/worse. Fine tuning options in basic mode is not available.

Settings video playback are also not rich, however, the necessary minimum is present:

The settings provided by the CCC depend on the devices it finds. Here is what the tab looks like quick setup for laptop:

The window for changing the settings of the laptop desktop:

There is nothing more significant to say about the basic view mode. All settings are described in sufficient detail directly in the base window, there are also good tooltips. And if so, go to the advanced mode.

Advanced mode

Switching from basic to advanced mode is very simple - just press the button "Additionally" in the lower left corner of the base window.

The number of settings in the window on the left will quite please a sophisticated user:

CCC Settings

The settings for the CCC itself are accessible from the top menu.

You can change the operating mode and set up an extended view mode in the menu "View":

Check the checkboxes on the items you want to see in the main CCC window and select from the menu "View" paragraph "Custom View":

Menu "Keyboard Shortcuts" will make the management of CCC capabilities much more convenient:

Customize hotkeys for everyone significant functions CCC, and you no longer have to get into the leisurely interface of the control center for any reason:

Menu "Profiles" will help you download the optimal graphics settings personally for the selected program:

You can select which parameter groups to include in the profile. To do this, you need to set up the desired group in the main CCC window (for example, 3D), and then simply check the necessary checkbox in the manager:

There are also several ways to enable the profile you need in the manager:

Finally, you can choose the program with which this profile will be associated:

This is especially convenient for games of different generations: some work quickly on maximum settings, others barely move on medium. Well, now you do not need to reconfigure the graphics settings before launching the games - it is enough to configure the desired profile once.

Menu "Settings" is responsible for the parameters of launch, operation and appearance CCC:

Selecting the CCC interface language:

Unfortunately, the translation into Russian is rather mediocre, and perhaps you will like the English interface more.

The choice of the so-called "skin", changing the appearance of the CCC:

The preview window will allow you to quickly evaluate the result of changing the skin.

And now let's go directly to the main window of the control center.

Information centre

Information centre, just like in the basic mode, provides information about the hardware and software components of the video card.

Selecting an item "Graphics Software", you can find out the version of CATALYST, driver and CCC:

Selecting an item "Hardware" , you can find out the video card ID, BIOS version, bus type and memory size:

Display manager

Display manager allows you to configure the display settings of the standard desktop Windows desktop:

Here you can assign a primary and secondary display, select the resolution and color depth of the desktop for it, and also rotate the image if your monitor supports portrait mode.

If the system has a second monitor or TV, desktop configuration is also performed in this window.

Desktops are configured using the context menu, called by right-clicking on the image of the desired display:

You can choose from three desktop configurations:

By default, the found display is connected in mode extended desktop. All programs will open on the main desktop, but you can drag them to the second one with the mouse.

The position of the second desktop relative to the main one can be set by dragging it with the mouse:

Cloning simply creates a copy of the desktop on the second display. This is convenient, for example, for organizing training or various presentations. You just need to connect a projector or a larger plasma panel.

Full screen video on desktop clone is only available with CATALYST 6.5 drivers for X1xxx series graphics cards.

Stretched desktop useful when using two monitors installed in close proximity to each other. Your desktop is fully stretched across both displays, creating a kind of panorama.

If you don't need the second display temporarily, you can turn it off. To do this, just drag the icon with the mouse to a special field below:

The second display is turned on by similar dragging, and you can immediately select the desired operating mode:

Button "Forced" allows you to override display settings that are required by a particular application or not allowed by this application:

Display options

Paragraph "Display Options" allows you to customize some Extra options display:

In the first group, you can force the refresh rate in full-screen applications (usually 3D).

In some applications, the default refresh rate may be too low. On CRT monitors, this is not only harmful to the eyes, but also badly affects the speed of games. Forcing the refresh rate for full-screen DirectX/OpenGL applications will allow you to work around this issue. But for liquid crystal monitors, this parameter is of little use.

Below you can set how you want to search for additional displays - automatically or manually.

In a group Control Options display, you can enable forced detection of TVs with non-standard inputs not recognized by your graphics card. For displays with limited resolution, you can enable display in the list Display Manager all modes, including panoramic.

Monitor Options

Paragraph "Monitor settings #" Allows you to set the Display Data Channel (DDC) of the monitor, output information about the connected monitor, and adjust the screen position/size.

AT "Properties" you will see information about the connected monitor. Also here you can enable the use of EDID - Extended Display Identification Data.

Adjustments Monitors allow you to change the size and position of the desktop on the screen. You can also enable composite and adjust horizontal/vertical sync.

"HDTV support" needed for displays that support HDTV modes not listed in the display manager.

Note:
- These modes are not indicated in the Display Manager, because frequencies of 30Hz or 25(50) in computer terminology are unacceptable.
- Switching to HDTV modes is carried out from the Display Manager after checking the appropriate checkbox in this window. When HDTV is activated, the video card is completely transferred to this mode, and other permissions in the Display Manager become unavailable. Return to normal mode is possible only with the button forced item Display manager.

"Colors of Avivo"(only available for the X1xxx series) will allow you to adjust the color hue and saturation for each connected display.

Since CCC uses a settings view that is dependent on the device connected to the video card, when using a device other than the standard monitor, the list of configurable parameters may change. For example, when connecting a TV after "Monitor settings #" you will see an additional item "TV Properties #" with the following settings:

Paragraph "Colors of Avivo" completely identical to that in the monitor settings.

But on the laptop we considered the item "Monitor settings #" changes into "Laptop Display Properties #":

3D

The most interesting item for gamers "3D" - 3D graphics settings.

"Standard options" do not deserve a detailed analysis - the graphics quality is adjusted by the better / worse slider in exactly the same way as the basic mode.

Smoothing(AntiAliasing, AA) allows you to remove the ladder effect, which is most noticeable on slanted edges and contours of objects.

