AMD is ditching Catalyst, moving on to ‘Radeon Software’ Crimson Edition

About a week ago, we began hearing rumours that AMD was preparing a new special edition driver, much like last year's ‘Omega' update. However, it turns out that something much bigger was planned, Catalyst Control Centre is dead. AMD is now introducing ‘Radeon Software', which will completely overhaul the driver experience for Radeon GPU users.

The Catalyst Control Centre first launched back in 2002 but now it seems that it is time for a change. AMD recently set up the Radeon Technologies Group, which has been working on Radeon Software: Crimson Edition. Big name updates like ‘Crimson Edition', will be yearly driver releases, though there will be plenty of incremental updates in-between, which will follow the familiar X.XX numbering scheme, for example, the first Crimson update will be known as version 15.11.

Aside from the big name change, there will be a completely overhauled user interface, performance improvements and some new features. First off, there is a new ‘Game Manager' tab, which allows you to view your games on one screen and set graphics settings from the driver. Overdrive has some changes too, allowing you to configure unique over-clocking settings on a per game basis.

Eyefinity users can now set up their displays with just one click and things like VSR, FreeSync or GPU scaling can all be configured under the ‘Display' tab.

AMD plans to have WHQL driver releases each year and the software will check itself for updates every two weeks. However, you can just do things manually if you want to. Expect Radeon Software: Crimson Edition to launch soon.

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KitGuru Says: It looks like AMD is kicking things up a notch with its drivers this year. What do you guys think of the announcement today? 

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