With the first Radeon Software Crimson Edition at the end of 2015, AMD had promised and kept its routine of major annual updates to its own graphics drivers and the software that accompanied them: Crimson was followed by Crimson ReLive at the end of 2016 and adrenalin at the end of 2017. Now the next update is planned.
Preliminary information under the NDA
Obviously, AMD is presenting its innovations to media representatives all around the world, as Terry Makedon, AMD’s Director of Software Development revealed on Twitter.
Let the fun begin! 70 minutes until the first batch of media get to experience the future. @Radeon @AMD #SeoulROCKS pic.twitter.com/TpLjlCnFDH
— Terry Makedon (@CatalystMaker) November 27, 2018
Over the past four years, AMD has delivered a major update of Radeon drivers on time every December. While the normal updates bring mostly game-specific improvements, bug fixes, and minor innovations, the December updates contain important new features. The Catalyst Omega 2014 made the start, followed by the Crimson (2015), Crimson Relive (2016) and Adrenalin (2017). Meanwhile, the Radeon controller has grown into a fairly powerful software package that includes features such as an overlay of games to the Afterburner, streaming capability and all sorts of performance options.
Information on the innovations contained in the software package has not yet been made public this year. This also applies to the name, for which AMD is geared towards Rottönen from the end of 2015. Originally, the Group intended to use a new name every year, but they stopped doing so immediately after the first year with Crimson ReLive. With adrenalin, that’s how it could be right now.
New features every year
A year ago, adrenalin brought a powerful overlay built into the controller as a major innovation, while Crimson ReLive introduced the streaming service of the same name as a competitor in Nvidia Highlights (formerly Shadowplay). In addition, the AMD controller can now offer its own FPS limiter (“Chill”), which automatically decides how many FPS there should be in the current scene. Since the first Crimson, AMD has relied on a completely new user interface.