[Originally posted on 12/08/16.]
This time last year marked a groundbreaking event in AMD’s history: the launch of Radeon Software Crimson Edition, revolutionary new graphics software enabling supercharged performance for Radeon GPUs and AMD APUs, while redefining and enriching the overall user experience with exciting new features and innovative functionality.
Since the Radeon Software Crimson Edition launch last year, we delivered 29 driver releases, including eight WHQL-certified drivers, earning a user-satisfaction rating of 4.5/5 — the highest-ever rating achieved by any AMD software release.
Radeon Software Crimson Edition was a blockbuster success, earning accolades from users, reviewers, gamers, and developers, along with coveted industry recognition and awards. With all this industry praise, did we rest on our laurels? Absolutely not.
Introducing Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition, our biggest software release — ever.
Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition is AMD’s next-generation graphics software for enabling high-performance gaming, engaging VR experiences on VR-capable hardware, and innovative new features offering professional-grade reliability and stability. With more than 400 million gamers playing on Radeon™ graphics worldwide, it should come as no surprise that the new release focuses on features demanded by gamers. In fact, we decided to name the new release for the feature requested most by gamers: Radeon ReLive.
With Radeon ReLive, gamers can “relive” their gameplay by capturing, streaming, and sharing recorded gaming sessions. Highly efficient with minimal impact to gameplay, Radeon ReLive enables seamless playback of ReLive recordings via an easily accessible in-game toolbar, and offers quick and convenient customizable settings, custom scene layouts, and more. With Radeon ReLive, gamers now have a way to capture gaming highlights, and share their gaming exploits and conquests with online friends and competitors.
Another amazing feature tailored for gamers is Radeon Chill, a power-efficient framerate controller for Radeon graphics that dynamically regulates framerate based on the speed of your mouse movements. Radeon Chill was designed to reduce system power consumption while maintaining an excellent end-user gaming experience, enabling gameplay without noticeable impact to performance while helping maintain a cooler and quieter system.
Radeon Chill adapts the in-game frame rate to the action that is occurring onscreen. If the game action is mostly static or the game character is not moving, Radeon Chill quickly scales-down frame rates to save power. As soon as the game character resumes moving, Radeon Chill responds by increasing frame rates to preserve fluid gaming motion.
Enhanced AMD FreeSync™ technology enables seamless communication between the display and the graphics card for naturally smooth gameplay, with a borderless full-screen mode that enables effortless switching between applications. FreeSync’s gradual refresh-ramp enables a smooth increase or decrease in display frames per second, providing an even smoother end-user experience.
And there’s more. Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition is packed with innovative features including Automatic Bad HDMI™ Cable and Signal Detection and Fallback, VP9 Decode Acceleration, DisplayPort HBR3 Support, Radeon Software Installer, and more.
Another first for this year is our Radeon Pro Software Crimson Relive Edition launching simultaneously as part of our Radeon Software annual launch. Radeon Pro ReLive software enables capturing and recording professional workflows within CAD/engineering applications, visualization and prototyping software, content-creation tools for collaboration, presentation, training and customer support, and more. Free and seamlessly integrated within Radeon Pro Settings, Radeon ReLive enables full control of its video capture parameters, including customizable recording quality at up to 4K resolution.
Radeon ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that helps creative professionals produce stunningly photorealistic images, with planned upgrades in 2017 to include native application integration for Blender and Maxon’s Cinema 4D.
Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition also introduces innovative features for empowering developers and dreamers with open-source tools that redefine visual and audio quality. Radeon Loom software overcomes formidable technology challenges with the processing-intensive video stitching process that is vital to creating cinematic 360-degree video experiences in VR. Built upon the Khronos OpenVX™ computer vision framework as implemented by AMD, the professional-grade Radeon Loom software stitches output from up to 24 cameras live in real-time and up to 31 cameras offline.
Supporting the acclaimed AMD LiquidVR™ technology and Radeon VR Ready Creator2 graphics cards, Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition works with professional applications supporting CAD and 3D model visualization in VR, virtual prototyping, and VR content-creation tools on VR-capable hardware.
Professional users demand professional-grade software — and Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition delivers. The new Radeon Software Pro Crimson ReLive Edition release reaffirms AMD’s continuing commitment to providing content creators and designers with high-performance and stable certified professional software. There’s also good news for Linux® users: AMD’s ongoing commitment and support for open-source technologies and tools means Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition now supports the AMD GPU-PRO hybrid Linux driver. This new Linux driver combines two great worlds — an open-source core and AMD Radeon Pro graphics’ technologies and performance.
TressFX 4.0, a state-of-the-art hair-rendering tool enables developers to create high-fidelity hair interactions in DirectX®12, and features new streamlined code that makes seamless integration of high-quality hair designs incredibly easy. Depth of Field is an advanced blurring tool that assists creators in developing high-quality focus and blur effects with low overhead processing by leveraging the power of asynchronous compute. Advanced Media Framework 1.4 (AMF 1.4) unifies video data and provides the GPU-accelerated foundation for many industry leading video and streaming applications.
Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition leverages AMD LiquidVR™ technology for incredibly realistic VR experiences on VR capable hardware. Asynchronous Space Warp for Oculus Rift improves on the Asynchronous Time Warp (ATW) feature, enabling VR to render at lower frame rates by extrapolating intermediate frames. TrueAudio Next enables lifelike acoustics and enhances sound perception, helping create realistic echoes and reverberations within a setting, and boosting overall audio quality to match stunning game visuals. MultiRes rendering enables improved performance by reducing API overhead and reduced pixel-processing cost by matching the rendered image resolution to select VR HMD’s optical system, and MultiView intelligent rendering algorithms enable single-pass rendering that can further reduce pixel-processing cost.
Much more than the sum of graphics power and innovative features, Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition and Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition strive to fulfill the essential promise of graphics software: to entertain, enable and inspire the next generation of gamers, professionals, developers, and content creators — and to harness the power of advanced graphics technology to enhance our digital lives.
Download Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition or Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition today — and discover the true power of Radeon graphics.
Sasa Marinkovic, Head of VR and Software Marketing for the Radeon Technologies Group at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies, or opinions. Links to third party sites and references to third party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.
- GPU Package Power refers to the amount of power (in Watts) being delivered to the GPU package; the GPU chip and substrate. Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of November 14th, 2016 on the 8GB Radeon RX 480, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 5960X CPU (3.0 GHz), 16GB DDR4-2666 Mhz system memory, pre-release Radeon Software driver 16.50 and Windows 10 x64 using the game World of Warcraft on graphics preset 10 with Radeon Chill OFF or ON. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. At 1920x1080, pre-release Radeon Software driver 16.50 and 8GB Radeon RX 480 running World of Warcraft and Radeon Chill OFF scored 107.72 Watts and pre-release Radeon Software driver 16.50 and 8GB Radeon RX 480 running World of Warcraft and Radeon Chill ON scored 74.75 Watts, which is 31% lower Average GPU Package Power in Wattage. Performance may vary based on use of final driver. RS-92
- Radeon VR Ready Creator Products are select Radeon Pro and AMD FirePro GPUs that meet or exceed the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive recommended specifications for video cards/GPUs. Other hardware (including CPU) and system requirements recommended by Oculus Rift or HTC Vive should also be met in order to operate the applicable HMDs as intended. As VR technology, HMDs and other VR hardware and software evolve and/or become available, these criteria may change without notice.
