AMD is making a change in their driver naming and branding. As you probably can remember, a few weeks ago AMD announced the Radeon Technologies Group, led by graphics industry veteran and architect, Raja Koduri.
In the line of changes is a newly ling of driver software that is to be released in the near future. This Radeon Technologies Group is tasked with propeling the industry forward by driving performance/W with new GPUs, creating innovative new technologies, and making sure the software that supports GPUs is top notch. AMD therefore is announcing that the first output from the Radeon Technologies Group is a re-imagined Software strategy. As such AMD is putting good focus on software and states It’s more than just a driver. It’s a whole range of software.
The "Radeon Software" will get the Subtitle "Crimson Edition" and hold all upcoming 2015 and 2016 drivers. The bigger change is the vertical integration of game installed game presets which AMD had been doing with Raptr. Per game you can pick a profile with accompanying graphics settings. The bigger chunk of overall settings all have been available in the Catalyst Control Center, just with that different jacket. AMD claims that this software suite will load up 10x faster opposed to the old Catalyst drivers. The new drive suite will be released 'before the end of this year'.
AMD on the topic:
Now we have user interfaces, libraries, tools, applications, packaged as what we call drivers. This great set of software has evolved into a mini graphics Operating System. With the formation of Radeon Technologies Group, we have decided to call this mini graphics Operating System “Radeon Software”.
This means we will be retiring AMD Catalyst. This marks the end of an era, and the beginning of a new age of immersive computing where we will be surrounded by billions of brilliant pixels that enhance our daily lives in ways we have yet to fully comprehend. The new era starts on November 2nd when we will introduce Radeon Software Crimson Edition.
The change is all-encompassing. We’ve re-designed and re-architected what was previously known as AMD Catalyst Control Center (CCC), and named it Radeon/FirePro Settings. With the new design, we focused on experience, form and function. You’ll see how the new Radeon/FirePro Settings has a modern user interface that is simple and clean, is intuitive to use, and has a significantly faster start up than its predecessor. It also has new features:
So what is announced?
Below an overview of the press deck that outlines key points and provides a visual representation of what you can expect from Radeon Software. Mind you that these driver / software suite are NOT yet available but will be in the near future likely this month or in December.