[Originally posted on 01/26/17]
2016 marked the first two Radeon Pro Software releases, our powerful software that lets professionals unleash their creativity with Radeon™ Pro graphics. In October, we released the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 16.Q4, designed to address the specific needs of enterprise users. This software included the predictable feature, performance, and stability improvements enterprise users need.
We followed in December with Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition, our powerful and reliable professional-grade graphics software, that enables high-performance productivity and outstanding stability for designers, content creators, and game developers.
With the start of the new year, we are building on our successful 2016 Radeon Pro Software releases, and today marks the release of our next Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver, 17.Q1, maintaining our commitment to release Enterprise Driver updates on a quarterly basis (future releases will follow on April 27th, July 27th, and October 26th, 2017).
Continuing to Address Enterprise Needs
In addition to maintaining our quarterly release cadence, which gives enterprise workstation graphics users predictable software release dates so they can properly plan ahead, Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 builds upon our Prioritized Support1 program with 24/7 Radeon™ Pro Support for professional graphics users.
Reliability and Performance
Like our previous Enterprise Driver, the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 has been rigorously tested to help ensure rock-solid reliability and undergoes 2x more OEM platform testing, 3x more ISV certification testing, and 1.5x more stress testing than our legacy AMD FirePro™ drivers3. Our professional drivers are also certified in over 100 workstation applications covering many of the leading software packages professionals use, including Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Dassault CATIA®, Siemens® NX™, Adobe® Premiere®, Avid® Media Composer®, Autodesk® Maya® and many more.
Radeon Pro Software continues to offer exceptional performance in key applications such as PTC Creo®, Siemens NX, and Dassault CATIA when compared with last year’s AMD FirePro™ 14.502.1019 Driver, with up to 30-percent better performance.
Introducing Radeon Pro ReLive for Enterprise Users
In additional with our continuing support for enterprise user needs, the 17.Q1 Enterprise Driver also includes our key Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition feature for Windows users, Radeon Pro ReLive, our powerful professional-grade solution for high-resolution screen capture and recording.
Radeon Pro ReLive’s GPU-accelerated H.265 High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)5 support enables up to 44% smaller recordings compared to H.264 AVC video6, enabling fast data transfers when sharing recorded workflows, and captures within professional applications with an expected 3% performance impact7. ReLive includes an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, a repositionable application toolbar, and a resizable and repositionable webcam overlay.
Radeon Pro ReLive can be used with CAD applications, visualization and prototyping software, and content-creation tools for collaboration, presentation, training, and customer support, and more. To read about how Pro ReLive can be used in professional workflows in more detail, please check out our new blog on this topic and watch our video.
One improvement Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 brings to Radeon Pro ReLive is a fix for the issue of the mouse cursor appearing to judder at times when recording the desktop.
Professional VR Support and More
Like the previous Radeon Pro Software releases, the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 supports AMD’s pioneering virtual reality LiquidVR™ technology, enabling professional VR workflows, such as such VR design, engineering, animation, and modeling, on Radeon VR Ready Creator graphics cards.
The Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 also has DirectX® 12 and Vulkan™ support and is ready for the coming real-time game engine professional workflow revolution for real-time previz storyboarding, CAD visualization and Building Information Modeling (BIM), along with support for Windows® 10 Anniversary Update and Windows® 10 Device Guard.
Enhanced Linux® Support for Enterprise
The Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 also brings the new features and improvements from our Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition Linux® Driver to enterprise users — you’ll find support for CentOS®, AMD FreeSync™ technology, DirectGMA, and Vulkan™ on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®.
Our Commitment to Enterprises Continues
With Radeon Pro Software, AMD is committed to providing all levels of workstation graphics users with high-performance and stable certified professional software. Our quarterly Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 is available starting today, and as you have read, incorporates new features like Radeon Pro ReLive, performance and stability improvements, and prioritized support designed to make enterprises and their users more productive.
You can download the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 here.
Compatible with: Radeon™ Pro WX series, Radeon Pro Duo, AMD FirePro™ W series, and AMD FirePro™ S series.
Supports: Windows® 7/10, Linux®.
Alexander Blake-Davies, Software Product Marketing Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. 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. Use of third party names or marks is for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.
FOOTNOTE:
AMD will work with ISV & OEM partners to provide top of the queue engineering support for Enterprise users.
