AMD Radeon Software

Last updated

AMD Radeon Software
Original author(s) ATI Technologies
Developer(s) AMD
Initial release02.1 / June 13, 2002(21 years ago) (2002-06-13) [1] [2]
Stable release
Windows

Unified-Linux
23.40.2 [5] / February 16, 2024(59 days ago) (2024-02-16)
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Linux
Platform x64
Type Device driver and management
License Freeware
Website amd.com/en/technologies/software

AMD Radeon Software is a device driver and utility software package for AMD's Radeon graphics cards and APUs. Its graphical user interface is built with Qt [6] and is compatible with 64-bit Windows and Linux distributions.

Contents

Software bundle

Functionality

Radeon Software includes the following feature set:

Radeon Anti-Lag reduces input latency. It helps when the GPU is bottlenecking the CPU [7] and is supported in DirectX 9, 11, and 12. [8] Radeon Super Resolution is image upscaling technology similar to FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), but it does not have to be customized for specific games. It works on thousands of games, but AMD recommends using FSR when available. [9] Radeon Boost also uses image upscaling to increase performance, but unlike AMD's other technologies, it does this only at certain times, such as when rapidly moving the mouse. This is interpreted as an action-heavy scene where image quality can temporarily be decreased without much noticeable effect. [10] This only works in supported games. [7] HYPR-RX enables Radeon Anti-Lag, Boost, and Super Resolution. In supported games, this is done automatically according to a user's Radeon Software settings; otherwise, it requires some configuration in-game. HYPR-RX requires an RDNA3 GPU. [11]

Radeon Chill lowers performance when the AMD drivers detect idle moments in games and can set frame rate caps. [7] Smart Access Memory enables potential performance boosts on systems that use both AMD Ryzen CPUs and Radeon video cards. [7] Radeon Enhanced Sync reduces screen tearing like vsync, but it avoids capping frame rates at the monitor's refresh rate. This can reduce the input lag associated with vsync. This is limited to DirectX 9, 10, and 12. [12] AMD Link allows users to stream content to mobile devices, compatible Smart TVs, [lower-alpha 2] and other PCs with Radeon video cards. The client requires a free app, which is available via Google Play, Apple App Store, and Amazon Appstore. [14]

History

The software was previously known as AMD Radeon Settings, AMD Catalyst, and ATI Catalyst. AMD ceased providing 32-bit versions in October 2018.

Supported hardware

AMD Radeon Software is targeted to support all function blocks present on a GPU's or an APU's die. Besides instruction code targeted at rendering, this includes display controllers as well as their SIP blocks for video decoding (Unified Video Decoder (UVD)) and video encoding (Video Coding Engine (VCE)).

The device driver also supports AMD TrueAudio, a SIP block to perform sound-related calculations.

Supported products

AMD Radeon Software supports the following AMD (and ATI-tradition) product lines targeted at rendering:

The following product lines are probably[ original research? ]not supported by the AMD Radeon Software, but instead by some other software, which (for example) is OpenGL-certified:

Multi-monitor support

Starting in Catalyst 14.6 AMD has enabled mixed-resolution support, allowing for a single Eyefinity display group to be created where each monitor runs at a different resolution. The current version may, however, disable any additional display mode and change to a resolution in the one mode available. This feature is made possible through the addition of two new Eyefinity display modes, Fit and Expand, which join the traditional Fill mode. In both Fit and Expand modes, AMD is compensating for the mismatched resolutions by creating a virtual desktop that is of a different resolution from those of the monitors, and then either padding it out or cropping it as necessary. [15]

Before Eyefinity, there was the Windows-only software "HydraVision" [16] (originally acquired from Appian Graphics complete with its development team), a desktop/screen management software mostly providing multi-monitor and virtual-screen management. It has extensive hot-key support. [17]

Video acceleration

Both of AMD's SIP cores for video acceleration, Video Coding Engine as well as Unified Video Decoder, are supported by AMD Radeon Software.

Audio acceleration

Some AMD products contain SIP cores for audio acceleration branded AMD TrueAudio. Support for this audio acceleration DSP co-processor is part of AMD Radeon Software.

Under Microsoft Windows the support for AMD TrueAudio is codenamed "ACP" (for audio co-processor) and implemented via "ACP user service" (amdacpusrsvc.exe), a background service that helps manage audio tasks in games.

Under Linux, AMD TrueAudio is codenamed "acp" as well: some code regarding this can be found in the /drivers/gpu/drm/radeon directory of the Linux kernel sources.

Power saving

AMD Radeon Software includes support for AMD PowerPlay, AMD PowerTune and AMD ZeroCore Power, AMD's set of technologies to reduce energy consumption in their graphics products. [18]

Supported interfaces

Rendering

The AMD Radeon Software device driver supports multiple rendering interfaces, all designed to give the user-space programs, such as video games or CAD software, access to the corresponding SIP blocks.

