Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11664/amd-radeon-software-crimson-relive-edition-1772



It’s been roughly 7 months since AMD released the Crimson ReLive Edition update for Radeon Software, the latest entry in their annual cadence for major driver revisions and feature additions. Today’s launch sees AMD/RTG bring the sequentially and demurely named “Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2,” but for all intents and purposes 17.7.2 serves as a major feature revamp to the original Crimson ReLive Edition, as well as refinement of Radeon ReLive and Radeon Chill. In addition to performance optimizations and feature changes, 17.7.2 also introduces AMD’s new Enhanced Sync (comparable to NVIDIA’s Fast Sync and Adaptive V-Sync) and Radeon GPU Profiler, a low-level GCN hardware tracing developer tool.

Taking a step back, 17.7.2 adds to the regular pace of AMD’s graphics overhauls in recent years: Catalyst Omega (12/2014), Radeon Software Crimson Edition (11/2015), and Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition (12/2016). While not a wholly new Radeon Software edition, 17.7.2 does show a commitment to improving graphics software features outside of those yearly ‘all-in-one wonder drivers,’ building on AMD’s ongoing efforts to improve user experience. On that topic, AMD today is also launching the Radeon Software Vanguard Beta Tester program.

Overview of Radeon Software 17.7.2: What’s in the Driver?

Similar to the original Crimson ReLive Edition, AMD has broadly outlined 17.7.2 into two areas: gamers and game developers. Many of the changes and improvements revolve around previously introduced software features; for readers unfamiliar with the mentioned features, more detailed looks can be found in Ryan and Daniel’s Crimson Edition launch piece, as well as Ian’s Crimson ReLive Edition launch piece.

For gamers, 17.7.2 includes quality-of-life changes for Radeon Software, fulfilling the top two most-voted feature requests: folding in Radeon Additional Settings into Radeon Settings, and bringing back advanced video feature options with new per-display color controls. AMD has also brought some quality-of-life and recording improvements to Radeon ReLive, as well as broader support for Radeon Chill in terms of more games/APIs and more GPU configurations (including Radeon XConnect). In the same vein, WattMan has been updated with memory underclocking and “per power state” control, while FRTC has been updated with DX12 and mGPU support. Rounding out these feature enhancements is Radeon Software support for AMD’s new Enhanced Sync, a V-Sync replacement that can mitigate latency and stuttering. Lastly, 17.7.2 brings general driver optimizations, as well as driver frame wait-time and shader caching improvements.

Moving on, the developer oriented changes fall under the GPUOpen umbrella. First off is an update to Open Capture and Analytics Tool (OCAT) – AMD's open source successor to FRAPS – which was introduced in Crimson ReLive. AMD stated that this is largely a stability update, particularly targeting certain misbehaving games, and additionally brings Windows 10 Creators Update support.

The second is a new tool for DX12 and Vulkan applications: Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP). Already in the hands of select developers and partners, RGP takes advantage of GCN hardware thread tracing to allow low-level event tracking and visualization of graphics workloads. In essence, RGP opens up GCN GPUs to developers in a way that compares to console development. RGP works hand-in-hand with another new developer feature, the Radeon Developer Driver (RDD), which allows creation of trace files and access to internal driver settings. As a unified consumer and developer driver, RDD enables RGP to “just work.”

Concluding the new developer features is the AMD LiquidVR 360 SDK. This enables end-to-end GPU-accelerated HEVC 4K x 4K VR video playback, as well as 6-channel spatial audio in the form of Immersive Ambisonic Audio.



Iterating on Crimson ReLive Edition (2016)

Although 17.7.2 is nominally a step up from version 17.7.1 of the same driver branch, AMD has marked the release with a bit of a mid-year report. While the total driver releases are in line with last year, it should be noted that in 2017 AMD has released five WHQL drivers so far: 17.4.4, 17.4.3, 17.2.1, 17.1.2, and 16.12.2. For 2016, AMD released eight WHQL releases, over-fulfilling their promised six WHQL drivers; for 2017, AMD appears to be well on track to deliver again. Once again, AMD touts the same 90% user satisfaction rating reported at the end of 2016.

Like last December, AMD points out their top bug fixes, a result of their renewed dynamic update schedule. This has proven important for tools like ReLive, which like most new tools had launched with some teething issues. For gains in gaming performance, AMD points to improvements in RX 480 performance in three 2017 games, although it’s not clear if this represents post-day-0 gains since all three games were launched after Crimson ReLive (2016).