ATI video cards, starting with the Radeon 9700, use the multisampling method (MSAA). The theory is discussed in detail in the article Educational program on 3D, we can only add that on this moment anti-aliasing is the most difficult way for video cards to improve 3D images. If you see that the video card can not cope with your favorite game, then it is advisable to sacrifice anti-aliasing in the first place.

Here's what anti-aliasing looks like with different selections (using the example of the road from the demo video of the old control center):

Also in this window you can enable temporal smoothing(Temporal A.A.). It processes fewer samples at faster speed. However, note that temporal anti-aliasing only works when enabled. vertical sync(V-sync), which limits the speed of the video card in games. When temporal anti-aliasing is enabled, vertical sync is forced by the drivers.

Adaptive anti-aliasing is combined - a combination of multisampling (MSAA) and supersampling (SSAA) is used, while its strongest sides are taken from each method.

Adaptive anti-aliasing provides more realistic rendering of content transparent elements 3D objects, however, are also quite resource intensive. In addition, some applications may not work correctly with it. Look at the little puddle from the game "Eastern Front: Unknown War"- the screenshot on the left was taken with adaptive anti-aliasing enabled:

Anisotropic filtering(Anisotropic Filtering, AF) provides high-quality detailing of surfaces with a three-dimensional perspective - namely, receding into the distance and gradually merging with the background.

Here is how anisotropic filtering of different levels looks like on the example of the same road:

Anisotropic filtering works more efficiently when used in conjunction with the multiple mapping mode (MipMap). For modern video cards, the price for using anisotropic filtering is relatively low.

Catalyst A.I. designed to improve and speed up 3D image filtering.

This is what CATALYST A.I. does. through clever optimizations and only for applications known to him. Those. ATI programmers have created a kind of database that contains information about games - namely, what you can save on in a particular game so that it works faster and the loss of quality is invisible to the eye.

A.I. stands for "Artificial Intelligence", which means "Artificial Intelligence".

Level of Detail of Multiple Displays(MipMap Detail Level) allows you to save details on the surface of a three-dimensional object receding into the distance while gradually merging with the background.

For such objects, depending on the required level of detail, several texture maps of high and low resolutions are used. Modern video cards practically do not load this method of image enhancement.

Paragraph "All settings" simply collects all the above settings in one window - without beautiful picture, which visually shows the effect of applying the selected parameter.

Please note that Vsync control is only available in this window.

Additional settings provide access to some DirectX and OpenGL specific options. As a rule, you should not touch them - the positive effect is minimal, but you can mess it up.

This completes the 3D graphics settings.

Color

Paragraph "Color" allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, gamma of the desktop - both rough and fine.

All settings related to video viewing are concentrated under the item "Video".

Video

basic settings allow you to adjust the quality of the video using pre-created profiles - Home, Office, Theater, Custom. Just like the standard 3D settings, it is a tribute to the basic mode.

Video cards of the Radeon 1xxx family and older use Avivo technology, which is reflected in the addendum Avivo to the titles of the subsections.

Paragraph "Color: Standard" allows you to adjust video settings such as brightness, contrast, gamma, hue, and saturation. A small demo video will immediately show you the consequences of the settings made.

theater mode allows you to customize how you view streaming video. You can choose how to view video for clone mode and extended desktop - standard or full screen.

Paragraph "Quality" is responsible for deinterlacing settings and allows you to create one frame from two interlaced half-frames for further output to a progressive scan display (for example, to a monitor). If the display does not support progressive scan, the utility given parameter small.

Paragraph "All settings" simply collects all the above settings in one window (similar to 3D settings).

This completes the video viewing settings.

VPU Recovery

VPU Recovery allows you to avoid freezing the computer if the graphics processor stops responding to driver commands. An attempt is being made to reset the graphics card settings, and in case of a successful reset, you will simply be thrown out of the game. And this is still much better than the Reset button.

If the computer fails to automatically recover from a crash, VPU Recover will switch the computer to software rendering mode. This will allow you to save whatever else can be saved before restarting your computer.

ATI Overdrive

ATI Overdrive automatically overclocks the video card depending on the temperature of the GPU. On the Radeon X1xxx, you can run the built-in test program, which will independently find the limits of overclocking your video card.

Owners of older video cards of the X1xxx family should take into account that they operate in two modes - 2D and 3D. During office work, the voltages and frequencies of the video card chip/memory are reduced, which reduces the temperature and stress on its components. And the video card shows its full speed only in 3D. For example, for X1900XTX the frequencies for 2D are set to 500/600MHz for the chip/memory, and 650/775 for 3D.

The service is responsible for dynamic switching of frequencies on older Radeons. ATI HotKey Poller.

ATI Mobile and Embedded Solutions

ATI Mobile Solutions may have settings in CCC that are not available on conventional video cards. An example of this is energy saving technology POWERPLAY. You can set different performance of the video card when running on mains and batteries, and the threshold for lowering the battery level. This technology lowers the frequencies and voltages of the chip / memory of the video card in the same way as it is done on mobile CPUs.

On mobile and desktop ATI chipsets with integrated graphics setting of memory allocated for video is available. Since integrated graphics eat up some of the system memory for their own needs, you can limit its requests a little.

Russian interface flaws

As we already mentioned, the translation of the interface into Russian is rather mediocre. Some phrases may be cumbersome and inaccurate, but at least understandable.

In some places, sentences do not fit into the space allotted to them and are cut off:

And the presence of real errors is quite capable of confusing you. Here are just a few examples seen when setting up a multi-monitor configuration:

Translation of the help system also causes criticism. If the tooltips are quite satisfactory, then the help translation raises legitimate doubts that its translators and interface localizers have ever communicated with each other. When writing an article, I regularly had to refer to the help, and the author often spent several minutes trying to correlate what he saw in the interface with what was described in the CCC help system.

