AMD Radeon Crimson Edition 16.2 Driver Brings Performance Boost To Rise of The Tomb Raider And AOTS

AMD has just released the latest version of its Radeon Crimson graphics driver, 16.2. If you plan on playing either Ashes of the Singularity or Rise of the Tomb Raider, this driver is going to be worth the time it takes to download. For everyone else, if time and bandwidth isn't an issue, you may still want to grab the update as there is a long list of fixes.

At the forefront, AOTS is the highlight here. Earlier this week, AMD worked with Stardock to deliver an improved DirectX 12 benchmark. This enabled asynchronous compute, multi-GPU support, and multi-threaded command buffer re-ordering. There's a good reason AMD is helping Stardock out with this: its Radeon GPUs are delivering the best benchmark scores.

Along with this update, AMD has confirmed that its Radeon R9 390 and higher GPUs will all achieve a "VR Recommended" rating from Valve's new SteamVR benchmark, which is the highest rating that can be attained. If you have CrossFire, you'll be golden: AMD has that taken care of, too.

As for other additions, CrossFire profiles have been added for both Tom Clancy's The Division and XCOM 2. The rest of what bulks up 16.2 comes in the way of bug fixes, so if you've been dealing with a particularly nasty one, check to see if it's one of these: 

• A black screen/TDR error may be encountered when booting a system with Intel + AMD graphics and an HDMI monitor connected
• Choppy gameplay may be experienced when both AMD Freesync™ and AMD Crossfire™ are both enabled
• Display corruption may be observed after keeping system idle for some time
• Fallout 4 - Flickering may be experienced at various game locations with the v1.3 game update and with AMD Crossfire™ enabled
• Fallout 4 - Foliage/water may ripple/stutter when game is launched in High/Ultra settings mode
• Fallout 4 - Screen tearing in systems with both AMD Freesync™ and AMD Crossfire™ enabled if game is left idle for a short period of time
• Fallout 4 - Thumbnails may flicker or disappear while scrolling the Perk levels page
• Far Cry 4 - Stuttering may be observed when launching the game with AMD Freesync™ and AMD Crossfire™ enabled
• FRTC options are displayed on some unsupported laptop configurations with Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's
• Radeon Settings may sometimes fails to launch with a "Context Creation Error" message
• Rise of the Tomb Raider™ - Corruption can be observed at some locations during gameplay
• Rise of the Tomb Raider™ - Flickering may be experienced at various game locations when the game is left idle in AMD Crossfire™ mode under Windows 7
• Rise of the Tomb Raider™ - Game may intermittently crash or hang when launched with very high settings and AA is set to SMAA at 4K resolution
• Rise of the Tomb Raider™ - Lara Croft's hair may flicker in some locations if the Esc key is pressed
• Rise of Tomb Raider™ - A TDR error may be observed with some AMD Radeon 300 Series products after launching the "Geothermal Valley" mission
• The AMD Overdrive™ memory clock slider does not show original clock values if memory speeds are overclocked
• World of Warcraft runs extremely slowly in quad crossfire at high resolutions

Overall, it's a solid release. If you are having no issues at all right now, it might be best to hold off on an upgrade, but if you are playing either AOTS or Rise of the Tomb Raider, or just want to live life on the bleeding-edge, hit up the link below to snag the driver.