Crimson ReLive (2016) also extended Linux driver support for all GCN discrete graphics cards and additionally brought FreeSync 1.0 support to the OS. Following up on those efforts, AMD cites last month’s article from Phoronix for RX 470 game performance gains in Linux.

Turning User Feedback into Radeon Software Changes

If you’ve ever clicked the star icon at the top right of Radeon Settings, then you know about the Radeon Software feedback webpage, a feature introduced in the ReLive Edition. Part of this page is a voting section, where users can upvote items on a given selection of ideas and features. In 17.7.2, AMD has implemented the top two: “Remove Radeon Additional Settings and transfer all functionality into Radeon Settings” and “Bring back advanced Video features options into new Radeon Settings.”

With 17.7.2, the most egregious elements of the old CCC UI are transferred into the Radeon Software QT framework. The custom resolutions option now sits at the bottom of the monitor list. Furthermore, clicking on the “Color” button for a given monitor brings up per-display color controls, essentially bringing back the advanced video options.

AMD notes that it is now end-of-life for Radeon Additional Settings, with the exception of Eyefinity. For the time being, a remnant of Radeon Additional Settings will continue to live on in Eyefinity Advanced Setup, which still opens up the CCC-based Eyefinity display group configuration. It is likely only a matter of time before this too is incorporated into Radeon Settings.

Arguably, these top two requested features are part of the same issue. Nevertheless, implementing those features reflects a direct link between user feedback and subsequent informed changes in Radeon Software. On some level, AMD has put its money where its mouth is in terms of feedback-driven user experience.

Early Access for Drivers: Radeon Software Vanguard Beta Tester Program

Thematically, the story of 17.7.2 is one of refining the Crimson ReLive Edition (2016) user experience, particularly based on user feedback. In looking to the future, AMD is launching the Radeon Software Vanguard Beta Tester Program, providing selected participants with pre-release Radeon Software drivers to play-test and share feedback on.

Comprising of both gamers and professionals, the idea behind the program is to have Vanguard Beta testers work directly with AMD representatives on quality issues, while also submitting feedback and new ideas based on their experience with early access Radeon Software. AMD envisages a “like-minded community of gamers, streamers, developers and other industry professionals” that can provide an end user perspective in their quest to make Radeon Software better.

AMD is offering more information and details on their Vanguard Beta Tester page.



ReLive 2017

In keeping with the ReLive Edition namesake, 17.7.2 improves on a number of features with AMD’s in-house capture and streaming software. Right off the bat, ReLive now has double the max recording bitrate, offering 100 Mbps Variable Bitrate Recording (VBR) as opposed to 50 Mbps VBR. The previous 50Mbps limit was artificially limited for testing and quality purposes, and with 17.7.2, ReLive has been tested and validated to support up to 100Mbps VBR.

With a “Camera Opacity” option under the ReLive Overlay tab, AMD has also enabled transparency for the webcam image. Obviously, with high transparency, the audience can see a HUD that might be otherwise obscured.

ReLive also has three new notifications: instant replay save, overlay record timer, and network connectivity issues. In saving larger instant replays, ReLive will give a notification to reassure the user that their clip is being saved. For the record timer, a timer is displayed under the Record overlay icon while recording.

Meanwhile under the Global tab, ReLive now has more audio controls: customizable microphone volume control, audio volume boost, and microphone push-to-talk (keyboard and mouse) support.

17.7.2 ReLive also reduces the performance impact of recording in graphics cards with smaller frame buffers – in this case cards with 4GB or less of VRAM. While the improvement in FPS overhead is rather modest, this does show that AMD is paying attention to the performance impact of ReLive on weaker cards.



WattMan Memory Underclocking and Power State Controls

In 17.7.2, WattMan now offers memory underclocking for the RX 500 series. However, this functionality does not seem to extend to the RX 580’s memory mid-power state; with the revised Polaris 10 in the RX 580, AMD introduced a new mid-power memory clock state that we tested out in our launch review. In 17.7.2, WattMan does show three states for the RX 580 but only the highest state can be adjusted.

The other enhancement to WattMan is “per state” control for RX 400 and 500 series cards. Each power state can be set as minimum or maximum by clicking it.

Despite the RX 580 Memory State 1 being unchangeable, setting that State 1 as maximum will still cap the RX 580 VRAM at 1000 MHz. However, it appears that while this works for a single monitor setup, in a mismatched multi-monitor setup the RX 580 ignores the State 1 ‘maximum’ setting and goes to max memory clocks. For the time being, this falls in line with our findings with mismatched multi-monitor setups in the RX 580 review.