Conclusion

In general, the CATALYST Control Center does its job quite well. All settings are easily accessible and quite logical, the scientific poke method works properly and there are no particular difficulties when setting up a video card.

The main disadvantage of CCC is its slowness. An absolutely clean system after installing the control center starts to load noticeably longer, and even after the final drawing of the desktop, it crunches for a long time, periodically ceasing to respond to the mouse.

The brakes directly in the interface also interfere with life, especially when setting up a multi-monitor configuration. The system freezes, the screen flickers, the CCC window takes so painfully long to redraw that it looks like a fatal error.

But the main thing is that the CCC fully fulfills the tasks assigned to it. If you have a philosophical outlook on life and infrequently tune your graphics card, then CCC is fine for you.

If you decide to download this utility, then most likely you know in general terms what kind of software it is and what it is for. In this thread, we'll take a closer look at frequently asked questions such as:

• Performance tuning (settings for games);
• Failed to start the program;
• AMD Catalyst Control Center does not start or open;
• How to uninstall an application?

Game settings

To switch to the performance settings mode, you should go to the “Games” tab in the main menu, and then open the “Global settings”. In the menu that opens, we see two tabs. The first is global graphics; the second is OverDrive technology. Be sure to pay attention to each point. Let's start with the first one:

1. 1. Smoothing mode.Select the level and anti-aliasing filter (if supported by the video adapter). x2, x4 etc. These are the so-called steps, or levels of smoothing. The higher, the less squares will be visible and the clearer the picture is observed in games.
   2. smoothing method.It has three types: multiple, adaptive and oversampling. The higher, the more the video card will heat up. It is not recommended to be used at maximum settings with weak hardware. This leads to overheating, and in the future to equipment failure.
   3. Morphological filtering.Unlike anisotropic, it does more blurring than anti-aliasing. There are few places where you may need it, so I advise you to always keep it on.
   4. Anisotropic filtering mode.In graphics, they are used to improve only the surfaces of images, which in one way or another have a slope. There are four modes: x2, x4, x8 and x16. In modern machines, it practically does not negatively affect performance, therefore it is used at the maximum level. Perfectly improves quality.
   5. Texture filtering quality.Has three modes: high level, standard and performance. We expose the one that is more suitable for your hardware.
   6. Surface format optimization.Another filtering method, but already the textures themselves, and not anti-aliasing, as was the case with morphological. Subtly improves quality, but also practically does not load the system.
   7. Wait for the vertical update.This is vertical sync. There are always four options: on, two of them depend on the game settings, and off. I advise you to keep it always on, because. benefits are not visible to the naked eye. But, at the same time, not a particularly strong load goes to the video card. More of a marketing ploy of the company than a real benefit.
   8. Triple Buffering OpenGL.Allows you to significantly speed up the process of displaying a picture, unlike its predecessor. Simply put, it has three buffers 1, 2 and 3. The picture is shown from the second, the next picture is processed in the first.
   9. Tessellation mode.Roughly speaking, it is necessary to improve the entire image, it is used as a “planer” for too rough surfaces and rounds off surfaces. Naturally, you have to pay for everything, in this case - performance. Tessellation example:

Failed to start?

• In most cases, especially new versions, there is a delay. Almost always, a second click on the tray icon or on the desktop helps.
• You may have installed the wrong software version for your adapter.
• Make sure the video card is from ATI Radeon.
• If nothing helps, contact support.

If your computer has a built-in and a discrete graphics card and the discrete one is not automatically used for the game, you can choose it yourself. Select your graphics card brand and operating system to read the instructions.

The instructions are relevant for World of Tanks and World of Warships game clients. Take action for the game where you are having problems.

ATI Radeon

Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10

Notebooks equipped with Switchable Graphics/Switchable Graphic technology can use a high-performance discrete adapter for “heavy” 3D applications and a power-saving integrated adapter for less complex tasks.

This article will guide you through setting up switchable graphics using Radeon™ settings.

Driver Compatibility

To ensure compatibility, install the latest laptop manufacturer (OEM, or original equipment manufacturer) drivers for both discrete and integrated graphics cards.

Also, in many cases, you can use the latest compatible universal driver from the manufacturer(s) of integrated and discrete graphics cards. This will allow you to run games and applications on your laptop that are not supported by the latest OEM drivers.

Accessing the switchable graphics menu

Switchable graphics can work in several standard modes. It can also be configured to run a specific application using the desired graphics card. For this:

Selecting Switchable Graphics Mode for Applications

In the Switchable Graphics menu, the Recent Apps tab will be displayed by default. This view lists recent and currently running applications, as well as the switchable graphics mode assigned to them.

Please note that for most applications, the default mode is usually selected by the operating system. Applications with specific video card requirements are marked with a padlock next to their name. You cannot change the settings for them. These applications always run on the integrated graphics card in power saving mode.

For applications that are not locked by the operating system, you can select the following switchable graphics modes from the drop-down menu:

• Power Saving - selects an integrated graphics card for the application that consumes less power but is less efficient.
• "High performance" - the application will run on a discrete graphics card. It consumes more power but provides better performance.
• "Based on the power supply" - in this mode, the application will use the built-in video card if the laptop is running on battery power, and the discrete one if it is connected to a power outlet.

Choose a game mode high performance. The change will take effect the next time you run this application.

If the game is not available in the list of running applications, click on the "Running Applications" option and select "Installed Profiled Applications" to view all programs that are detected by your video driver.

Check if the page contains the application for which you want to set switchable graphics. If not, click Browse to find the app and add it to the list.

Tip: If the list of applications is large and difficult to navigate, enter the name of the application in the "Search" field.

To reset app settings to basic settings, tap Reset. Please note: this action will reset the settings for all applications from the list.

