AMD Radeon and Radeon Pro Crimson Software

 August 2017 – The release of the new Vega GPUs from AMD has been followed by an update in the support software for both professional developers and end point users. The two products are the Radeon Crimson ReLive Software Edition 17.7.2 and the Radeon Pro Crimson ReLive Software 17.8.

The lead feature on the Pro software is the update of the ProRender, with its support for the Vega architecture. The new program is free and is available as a plug-in for Autodesk 3DS Max and Maya, Dassault Systems Solidworks as well as a importer for Unreal Engine. In addition to the performance improvement, Radeon Pro Security has been integrated that allows the GPU to come up with a secure processor boot and firmware validation, and workflow plus shutdown security. This new content creation flow has software and driver support for next generation displays. The software can drive the new 8K displays and 10 bit HDR. In addition to the Unreal Engine import, the new version has both Unity and Unreal Engine integration with LiquidVR for VR content support.

For the developer the Radeon Pro software works with the user side Radeon Crimson software and supports switching between the standard and the pro version up to three times without having to reboot. This allows the developer to check the results as the player would, without changing machines or delaying their workflow with restarting the machine.

On the user side, the Radeon Crimson features a major update to the ReLive product. Focusing on updated video control, increased frame rate and Bitrates as well as integrated audio controls. The high recording bitrate now supports up to 100Mbps with camera transparency on the overlay of the gaming graphics. For the mobile community, there is a new power control function called Radeon Chill. It provides a lower average power consumed the GPU by having pixel aware control natively to 30 games and an average of 13% lower temperature, including multi-GPU configurations. The Chill driver supports both DirectX12 and Vulkan which can make an impact on the order of 139w vs 211W for Doom coded under Vulkan.

The Chill solution also has support for the Radeon XConnect technology that supports external graphics cards for laptops, tablets and convertibles, as well as lower energy for high frame rate (over 60fps) gaming applications. For enhanced performance, even with the reduced power, the software supports FreeSync from 30Hz to 240Hz with reduced latency, decreased shutter and minimized tearing. The separation of the frame rate from the refresh rate allows for content specific power and graphics optimization.

The Radeon Crimson solution incorporates an end to end HEVC (H.265) Codec for 4K x 4K VR video playback under the LiquidVR 360 SDK. This video playback engine also supports full spatial ambisonic sound. The solution also supports up to 90fps with no dropped frames in both Unity and Unreal Engine applications.

Both products are available now.