Otherwise, 17.7.2 does not add further product support for WattMan.

Improvements to Shader Caching and FRTC

First introduced in Radeon Software Crimson Edition, the Shader Cache feature can reduce game/level load times, CPU overload induced stutter, and split second hanging/map hitching during gaming. Shader caching does this by storing compiled shaders after running and loading the game once, benefiting slower HDD-based systems. Before 17.7.2, Shader Cache optimizations were only available for DX11 games; 17.7.2 brings Shader Cache optimizations to the following DX9 titles: CrossFire, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Monster Hunter Online, Rocket League, Starcraft 2, and World of Warcraft: Legion.

With DX9 game support, shader caching can provide tangible improvements to lower-end systems generally used for less demanding eSports titles. In any case, AMD comments that the Shader Cache feature is only practical for HDD-based systems, and as noted in 2015, some games do not show any discernable improvement with shader caching enabled.

17.7.2 also extends Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC) support to DX12 games and multi-GPU configurations. As with its earlier incarnations, the primary purpose of FRTC is to cut down on the work done by the GPU – and therefore cutting down on power consumption – by setting a hard limit on rendered frames. Multi-GPU support extends this capability to a situation where users are most likely to have an overpowered (in both senses) graphics solution for less demanding games.



Radeon Chill 2017

Radeon Chill originated in efforts by a company called HiAlgo, which was acquired by AMD in June 2016. When Radeon Chill was introduced later that December, it was hampered by a few limitations: it was unintuitive to find in Radeon Settings, supported a rather limited number of games, and laptops were not supported. With 17.7.2, all those issues (and more) are being addressed.

First off, Radeon Chill is now contained in the Global Settings/Global Graphics tab, rather than being inside the WattMan pane. Once globally enabled, the minimum and maximum Chill FPS ranges can be adjusted per-game in each game's Radeon Settings profile; most titles have a 40 – 144 FPS range set by default. AMD also stated that users no longer have to deal with the EULA wall in front of WattMan in order to get to Radeon Chill, as not all users may be comfortable with that.

Moving on, AMD has expanded Chill API support to include DX12 and Vulkan. At the same time, AMD has expanded game support, adding 21 new games. In total, 38 games are supported across a range of APIs (DX9, DX11, DX12, and Vulkan).

With 17.7.2, AMD has extended Chill support to multi-GPU, XConnect, and laptop/hybrid configurations. To note, AMD dual graphics (APU + discrete Radeon graphics) is not supported. Like multi-GPU support for FRTC, Chill can now reduce the power/noise/heat impact of excessive graphics horsepower.

This allows the potential power savings from Chill to directly benefit battery life on laptops, and AMD notes gains while utilizing Chill in League of Legends at 1080p.

XConnect support allows for easy Chill compatibility while switching between eGPU and mobile configurations, not to mention potential reduced power/noise/heat for a small box in very close proximity to the user.



Developing a Better V-Sync: AMD Enhanced Sync

Last year, AMD had targeted stutter with DX12 frame pacing, and overall framerates with day-0/driver-over-driver improvements. For 2017, AMD is targeting input lag/responsiveness and latency, with one such method being the reduction of driver frame wait-times.

AMD has addressed such driver overheads in 17.7.2, noting increased responsiveness in certain games.

On lower latency, AMD’s major effort in 17.7.2 is introducing its latest sync technology: Enhanced Sync. The idea is that Enhanced Sync acts as an alternative lower-latency solution to V-Sync, which can cause high latency or stuttering in certain scenarios. Within Radeon Settings, Enhanced Sync is now an option under the vertical refresh drop-down menu. Because Enhanced Sync does not work for OpenGL applications, there is no interaction between Enhanced Sync and the OpenGL Triple Buffering option.

Above the refresh rate, Enhanced Sync keeps the frame rate unlocked and displays the most recently completed frame, in a manner roughly analogous to old-school triple buffering. The net result is that this reduces V-Sync’s average latency (also known as ‘input lag’) at high framerates. Though it should be noted that because a frame can only be presented at the next buffer flip, it still incurs a slight penalty to response time relative to V-Sync off, which AMD measured with a high speed camera.

Otherwise if the frame rate drops below the refresh rate, Enhanced Sync dynamically disables V-Sync falling back to V-Sync off behavior where a finished frame is immediately presented, decreasing the stutter that results from repeated frames. In turn, this does come with all of the drawbacks of having V-Sync off, namely tearing. AMD explains that enabling tearing this way is the best compromise in this situation, where low framerates typically result in only a single tearing "seam" on the screen at any given time.