Controlling the use of integrated and discrete graphics cards

On laptops under Windows control® 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) and newer, you can monitor graphics card usage in Task Manager. You can call it by pressing the key combination Ctrl + Shift + Esc. Necessary information located in the "Performance" section.

For some games, for example, for online shooters, it is not so much the quality of the picture that is important, but the high frame rate (number of frames per second). This is necessary in order to respond as quickly as possible to what is happening on the screen.

By default, all driver settings AMD Radeon arranged in such a way as to obtain the highest quality picture. We will configure the software with an eye on performance, and hence speed.

AMD Graphics Settings

Optimal settings help increase FPS in games, which makes the picture smoother and more beautiful. You should not expect a big increase in performance, but you can “squeeze out” a few frames by disabling some parameters that have little effect on the visual perception of the image.

The video card is configured using special software, which is part of the software that serves the card (driver) called AMD Catalyst Control Center.

1. You can access the settings program by clicking PKM on the desktop.

   

2. To simplify the work, include "Standard View" by clicking on the button "Options" in the upper right corner of the interface.

   

3. Since we plan to configure settings for games, we are going to the appropriate section.

   

4. Next, select a subsection with the name "Performance in games" and click on the link "Standard 3D Image Settings".

   

5. At the bottom of the block we see a slider that is responsible for the ratio of quality and performance. decline given value will help to get a small increase in FPS. Uncheck the box, move the slider all the way to the left and click "Apply".

   

6. Let's go back to the section. "Games" by clicking on the button in the breadcrumbs. Here we need a block "Image quality" and link "Smoothing".

   

   Here we also uncheck all the boxes ( and "Morphological filtering") and move the slider "Level" to the left. Select the filter value box. Click again "Apply".

   

7. Again we go to the section "Games" and this time click on the link "Smoothing method".

   

   In this block, we also remove the slider to the left.

   

8. The next setting is "Anisotropic Filtering".

   

   To configure this setting, uncheck the box next to "Use app settings" and move the slider towards the value "Pixel Sampling". Don't forget to apply parameters.

   

In some cases, these actions can increase FPS by 20%, which will give some advantage in the most dynamic games.

Absolutely new interface, functionality and performance improvements

Introduction

We don't often write articles dedicated exclusively to updating video driver versions, even if the special versions promise big performance boosts in games, which we are already used to. But there are exceptions, as was the case with the AMD Catalyst Omega driver, a review of which was published on our website about a year ago. That version was a major driver update from AMD, featuring new features and performance improvements in many popular games. Since the release of the Catalyst Omega driver, AMD's software has been downloaded over 60 million times - an impressive number.

Improving drivers for video cards is very useful, since a modern video card is not just a hardware solution, but a software and hardware solution, in which software is the most important part that can be improved without the need to replace hardware solutions. Drivers for video cards from AMD under the familiar name Catalyst were first released a long time ago, the first version of ATI Catalyst appeared back in 2002, and video drivers for Radeon in general have been released for more than 20 years.

During this time, graphics card drivers have become more than just device drivers designed solely to keep them working. Now the driver package includes a decent set software: user interfaces, libraries, tools, applications, etc. This whole set of software is habitually called a video driver, but in fact it is already almost a small graphical operating system. No wonder that quality software is very important for gamers, game developers and graphics professionals.

Today is the next major and most important video driver update for AMD. Since this is the first announcement on behalf of a new division of the Radeon Technologies Group, they decided to give it a new name - Radeon Software. We say goodbye to the usual Catalyst drivers, their era is over and a new era has begun. The first version of the Radeon Software drivers was named Crimson Edition, and in the future, global versions will be released, named one of the shades of red (Crimson - crimson).

The announcement of the planned release of a radically new version of video drivers aroused great interest: dozens of articles and news were published, thousands of comments were written in social networks and forums. Users of AMD graphics cards were clearly looking forward to the new driver. And for good reason, because it gives them a completely new user interface with reduced load times, new and improved features, including reduced power consumption for watching videos and light games, as well as optimizing 3D rendering performance.

In 2015, there were three major WHQL driver releases and nine beta versions, all important game projects like GTA V, Star Wars Battlefront, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 received optimized driver versions from the day they were released. But plans for 2016 are even broader, with up to six major WHQL driver releases planned, with additional betas as needed and major hit games released.

New Radeon Settings UI

One of the most important changes in the new driver pack is a completely new graphics card settings UI and a redesigned installer. AMD has redesigned the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) settings tool with a completely new tool called Radeon Settings. It received a modern user interface, quite simple and clear, and most importantly - much faster than the previous CCC. Added a number of new features to Radeon Settings as well.

At work, Radeon Settings uses a software development tool called Qt. Since this set of libraries and tools is cross-platform, it is theoretically possible to easily port the code to other operating systems, such as Android. But for now, the new user interface works in all operating systems of the Windows family - in versions 7, 8.1 and 10.

Among the main improvements of the new driver, we note: a much faster application start time, an intuitive GPU settings interface, a new settings and profiles manager for gaming applications, a new interface for GPU overclocking capabilities, as well as changed settings for display output, video data processing and AMD multi-monitor output configuration eyefinity.

At the heart of Radeon Software Crimson Edition is a completely redesigned settings and installer interface that improves the user experience when installing, launching and using the new version of the software. Just as a theater begins with a hanger, any driver package begins with its installer. According to AMD, the installation time in the new version has been reduced by about 1.4-1.5 times compared to the previous installer. It also received a new interface - quite simple and straightforward.

The functionality of the installer has not changed - you can choose the driver components necessary for installation in approximately the same way. Of the unusual (perhaps this is true only for the beta version issued to the press), we note only the possibility of choosing the installation user interface: Either Radeon Settings (AMD Settings) or AMD Control Center (CCC). But we liked the simplified and more understandable installer progress bar - now it is one.

