It didn't take long at all, but AMD has come in with another driver update full of performance enhancements, compatibility fixes, and bug fixes. With continued efforts on their latest commitment to improve their drivers let's look at what Crimson 16.2 bring to the table.

This release continues what has become a steady flow of bugfixes. From AMD solving general stability issues such as TDR errors found when running a system with Intel and AMD Graphics to an HDMI monitor, to multiple fixes from Fallout 4 relating to graphics glitches and edge cases found with AMD Crossfire and AMD Freesync. The recently released Rise of the Tomb Raider has also received some attention to fix both visual glitches and a crash that occurs when running very high settings and SMAA at 4K.

This latest driver also brings performance and quality improvements for Rise of the Tomb Raider and a report of the Radeon R9 390, Nano, and Fury series cards receiving VR Recommended status in Valves new SteamVR Performance Test. But what AMD draws the most attention to is Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 being optimized for Yesterdays release of Stardock's Ashes of the Singularity - Benchmark 2, of which we gave a thorough running as well.

As always, those interested in reading more or installing the updated hotfix drivers for AMD’s desktop, mobile, and integrated GPUs can find them either under the driver update section in Radeon Settings or on AMDs Radeon Software Crimson Edition download page.

Source: AMD

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  • Drumsticks - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Out of curiosity, will y'all be revisiting the Radeon results with the new drivers, given that they suggest performance improvements, for at least some of them?

    In any case, AMD seems to actually be doing awesome with their DX12 results. This year is going to be pretty sweet for buying a new GPU.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    I got a small boost in Steam VR with my old gpu :)

    7970ghz 2.3 on previous driver and now 2.5 with these.
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    +1 please Daniel Williams & Ryan Smith!
  • MadAd - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Have they re-enabled hotkey switching of different desktop profiles in this one yet? I dont see anything in the release notes but they arent clear, "Radeon Settings" could mean anything.

    The first Crimson release completely broke the way desktop profiles can be assigned a hotkey and switched, without that its game over for me, Im forced to sit in 15.11.1b till they return my functionality to normal.
  • cknobman - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    I was hoping to see a FarCry 3 DX11 issue fixed in this update.
    Stupid game randomly crashed running DX11 mode.
  • DominionSeraph - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Thank God. MPC-HC + madVR with GPU-Z running would hard lock Windows 10. I don't think I've hard locked Windows since Windows 98, but AMDs drivers were up to the task. It would also randomly need to restart the display driver if you left MPC-HC paused in the background.
    Radeon Settings were broken too, sometimes not coming up, sometimes coming up only as a empty translucent window.
    I see why Nvidia makes billions while AMD is bankrupt.
  • extide - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Wow, are you sure you don't have bad hardware? I haven't ever experienced anything like that and I used all that same stuff. Both on a 7970, and now a R9 290.
  • DominionSeraph - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Play a video with GPU-Z running and watch your queues empty.
    Not bad hardware unless AMD can't do that right either.
  • FaaR - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    Something about AMD's drivers and/or hardware is wack with regards to GPU compute. Run Folding@Home along with some other task using GPU graphics acceleration and your PC will bluescreen or freeze. It could be a game, or it could be a web browser using hardware acceleration for page layout. Google Maps and the iCloud.com login screen have both bluescreened/hung my PC, both on a R9 290X and a R9 390X.

    Reported the issue to AMD, but it took them months just for their moderators to approve the message; the bug will probably go unfixed until the stars themselves go out. AMD's f****d.
  • rseiler - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Isn't 15.12 still the release version and 16.2 the beta?

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