For the time being, AMD is not providing any further implementation details for Enhanced Sync, and will let us know when they do. Likewise, during the slide deck presentation, AMD did not clarify if Enhanced Sync was an implementation of triple buffering when asked, citing an upcoming whitepaper on the topic. But at a glance, Enhanced Sync appears similar to a combination of NVIDIA’s Fast Sync (introduced with Pascal) and Adaptive V-Sync (introduced with Kepler). Regarding the latter, Adaptive V-Sync operates by selectively disabling V-Sync, which appears to be exactly how Enhanced Sync operates when framerates are below the refresh rate. In which case if AMD's implementation does behave similarly to NVIDIA's, then as we've already found with Fast Sync, to make the most of the technology you will need a framerate 2x (or more) higher than the refresh rate. This is because the closer the frate rate is to the refresh rate, the fewer opportunities there will be to "jump ahead" by discarding frames.

Finally, Enhanced Sync can work in conjunction with FreeSync, kicking in when framerates exceed the maximum FreeSync range. For FreeSync displays that don't support low framerate compensation (LFC), Enhanced Sync will also come into play on when framerates dip below the display's minimum FreeSync range. Enhanced Sync is officially compatible with FreeSync 2 and Radeon Chill as well, and works under DX9, DX11, and DX12 applications. Currently, Enhanced Sync is only supported on the gaming consumer driver, and thus does not support Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. Otherwise, according to Scott Wasson's accompanying Enhanced Sync blog post, Enhanced Sync is supported on the RX 400 and 500 series, as well as the upcoming RX Vega cards.



Radeon GPU Profiler

In many ways, the new Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP) is the marquee feature for game and software developers in 17.7.2. While select developers (such as teams at DICE, RenderDoc, and Valve) have had early access to RGP for the last couple months as part of a beta program, AMD is publicly announcing and launching RGP today, offering official API support for DX12 and Vulkan, and with Windows 7, Windows 10, and Ubuntu 16.04 (Linux) as the supported OSes. Hardware-wise, RGP is compatible with recent GCN-based products, with the RX 400, RX 500, and Fiji-based cards being officially supported.

AMD compares RGP with enabling a “white box” style console development workflow for GPUs on PC, as opposed to the typical “black box” experience. And before anyone asks, AMD’s experience with console development was only an indirect influence with respect to RGP, although consoles and console tools are also utilizing GCN’s built-in low-level thread trace features. Like how certain changes in Radeon Software came from user feedback, RGP came about due to requests from AMD’s ISV partners who liked those console tools and requested something similar for PC.

In the field of PC GPU performance tuning and debugging, developers will already be familiar with Microsoft’s PIX for Windows, of which AMD has released an AMD plugin this May. While RGP has no direct relation to PIX, it “complements the functionality offered with PIX for Windows, offering additional insight into the GPU not available today in PIX.” Otherwise, the AMD plugin for PIX continues to be actively developed, and is a separate initiative from RGP. Similarly, AMD stated that RGP is not competing with existing solutions like RenderDoc, instead choosing to collaborate with the developers and ensure that RenderDoc and RGP complement each other.

Using GCN’s hardware thread tracing feature, RGP combines that data with information from the driver and application, where a single frame could be presented and visualized as shown in the slide above. For developers, this can lay out what is exactly happening in the GPU and where performance could easily be increased, including analyzing async compute usage, event timing, pipeline stalls, and bottlenecks. With a vast amount of features and functionality, RGP also includes a large amount of documentation and a sample trace to peruse.

As its documentation outlines, RGP itself is actually comprised of four components:

  • Radeon Developer Mode Driver – This is shipped as part of the AMD public Crimson driver from 17.30 onwards and supports the developer mode features required for profiling.
  • Radeon Developer Service (RDS) – A system tray application that unlocks the Developer Mode Driver features and supports communications with high level tools.
  • Radeon Developer Panel (RDP) – A GUI application that allows the developer to configure driver settings and generate profiler trace data from DirectX12 and Vulkan applications.
  • Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP) – A GUI tool used to visualize and analyze the trace data.

As mentioned earlier, the Radeon Developer Mode Driver is the heart of RGP, exposing internal driver settings and experimental features that were previously only available to developers on a case-by-case basis. These settings are customizable and allows dumping of trace files for RGP to analyze.