Otherwise, apart from simplifying the interface and speeding up installation, the process is not much different from the previous version. But the launch of the Radeon Settings themselves after installing them is much faster than it was in the case of the clumsy CCC. To launch Radeon Settings, just select the appropriate item in context menu Windows desktop or double-click on the special red icon in the system tray. You can also quickly select a profile for games and video data from this menu.

The new Radeon Settings launches literally in a second, the total application launch time has been reduced by 2-3 times compared to previous versions, and this is really noticeable, especially when re-opening the settings.

In addition, the initialization time for connected displays has been significantly reduced - from 11 to 3 seconds. If this is not so important for the main monitor at system startup, then when connecting an external display or projector to a laptop, such an acceleration can only be welcomed.

As for the convenience of the new interface, here we can note a decrease in the number necessary action to get to any settings. For example, it took seven mouse clicks to install the previous driver, and new radeon Software Crimson Edition is content with only three such clicks. Roughly the same applies to the Radeon Settings interface itself.

Let's first take a look at all the pages of the new Radeon Settings panel. start page shown in the screenshot above, and the next one shows the page for checking for software updates - this is done quite conveniently, although separate page it was not necessary to give for updates:

Let's move on to the settings of the Radeon Settings utility itself - there is a convenient and popular option to restore all default settings, the ability to enable the tray icon, links with AMD, as well as some interface settings, including the ability to disable advertising banners(probably for the future).

The advanced settings button brings up a separate window with a completely different interface, familiar to us from previous versions of CCC - here you can configure some additional settings for working with displays and sound, which (yet?) are not included in Radeon Settings:

But let's move on to the main sections of the new utility. The first button with the game controller icon brings up a menu with a set of game profiles found by the driver in the user's system. There is also the possibility of changing the global 3D rendering quality settings:

On the one hand, profiles for games and changing their settings are quite conveniently made, on the other hand, games are not cataloged in any way, they all lie in one dump list, which is not very convenient. Global settings and settings for specific games are approximately the same and differ little in functionality from the previous ones:

The main thing visual difference new interface - it stretches and the utility window resizes to any size (almost the minimum borders still remain), automatically rearranging the order of the controls. This is especially important and convenient given the huge difference in resolutions of modern user devices.

Alas, you have to pay for everything - it seems to us that the settings have slightly lost in convenience and visibility, compared to what it was before, because all controls are the same and their location in the window is not fixed - now they will have to be searched for before any changes.

Immediately next to it, overclocking capabilities are configured, familiar in terms of a set of settings, but in a new interface. From this panel, you can view the current frequencies, temperature, fan speed, as well as change the target frequencies, power consumption and fan speed - all as usual.

The next panel is for setting up video data output - you can either choose a preset profile from several configured by AMD, or set up your own custom settings, enabling all quality enhancement technologies as you need. Recall that some settings remained in the additional menu called separately (see above).

This settings panel is for configuring displays. In this case, an LG monitor with FreeSync technology support is connected to the test system, and it seemed very convenient for us to indicate the frequencies within which the this technology: 48 to 75 Hz. The choice of settings is not too rich, you can also find all the rest in the additional menu.

We just have to look at the panel with information about the hardware and software configuration of the user system - in a convenient form it shows everything you need in maximum detail on three pages.

Overall, the new Radeon Settings interface is comfortable enough to get used to. It really works noticeably faster than CCC and does not consume too much memory. True, if you open many tabs after launch, then the consumption of system memory can reach 175-200 MB, which is a bit much even by modern standards.

Now let's talk about subjective shortcomings. Of the shortcomings we noted - the absence (or we did not find) a direct choice of the interface language - only the one installed in the system is used. It would be nice to be able to set the English interface, and not even because the translation is not perfect, but because many Russian words are too long for such an interface and are not included in short blocks. We also didn’t like the fact that you can’t turn off the now-fashionable translucency of the interface.

And we also lack additional functionality, such as monitoring temperatures, frequencies, voltages and other parameters with their display during the game or in the form of graphs, as is done in third party utilities. In addition, despite assurances of better stability of the new settings panel, the application in idle mode was terminated several times without any action from the user - there is still work to be done:

However, it is very likely that this problem is related to the costs of the pre-beta version, intended for evaluation, so we will not nitpick too much, hoping that Final version Radeon Software Crimson Edition will be devoid of these annoying flaws.

From what remains to be added on the topic - a new utility for uninstalling AMD drivers and cleaning the system from their "tails" -. This utility removes all previous installed drivers AMD Catalyst, including video and audio drivers, and also cleans files and registry entries left by them. Useful thing.

Performance optimization

And here is another interesting section - increasing the rendering speed in games is one of the most anticipated for all users. Such expectations are especially high when special editions are released, such as Catalyst Omega or Crimson Edition. In the case of the Catalyst Omega, performance optimizations have been carried out to a greater extent than usual, but for the Crimson Edition, the main change is still a new interface. But we were also promised improvements in 3D rendering speed and a general increase in comfort at AMD.

Radeon Software Crimson Edition delivers performance improvements to virtually all Radeon graphics card users, but in varying sizes and conditions. For example, the increase in frame rate for one of the popular DirectX 12 benchmarks Fable Legends is 7-20%, depending on the resolution: FullHD or 4K, in the latter case, the performance increase will be less. This test was conducted on a system with an AMD Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card, comparing the Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers with the rather old release of AMD Catalyst 15.7.1.

But not only benchmarks, AMD representatives also note solid speed gains in modern games. For example, the increase in average frame rate in the game Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is about 6-8%, depending on the resolution. In this case, Radeon Software Crimson Edition is already compared with AMD Catalyst 15.10 Beta.

This chart shows the gains in several popular recent games with Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers compared to Catalyst 15.10 Beta. Also noted are improvements in rendering speed in the operating room. Linux system. The gains from Radeon Software Crimson Edition on this system are most often around 10-15%, but sometimes it comes up to 50-55% (for a Total War game).

