AMD has launched their latest Crimson Edition 16.2 driver which brings a range of performance increases in AAA titles along with bug fixes. The Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 drivers specifically eye the Rise of the Tomb Raider and Ashes of The Singularity releases where bulk of the performance enhancements would be centered around.

The AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Driver can be downloaded from the following links:

• AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Driver for Windows 10, Windows 8.1 & Windows 7 64-bit
• AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Driver for Windows 10, Windows 8.1 & Windows 7 32-bit

AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Drivers Brings Performance Boost, Bug Fixes and CrossFire Profiles to Radeon Users

The two key titles which will be getting major performance and quality improvements from the Crimson Edition 16.2 drivers are Ashes of the Singularity and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Since launch, NVIDIA had a upper hand in Rise of the Tomb Raider with their GeForce cards which dominated the benchmarks. The game was bundled with GeForce 900 series cards and the performance was impacted on Radeon cards mostly due to non-availability of game ready drivers. With the latest 16.2 drivers, Radeon users will see a good boost in performance with enhanced quality that will put them on par with their GeForce counter parts.

The second title to see a massive performance increase is not a fully released game (yet) but the second benchmark to Stardock's Ashes of the Singularity title which is currently in BETA state. The title is loaded with tons of DirectX 12 goodness and unlike Tomb Raider, AMD has had pretty good driver support for the title due to them working close with the developers compared to NVIDIA which have yet to issue a capable driver for the title. The second benchmark makes use of several performance improving techniques that're featured in DirectX 12 API such as Asynchronous Compute, multi-GPU / Explicit multi-adapter support and multi-threaded command buffer Re-ordering. AMD has demonstrated really good performance in the DX12 benchmark as can be seen in our own analysis of the Beta.

Along side the performance increases, AMD also added CrossFire profiles for The Division and XCOM 2. Bug fixes were mainly focused for Rise of the Tomb Raider and Fallout 4 along with back-end tweaks. The 16.2 drivers will work with all GCN enabled product families which include AMD Radeon 300, AMD Radeon 200, AMD Radeon HD 8000 series, AMD Radeon HD 7000 series (desktop/mobile) cards and also Kaveri, Carrizo and Godavari APUs.

AMD Product Compatibility
The AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Driver is compatible with the following AMD products.

AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury Series Graphics	AMD Radeon™ R7 300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon™ R9 Nano Series Graphics	AMD Radeon™ R7 200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon™ R9 300 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon™ HD 8500 - HD 8900 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon™ R9 200 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon™ HD 7700 - HD 7900 Series Graphics

Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Highlights

• AMD has partnered with Stardock in association with Oxide to bring gamers Ashes of the Singularity – Benchmark 2.0 the first benchmark to release with DirectX 12 benchmarking capabilities such as Asynchronous Compute, multi-GPU and multi-threaded command buffer Re-ordering. Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 is optimized to support this exciting new release.

• The SteamVR Performance Test: we are pleased to report that our Radeon R9 390, Nano, and Fury series GPUs are all able to achieve 'VR Recommended' status, the highest achievable level of experience possible. In addition to that, our affinity multi-GPU feature is already showing significant performance uplift over a single GPU on Radeon cards in the aforementioned benchmark

• Performance and quality improvements for
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider
  • Ashes of the Singularity – Benchmark 2
• Crossfire Profiles available for
  • The Division
  • XCOM 2

Resolved Issues

• A black screen/TDR error may be encountered when booting a system with Intel + AMD graphics and an HDMI monitor connected
• Choppy gameplay may be experienced when both AMD Freesync and AMD Crossfire are both enabled
• Display corruption may be observed after keeping system idle for some time
• Fallout 4 - Flickering may be experienced at various game locations with the v1.3 game update and with AMD Crossfire enabled
• Fallout 4 - Foliage/water may ripple/stutter when game is launched in High/Ultra settings mode
• Fallout 4 - Screen tearing in systems with both AMD Freesync and AMD Crossfire enabled if game is left idle for a short period of time
• Fallout 4 - Thumbnails may flicker or disappear while scrolling the Perk levels page
• Far Cry 4 - Stuttering may be observed when launching the game with AMD Freesync and AMD Crossfire enabled
• FRTC options are displayed on some unsupported laptop configurations with Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's
• Radeon Settings may sometimes fails to launch with a "Context Creation Error" message
• Rise of the Tomb Raider - Corruption can be observed at some locations during gameplay
• Rise of the Tomb Raider - Flickering may be experienced at various game locations when the game is left idle in AMD Crossfire  mode under Windows 7
• Rise of the Tomb Raider - Game may intermittently crash or hang when launched with very high settings and AA is set to SMAA at 4K resolution
• Rise of the Tomb Raider - Lara Croft's hair may flicker in some locations if the Esc key is pressed
• Rise of Tomb Raider - A TDR error may be observed with some AMD Radeon 300 Series products after launching the "Geothermal Valley" mission
• The AMD Overdrive  memory clock slider does not show original clock values if memory speeds are overclocked
• World of Warcraft runs extremely slowly in quad crossfire at high resolutions

Known Issues

• A few game titles may fail to launch or crash if the Gaming Evolved overlay is enabled. A temporary workaround is to disable the AMD Gaming Evolved "In Game Overlay"
• Star Wars™: Battlefront - Corrupted ground textures may be observed in the Survival of Hoth mission
• Cannot enable AMD Crossfire with some dual GPU AMD Radeon HD 59xx and HD 79xx series products
• Fallout 4 - In game stutter may be experienced if the game is launched with AMD Crossfire enabled
• XCOM 2 - Flickering textures may be experienced at various game locations
• Rise of the Tomb Raider™ - The game may randomly crash on launch if Tessellation is enabled
• Core clocks may not maintain sustained clock speeds resulting in choppy performance and or screen corruption

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.