RGP documentation does state that RGP will not work with older APIs such as DX11 and OpenGL. In terms of major known issues, RGP only works on a single AMD GPU, and will not work with Windows Insider Editions, while driver settings for Vulkan are not available yet.

AMD LiquidVR 360 SDK

Building upon last year's LiquidVR additions, AMD has brought yet another asset to the LiquidVR platform: LiquidVR 360 SDK. The SDK enables end-to-end GPU-accelerated HEVC 4K x 4K video playback.

In addition, AMD notes increased performance and lower power consumption with the SDK on. The elimination of dropped frames is particularly important for VR, as poor VR experiences easily translate into VR motion sickness.

Audio-wise, the SDK supports 3D spatial audio for 360 degree and VR videos, with Immersive Ambisonic Audio providing six separate channels for up, down, left, right, back, and front. At this time, it's not clear if Immersive Ambisonic Audio incorporates True Audio Next.

AMD is also looking to bring LiquidVR 360 SDK capability to game engines. The AMF Media Plugin will support GPU-accelerated playback in Unity and Unreal Engine 4, both of which are commonly used as the foundation for VR video players.



Closing Thoughts

Wrapping things up, fundamentally the Radeon Software featureset has not changed in the way it had for Crimson and Crimson ReLive. At the same time, given the significant number of updates and changes in 17.7.2, on some level it's a little surprising that this rendition is still dubbed ‘Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2.’ But this goes back to how AMD has designed their software cadence around annual overhauls.

Nevertheless, 17.7.2 somewhat acts as AMD’s Crimson ReLive Edition 2.0, ironing out a lot of the ReLive Edition’s kinks and continuing to map out where RTG is heading. After all, AMD has offered 17.7.2 introductory videos for Radeon Chill, RGP, and Enhanced Sync, which is not something that accompanies a typical sequential driver update. After releasing feedback submission mechanisms and focusing on open source tools last year, 17.7.2 serves as evidence to the claim that AMD/RTG is indeed continuing to do these things, and at the same time, adding new things.

Like how AMD graphics fixes are now published as they are ready, 17.7.2 might show the same with features. That being said, a regular mid-year overhaul to specifically complement the yearly new edition would be very welcomed indeed, especially from a user experience standpoint, as it means new features can become available sooner and AMD can more frequently show users how they're responding to user feedback.

Of the new features in 17.7.2, Enhanced Sync and RGP are quite important and meaningful for gamers and developers, respectively. AMD now has a competing solution to NVIDIA's Fast Sync/Adaptive V-Sync features that improves game experience for both FreeSync and non-FreeSync users. With the Radeon Developer Driver now baked into Crimson, RGP offers developers a unique low-level debugging and tuning tool that complements pre-existing solutions like PIX for Windows and RenderDoc.

Last year, we discussed the state of DX12 at the time, namely the rate of adoption and the increased difficulty in programming for DX12. Today, RGP makes it that much easier for developers to work with these modern APIs and deliver the benefits of DX12 and Vulkan to gamers. As Ryan noted then, "Making effective use of DX12 requires a better understanding of the underlying hardware, and how to best treat it"; with RGP's console-like low-level access and visualization thereof, PC game developers can better understand – and see – how specific DX12 and Vulkan graphics workloads travel through the hardware.

However, 17.7.2 is not without its shortcomings. Feature support is a little inconsistent, and none of the new features explicitly included RX Vega support with the exception of Enhanced Sync, which was clarified later. For Enhanced Sync, this means that until RX Vega launches, only Polaris products are supported (and not the faster Fiji-based cards). For the time being, RGP does not have official support for Vega-based products, and thus features unique to Vega. AMD stated that 17.7.2 itself does not support any Vega-based products, and so a new rendition of Radeon Software will need to arrive when RX Vega enters AMD’s product mix.

With the Crimson and Crimson ReLive releases, we reiterated the statement that execution is critical. That remains the case here, perhaps even more so as the AMD prepares to launch their first high-end card since the Fury X two years ago. In order for RTG to succeed in their stability, performance, and release goals, the Radeon Software user (and developer) experience needs to be consistent across Fiji, Polaris, and Vega products. Obviously, differing hardware featuresets result in differing software compatibility, but as AMD/RTG adds and refines features both new and old, the user experience of their flagship consumer/professional solutions can and should be compared to the rest of their supported products.

The new Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2 drivers are available through the Radeon Settings tab or online at the AMD driver download page. More information on this update and further issues can be found in the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2 release notes.

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