As usual, AMD compares rendering speeds between the latest drivers and fairly old versions like Catalyst 15.7. It seems to us that it would be much more interesting to compare the speed of the latest version with more current drivers, including the latest Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta available on the company's website, which we did on our own. We also took another old version - 15.9.1 Beta.

The set of games for our own express test turned out like this: Star Wars Battlefront, Fallout 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. For our measurements, we used the video card of the model Radeon R9 380 and a test system based on the top Intel processor operated by the operating room Windows systems 7 SP1, took a resolution of 1920x1080 and tried to set the maximum game settings (except for the very demanding Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, where the settings were set to High). Let's see if we get speed gains in these games?

As you can see, there are still small gains in the most modern games, although they are quite insignificant if we compare the Crimson Edition with the latest available beta version of Catalyst. But compared to the not-so-new driver version 15.9.1, AMD's test card received an additional 5-25% increase in speed. Probably, for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, the driver has already been optimized earlier, but the rest of the games have accelerated decently. But if we compare the new product with Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta, then the gains in games turned out to be within the measurement error - up to 2-4%.

Let's look at the frame rate graphs in the above games, obtained as a result of testing:

The performance graphs in the games we tested confirm our findings - there is no noticeable performance improvement over the latest available Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta video driver. And here is the driver outdated version 15.9.1 clearly lags behind them in almost all the games used for testing.

Shader caching

But not only frame rate measures user comfort, there are other indicators that have been improved in the new Crimson Edition driver. For example, let's note the appearance of the possibility of shader caching - storing the compiled shader code on the drive, which can speed up the loading and execution of many game projects using DirectX 10 and DirectX 11.

Why is shader caching necessary at all? Many games now feature an open "seamless" world where shaders are sent to the video driver during the game, but they still need to be compiled, which can cause frame rate jerks and longer loading times for levels and missions. The shader cache, on the other hand, stores previously compiled shaders and quickly retrieves them from the storage as needed in a ready-made form, which requires less work for the CPU and video driver. This improves game and level load times and eliminates some of the performance drops (frame rate spikes) while playing.

Shader cache usage is set in game profiles and information is stored in the AppDataLocalAMDDXCache directory. Some games already have Shader Cache enabled in their profiles by default, but it can always be disabled in the Radeon Settings 3D Settings Manager.

These are all words, but what about real time downloads, is it really decreasing? According to AMD, enabling the shader cache causes a significant reduction in reload time (when there are already compiled shaders in the cache) in games such as Bioshock Infinite and Star Wars Battlefront. The benchmark loading in the first game without shader caching is 11.35 seconds, and with the cache enabled it is only 9.96 seconds, which is 12% less. For Star Wars Battlefront, the loading time of the Survival - Endor level with shader caching is actually 34.5% faster - it takes 11.2 seconds instead of 17.10 seconds. Good gains!

In terms of improving smoothness during gameplay, another scenario where the shader cache helps is games that send shaders to execute as the game progresses, rather than when the level is loaded. In this case, there may be performance hits due to the fact that the CPU does the work of compiling the shader code right during the game. The shader cache significantly reduces the possibility of such problems related specifically to compiling shaders.

As you can see in the middle of the graph, with shader caching disabled in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (High Quality settings, SMAA T2X anti-aliasing enabled at 4K resolution), on a configuration of a pair of Radeon R9 390X video cards in CrossFire mode, the moment of compiling the shader is clearly visible at disabled caching. The value of 2149 ms for rendering a frame means very noticeable “brakes” in gameplay- one frame was shown on the screen for more than two seconds, and the player's actions are not displayed on it all this time. Enabling the shader cache leads to the fact that the peak of the drop in rendering speed is significantly reduced, and as a result, the user sees a relatively smooth video sequence.

Improvements in frame pacing technology

Support for smoother multi-GPU rendering using frame pacing technology has been in AMD drivers for a long time, since Catalyst 13.12. The technology works for CrossFire configurations consisting of dedicated desktop GPUs and for combining APU and GPU power when working on rendering - in AMD Dual Graphics configurations. The new Radeon Software Crimson Edition brings this technology to games that use not only DirectX 10 and 11, but also DirectX 9, including many games known as eSports.

The graph shows the time of work on the rendering of frames in the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim using DirectX 9 on a test CrossFire system consisting of a pair of Radeon R9 Fury X video cards - as you can see, the frame rendering time changes that are unpleasant for comfort, typical of early multi-chip systems, are absent in this case. The technology works on all supported AMD GPUs, as well as on older APU A8 models.

FreeSync Technology Improvements

We have already talked about dynamically variable frequency technology more than once. AMD updates FreeSync, which eliminates frame sequence artifacts such as tearing (“tearing”, appears when V-Sync is turned off) and eliminates lag and uneven frame output when synchronization is turned on (if V-Sync is on) .

Radeon Software Crimson Edition brings support for this technology to CrossFire configurations in DirectX 9 games, low frame rate compensation is introduced in this version, and AMD announced that they are working with monitor manufacturers to enable FreeSync dynamic synchronization when displays are connected via HDMI.

We are most interested in low frame rate compensation Low Framerate Compensation (LFC). When the frame rate falls below the minimum refresh rate supported by a FreeSync-enabled display, a special adaptive algorithm automatically changes the output frames and their refresh rate to reduce frustrating stuttering due to frame rate drops.

In other words, with FPS below the minimum refresh rate and VSync on enabled, FreeSync was previously not working, causing choppy framerates. But now, with the inclusion of LFC, the transition of frames will be smooth. With synchronization disabled, frame breaks (the so-called tearing) are observed under the same conditions, and enabling LFC reduces it.

No user configuration or monitor refresh is required, this feature is automatically enabled on all FreeSync-enabled monitors that have a maximum refresh rate of twice or more the minimum. For example, in our test LG monitor, the minimum refresh rate is 48 Hz and the maximum refresh rate is 75 Hz, and this technology will not work, since 75/48=1.5625, which is less than two times. Alas.