Call US: 866-284-2093, UK: 0-800-086-9034, Germany: 0800-182-5841, France: 0800-914847, India: 1-800-266-6797, Japan: 0800-222-0553, China: 400-120-3037 24/7 to speak to an AMD support agent for support for your AMD FirePro™ or Radeon™ Pro product.
AMD internal data, testing of Radeon Pro 16.Q4 Enterprise Driver compared to FirePro™ 14.502.1019 driver.
Up to 17% faster performance using 16.50 and PTC Creo on AMD FirePro™ W7100 than with 14.502.1019. Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of November 7th, 2016 on a test system comprising of Intel E5-1650 v3 3.50GHz, 16GB RAM, Win7 64-bit SP1, AMD FirePro™ W7100, software drivers 16.50 and 14.502.1019 for SPECviewperf benchmark. Benchmark Application: SPECviewperf 12.1 under official run. Subtest: creo-01. FirePro W7100 (with 16.50) score: 58.30. FirePro W7100 (with 14.502.1019) score: 49.63. Performance Differential: 58.30/49.30 = ~17.4% higher score on FirePro W7100 with 16.50. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. FS-5
Up to 18% faster performance using 16.50 and Siemens NX on AMD FirePro™ W7100 than with 14.502.1019. Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of November 7th, 2016 on a test system comprising of Intel E5-1650 v3 3.50GHz, 16GB RAM, Win7 64-bit SP1, AMD FirePro™ W7100, software drivers 16.50 and 14.502.1019 for SPECviewperf benchmark. Benchmark Application: SPECviewperf 12.1 under official run. Subtest: snx-02. FirePro W7100 (with 16.50) score: 75.10. FirePro W7100 (with 14.502.1019) score: 63.53. Performance Differential: 75.10/63.53 = ~18.2% higher score on FirePro W7100 with 16.50. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. FS-7
Up to 30% faster performance using 16.50 and Catia on AMD FirePro™ W7100 than with 14.502.1019. Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of November 7th, 2016 on a test system comprising of Intel E5-1650 v3 3.50GHz, 16GB RAM, Win7 64-bit SP1, AMD FirePro™ W7100, software drivers 16.50 and 14.502.1019 for SPECviewperf benchmark. Benchmark Application: SPECviewperf 12.1 under official run. Subtest: catia-04. FirePro W7100 (with 16.50) score: 74.48. FirePro W7100 (with 14.502.1019) score: 57.33. Performance Differential: 74.48/57.33 = ~29.9% higher score on FirePro W7100 with 16.50. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. FS-6
As of January 24, 2017, Radeon ReLive H.265 HEVC video recording only available on desktop discrete Radeon™ Pro WX series products.
Testing conducted by AMD Performance Lab as of Nov 18th, on the test system: System: DELL Precision Tower 5810 Workstation CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1603 v3 2.80GHz (4 cores, 4 logical processors), Memory: 64GB RAM, OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Build 14393, Graphics: AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 7100, Graphics Driver: 16.50, Storage: Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB. Benchmark Application: SPECviewperf 12.1 under official run settings with ReLive AVC/HEVC capturing the desktop while running 3ds max-05 subtest. Subtest: 3ds max-05. For first round, using AVC encoding, ReLive records the video at 60fps, 1080p and 20Mbps. For second round, using HEVC encoding, ReLive records the video at 60fps, 1080p and 10Mbps, which outputs video of the same quality for AVC at 10Mbps. ReLive AVC recorded video file size: 459MB. ReLive HEVC recorded video file size: 257MB. Performance Differential: (459-257)/459 = ~44.01% smaller recorded video file size on ReLive HEVC encoding. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. HEVC acceleration is subject to inclusion/installation of compatible HEVC players. RPW-65
Using ReLive results in a 3% performance drop when capturing the desktop at 30fps in SPECViewperf 12.1, while using Camtasia results in a 25% performance drop. Testing conducted by AMD Performance Lab as of Nov 18th on the test system: System: DELL Precision Tower 5810 Workstation CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1603 v3 2.80GHz (4 cores, 4 logical processors), Memory: 64GB RAM, OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Build 14393, Graphics: AMD Radeon™ Pro WX7100, Graphics Driver: 16.50, Storage: Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB. Benchmark Application: SPECviewperf 12.1 under official run settings with ReLive/Camtasia capturing the desktop at 30fps. ReLive’s resulted performance drop: 2.80% or ~ 3%. Camtasia resulted performance drop: 25.28% or ~ 25%. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. RPW-66
