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AMD’s new driver fixes a bug that caused Anniversary Update installation issues

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AMD Radeon RX 470
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Hot on the heels of releasing Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.8.1 last week, AMD released v16.8.2 on Monday to address a bug that plagued many Windows 10 customers trying to install Anniversary Update. Apparently, there was an issue with a “small number” of AMD customers who experienced installation issues with Secure Boot enabled, which is essentially Microsoft’s anti-piracy system that also thwarts rootkits from installing malware. That has now been fixed.

In addition to the Anniversary Update fix, the new AMD driver is optimized for No Man’s Sky and the Paragon open beta launching Tuesday. The driver also fixes an issue with Overwatch, which previously experienced “intermittent” crashes when players browsed the hero gallery. Another fixed bug caused the desktop to flicker when it became idle with Freesync turned on.

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As far as new features and fixes are concerned, that’s it. AMD still has a list of known issues related to Ashes of the Singularity, Rocket League, World of Tanks, Total War: Warhammer, Battlefield 4, The Division, DOTA2, Ark Survival Evolved, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Crossfire mode seems to be the culprit with several of the listed games, whereas one title has a problem with the new Radeon RX 400 series graphics cards.

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According to the release notes, AMD is still having a problem with the AMD Gaming Evolved client provided by Raptr. Right now, there are a few games that will fail to launch or will crash if the client’s overlay is enabled. AMD suggests that users disable this overlay within the desktop client for now until a driver fix is provided. Typically, this overlay is used for browsing the Internet, taking screenshots, live-streaming to Twitch, chatting online, and more from within the game.

Outside of games, known issues still unresolved include flickering on the desktop caused by a “small number” of non-Freesync enabled displays set at 144Hz. There are also some Hybrid Graphics configurations that keep Shader Cache enabled even though it’s listed as “off” in Radeon Settings. However, AMD’s list of known issues seems to be growing shorter, which is a good thing.

AMD’s new driver is best suited for its desktop and discrete mobile GPUs. That said, if customers have a laptop packing only an AMD APU, they might want to stick with the drivers offered by the laptop’s manufacturer. These are tested and approved to run on specific hardware configurations, which means installing drivers from AMD could cause nasty problems. The drawback is that original equipment manufacturers usually aren’t on top of the latest video driver releases.

“This driver is not intended for use on AMD Radeon products running in Apple Boot Camp platforms. Users of these platforms should contact their system manufacturer for driver support,” the company states.

AMD’s next graphics chip is code-named Vega, based on 14nm FinFET process technology, and will support the second generation of stacked High Bandwidth Memory. Vega was first introduced at a special event earlier this year, and is expected to hit the market in early 2017. It’s the company’s upcoming rival to Nvidia’s Pascal-based GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 cards. However, there’s indication that AMD may push Vega’s launch to October 2016 due to Nvidia’s current lead in the high-end GPU market.

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Kevin Parrish
Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
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