Energy optimization

Recently, the issue of energy efficiency has become very important, especially for AMD solutions, which are clearly not among the leaders on this issue. New driver Radeon Software Crimson Edition includes some power optimizations that under certain conditions (when watching videos and playing light games) improve these performance for Radeon graphics cards, including the Radeon R7 360, R9 380, R9 390, and R9 Fury models.

For example, a clear reduction in power consumption is achieved when viewing high-definition video data. The energy savings in this case are very noticeable, and it will result, among other things, in reducing the noise from the cooling system of the video card and the case, if it is adjusted depending on the temperature inside the PC. The following graph shows the change in power consumption when streaming YouTube videos in FullHD resolution on a 4K display.

Compares the power consumption of a processor-based system Intel Core i7 5960X and Radeon R9 Fury X graphics cards when installing Catalyst 15.7.1 and Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers. The new version allows you to significantly reduce power consumption in this case, the consumption of the GPU itself is significantly reduced, and the overall energy efficiency of the system is also noticeably improved.

A decent improvement in energy efficiency can be achieved in some games using technology Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC), which allows you to set a target frame rate, reducing both the load on the GPU and its power consumption. We already wrote about this technology, which appeared in Catalyst 15.7, it allows you to reduce the power consumption of the GPU, since it will not need to do extra work, getting useless ultra-high frame rates. Instead, the GPU will consume less power and generate less heat, resulting in less cooler noise.

It is important that FRTC works not only in 3D scenes, but also in loading screens and in-game menus, where FPS very often reaches sky-high frequencies, and the GPU does a lot of useless work. For obvious reasons, FRTC is most useful in "light" games where the load on the GPU is low, such as older projects, or if the monitor connected to a relatively powerful system has a low resolution.

The Crimson Edition introduced wider game support and expanded the target frame rate range. Now all applications using DirectX versions 9, 10 and 11 ( earlier version D3D9 was simply not supported), and the target frame rate could be between 30 and 200 FPS. The following chart shows the improvement in power efficiency achieved by enabling FRTC in a Rocket League game running DirectX 9 at 1920x1080.

Powerful system based AMD video cards The Radeon R9 Fury X draws 297W with no FPS caps, of which 175W comes from the Fury X, while capped at 90 FPS only gives 172W and 61W, respectively. There is a total savings of 125W when using Radeon Software Crimson Edition.

FRTC technology has also been improved for gaming applications using DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. Although it was supported in Catalyst 15.7.1, modifications to Radeon Software Crimson Edition allow you to achieve better efficiency, compared to older drivers. So, in the game Bioshock Infinite at 4K resolution using the powerful Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card and capping the frame rate at 60 FPS, savings of up to 107 W are achieved when using Radeon Software Crimson Edition, although Catalyst 15.7.1 saves only 50 W. Roughly the same with the game Sniper Elite under the same conditions, but with FPS limitation up to 55 - Crimson Edition saves 190W of energy and old version Catalyst only 90 watts. Improvement in energy efficiency is evident!

Video playback and image output improvements

Of the new features of Radeon Software Crimson Edition, we will also note some improvements designed to increase the quality of video data playback. The new drivers introduced technologies for adaptive contrast change and improved directional scaling. The new version of AMD drivers has six pre-installed profiles, as well as a default profile and custom settings.

Selecting a profile changes some settings depending on the screen resolution, the content being played and the player being used. At default settings, all advanced image processing technologies are disabled. In the user mode, you can select any value for sharpness, color saturation, steady video and fluid motion technologies.

A new feature introduced in the Crimson Edition is directional scaling, which is designed to improve the smoothness of lines on the edges in the image when displaying a low-resolution image on modern displays- when playing 1080p video data on 4K monitors. In simple terms, the technology allows you to significantly reduce the "ladders" in the image obtained with conventional scaling algorithms. The easiest way to understand this is with an example (imitation):

The directional scaling algorithm renders 1080p content better on 4K displays and uses an adaptive directional filter to enhance edges and eliminate stair-stepping in the image. This filter requires a Radeon R9 Fury Series or Radeon Nano graphics card and supported browsers and media players. The technology is automatically enabled when playing 1080p video content on 4K displays.

With the release of Crimson Edition, the dynamic contrast algorithm for video data has become adaptive, changing depending on the content of the video. Adaptive Dynamic Contrast allows you to increase the overall contrast of the image, leaving the dark areas intact so that the image on them remains visible. Dynamic contrast depends on the selected video profile and is disabled by default. Video Adaptive Contrast requires a Radeon R9 285, R9 380(X), or R9 Fury series graphics card.

Some of the advanced video processing capabilities previously unavailable on APUs are now available on sixth-generation 35W TDP APUs such as the AMD FX-8800P and AMD A10-8700P. Features include blur reduction, frame rate smoothing, and an advanced filter to enhance detail. The first two options work when playing Blu-ray discs using CyberLink PowerDVD 15.

The new Crimson Edition drivers have support for adding custom resolutions, allowing you to create your own mode by changing timings, refresh rates, and more. This feature is available in advanced settings Radeon Settings called in a separate window.

The ability to create custom resolutions with Radeon Crimson Software Edition is available for all graphics AMD processors Radeon running on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 operating systems.

Another interesting feature has also appeared - a virtual increase in resolution not only for 3D applications, but for all tasks, including the Windows 10 desktop. This feature allows you to get more space on the display when using Windows 10 and a high-resolution monitor with a pixel density of over 150 DPI.

VSR technology can be used to set a larger desktop resolution on a lower resolution display, which can be useful in some cases - for example, when displaying the same high-resolution image on two monitors with different resolutions, or for tasks that require as much as possible spaces, such as large tables, video and photo editing, programming and in other cases.

