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AMD’s new Radeon graphics driver preps PC gamers for ‘Watch Dogs 2,’ more

Kevin Parrish
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AMD RADEON RX 480
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
AMD’s new driver for its Radeon graphics cards is optimized for Watch Dogs 2, which finally hits the PC on Tuesday. Released Monday and listed as Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.5, the new driver also fixes issues with two games and adds a DirectX 11-related AMD Crossfire profile for Bethesda’s Dishonored 2.

AMD customers looking to score a copy of Watch Dogs 2 will need the following hardware to meet the minimum and recommended hardware requirements:

Recommended Videos
Minimum Recommended
Operating system: Windows 7 SP1/8.1/10 64-bit Windows 7 SP1/8.1/10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-2400S @ 2.5GHz
AMD FX 6120 @ 3.5GHz		 Intel Core i5-3470 @ 3.2GHz
AMD FX 8120 @ 3.9GHz
Memory: 6GB 8GB
Storage: 50GB 50GB
Graphics card: AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB AMD Radeon R9 290 3GB
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The release notes for 16.11.5 show that AMD also resolved an issue with The Division where the game world would flicker on a system with a multicard AMD CrossFire setup. The same multicard CrossFire layout would also cause flickering in Battlefield 1, another problem AMD corrected in this release.

Unfortunately, that’s it for fixes and new features. The release notes list eight known issues, one of which is the continuing problem with the third-party Raptr in-game overlay that prevents games from launching, causes performance issues, or crashes games entirely when enabled. Naturally, AMD customers should disable this feature until the problem is resolved.

Here are the game-related problems that are still outstanding in the release notes:

Game: Problem:
Dishonored 2 – CrossFire mode is disabled on Windows 7.
Watch Dogs 2 – Flickering or game crashing when using multiple Radeon RX 480 cards in CrossFire mode.
Doom – Possible crash when using Vulkan on some Graphics Core Next cards.
DOTA 2 – Possible crash when launching with Vulkan enabled on some Graphics Core Next cards.
Overwatch – CrossFire mode may cause flickering on the main menu or when viewing character models.
FIFA 17 – The game may hang or have a black screen at launch on select Hybrid Graphics or AMD PowerXpress mobile configurations.

Finally, the last unresolved issue isn’t related to gaming at all. It’s a problem with H.264 playback on some Radeon RX 400 series graphics cards, as some customers are still experiencing blocky corruption when streaming the content through P2P content players.

For AMD customers wanting to get prepared for Tuesday’s launch of Watch Dogs 2, here are the links to download the driver for Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7 pulled from the release notes:

Windows 10: 64-bit 32-bit
Windows 8.1: 64-bit 32-bit
Windows 7: 64-bit 32-bit

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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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