For example, on a laptop that has a 1920x1080 pixel screen at 150 DPI, you can set the resolution to 2560x1440 pixels to get more window space on your desktop.

New for Developers

AT stable work and the rich functionality of drivers for video cards are of interest not only to players and other users of AMD solutions, but also software developers - 3D games in particular. For them, one of the good news will be the emergence of technology support. AMD LiquidVR in the Crimson Edition driver is the first publicly available driver with this functionality.

AMD Innovation and Improvement Initiative virtual reality allows developers to use some of the new driver features related to the operation of VR devices: affinity multi-GPU (a pair of GPUs work each on their own half-frame of a VR image), Direct to Display (simplification of connecting virtual reality helmets), Latest Data Latch (reducing delays with sending data to the GPU quickly), asynchronous execution of Asynchronous Shaders. LiquidVR technology requires Windows 7 and Windows 10 operating systems, Radeon R9 290, Radeon R9 390 and Radeon R9 Fury GPUs, and dual-chip configurations are supported.

A few words about the asynchronous execution of the shader code, which AMD is rightfully proud of. All their solutions based on GCN architecture GPUs have hardware support in the form of special Asynchronous Compute Engines that asynchronously execute incoming commands. The hardware implementation has a significant advantage over the software approach of competitors, and allows you to improve performance when both are executed simultaneously. different types computing.

This feature is already widely used by some game developers, including console developers, but not only - asynchronous execution of shaders is also useful for virtual reality applications. Since greater parallelism in the execution of various calculations leads to lower delays, which is vital for the comfort of users using virtual reality helmets.

In addition to the topic of VR, which has been loud recently, the new version of the Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers has support for some optional features included in OpenCL 2.0 (Open Computing Language) - the generally accepted industry standard for high-performance computing. general purpose. These features include 32-bit support for Generic Address Space (Windows only), support for buffers larger than 4 GB, support for mipmap-level images and depth maps.

Let's mention one more important decision for developers, which is promoted by AMD. Just a few days ago, AMD CodeXL 1.9 was released - a set of utilities for full-fledged work on profiling, analyzing and finding errors in software for 3D developers. CodeXL works like being integrated into Microsoft package Visual Studio, and standalone, and does not require implementation special code in researched applications.

New features introduced or improved in this version of CodeXL: power consumption profiling (energy consumption, frequencies, voltage and temperature of cores in real time, including separately for APU components: video core and general-purpose computing cores) for more than two GPUs simultaneously, static analysis, writing OpenGL shaders on Linux, troubleshooting (GPU Debugging) in HSAIL applications, operating system support Ubuntu systems 15.04 and bug fixes.

Bug fixes for previous versions of Catalyst

To achieve better quality and stability, the company conducted twice as many automated driver tests as the Catalyst Omega driver, a quarter more time spent on user testing with 15% more different firmware configurations.

Moreover, AMD has decided to continue the practice of asking users what problems they think need to be solved first. This year, ahead of the release of the Crimson Edition, they surveyed the AMD user community and created a list of the ten most important questions for existing driver versions. To solve them, the company created a separate team, which was engaged in catching such errors and eliminating them, and all these problems were successfully resolved in the discussed version of the drivers.

Here is a list of the ten most important fixes in the Crimson Edition driver:

• launch game application with simultaneous video playback on a separate display could cause the system to freeze
• FreeSync technology sometimes did not work if the game was launched at the same time as playing certain types of video data, such as streaming YouTube videos
• For a pair of Radeon 295X2 video cards, the option to enable and disable CrossFire configuration using CCC might not be available
• Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 sometimes freezes when using Radeon family graphics cards
• A black screen was observed during boot operating system Windows 10 between displaying the Windows logo and Windows login window
• Diablo 3 crashes unpredictably on Act 2 Desolate Sands
• GTA V crashed on some configurations with the Radeon R9 390X graphics card
• An error might occur during installation. latest versions drivers for some video cards of the Radeon R9 380 series
• Ashes of the Singularity crashes unpredictably on some Radeon 300 series graphics cards with 2 GB VRAM
• Playing MPEG2 video data caused a video playback or decoding error

Conclusion

Summing up our review material on the description of the capabilities of the absolutely new version of the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition video driver, we can note that the company's software novelty is really seriously different from previous versions The driver, called Catalyst, gives users and developers some new features while improving the ones they already have.

The new version of the driver, called Radeon Software Crimson Edition, also improves stability and fixes the most serious bugs of previous versions, including those suggested by users. There has also been a slight increase in 3D rendering performance in most modern games under some conditions, albeit slightly, compared to the most recent Catalyst beta.

The main thing to highlight among the novelties of the first edition of Radeon Software is a completely new interface for video driver settings called Radeon Settings. Yes, it did not do without flaws, but the new interface clearly looks much more modern than the old CCC, it scales to different resolutions and window sizes, and has several new features and settings. In addition, it is much more convenient to use it, since the time for launching the configuration utility and installing the driver as a whole has been significantly reduced.

Separately, we can single out improvements to improve the quality of video data playback: special post-processing algorithms that improve image quality, increase comfort and smoothness of frame rate when playing with the appearance of a shader cache and improve frame pacing technology for multi-chip rendering, etc. We also note improvements in AMD FreeSync dynamic refresh rate technology and increased energy efficiency when watching video data and in games using FRTC frame rate limiting technology - they allow you to reduce system power consumption in the event of a significant headroom.

For developers a new version drivers also will not pass without a trace, because it first appeared public support for LiquidVR virtual reality technologies, some new functions of the OpenCL 2.0 computing standard, support for new versions of the CodeXL utility, and much more.

Let's hope the Radeon Technologies Group continues to improve both software and hardware. graphic solutions AMD companies, as well as the introduction of new technologies and capabilities in them. The final driver will be available for download.