Direct3D

Direct3D 12 is available for GCN with version 15.7.1 or higher. [19]

Mantle

Only the Radeon Software targeting Microsoft Windows included support for Mantle. In 2019 starting with version 19.5.1 it was officially discontinued, in favor of DirectX 12 and Vulkan (built upon Mantle) raise in popularity. [20] Windows users who still wish to use Mantle would have to use older version of drivers (prior to 19.5.1). [21]

OpenGL

OpenGL 4.5 is possible for TeraScale 2 and 3 with AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta (driver version 15.30 or higher like Crimson Beta 16.2.1). [22] [23] OpenCL support will be lost, but it can be recovered by copying the relevant files from a previous package like Radeon Software 15.11.1 Beta. Beta drivers do not support HDCP.

OpenGL 4.5 is available for GCN with version 16.3 or higher. [24]

OpenGL 4.x compliance requires supporting FP64 shaders. These are implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs.

OpenGL 4.6 is supported in AMD Adrenalin 18.4.1 Graphics Driver on Windows 7 SP1, 10 version 1803 (April 2018 update) for AMD Radeon HD 7700+, HD 8500+ and newer. Released April 2018. [25] [26]

Vulkan

Vulkan 1.0 is available with AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3.2 or higher for GCN. [27]

Vulkan 1.1 with AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.3.3 or higher. [28]

Vulkan 1.2 with Adrenalin 20.1.2 or higher. [29]

Vulkan 1.3 with Adrenalin 22.1.2 or higher. [30]

Video acceleration

The AMD Radeon Software device driver supports multiple interfaces, all designed to give user-space programs, such as GStreamer or HandBrake software, access to the corresponding SIP blocks.

GPGPU

ROCm

OpenCL

With Catalyst 9.12 support of OpenCL 1.0 was available. [31]

In Catalyst 10.10 OpenCL 1.1 was available. [32]

Catalyst 12.4 Supports OpenCL 1.2. [33]

OpenCL 2.0 driver works since 14.41 for GCN-based Models. [34] This also supports previous OpenCL versions.

TeraScale 2 and 3 chips can use Level 1.2.

Close to Metal

Close to Metal was a low-level API by AMD which was abandoned in favor of OpenCL.

Other

AMD HD3D stereoscopic 3D API by AMD.

Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA)

With Catalyst 14.1 HSA is possible. [35] AMD main Processor graphic Units and Radeon graphic Card Units work combined.

AMD GPU Services (AGS)

AMD Display Library (ADL) SDK

Operating systems support

Linux

The main AMD GPU software stacks are fully supported on Linux: GPUOpen for graphics, and ROCm for compute. GPUOpen is most often merely a supplement, for software utilities, to the free Mesa software stack that is widely distributed and available by default on most Linux distributions.

AMD strives at packaging its software for Linux on its own, not relying solely on Linux distributions. They do so by using the amdgpu and amdgpu-pro shell scripts, and provide package archives for e.g. apt and rpm. [36]

Microsoft Windows

Windows supportFrom versionLast versionNotes
x86 x86-64
Windows 9x 02.14.4/6.2—There were some later releases for these operating systems, up to and including a Windows Me build of Catalyst 6.2 released on Feb 9, 2006. [37]
Windows 2000 02.16.5 [38] /7.4 [39] —Newer Catalyst versions up to 7.4 will work in 2000 unofficially without any modification; later versions may need .inf file editing
Windows XP 02.114.4Driver updates and support stopped at AMD Catalyst 14.4 for video cards with support up to DirectX 11 on Hardware, and 10.2 for DirectX 9.0c cards.[ citation needed ]
Windows Vista 7.213.12Driver updates and support stopped at AMD Catalyst 13.12 for video cards with support up to DirectX 11.[ citation needed ]
Windows 7 9.318.9.322.6.1 [40] Driver updates and support were discontinued for x86 operating systems at version 18.9.3, and for x64 at 22.6.1. [40]
Windows 8.1 12.8 [41] 17.1.2/17.7.1Support for driver updates stopped in 2017, though still possible to install. [42]
Windows 10 15.7 [43] 18.9.3 [44] active

support

x86 driver support was discontinued to focus on x64 only.
Windows 11 21.9.1—

Starting with version 4.9 (released on 4 September 2004) the Catalyst driver package included the ATI Catalyst Control Center, [45] a new software application for manipulating many hardware functions, such as 3D settings, monitor controls and video options. It shows a small 3D preview and allows the user to see how changes to the graphics settings affect the quality of the rendered image. It also shows information about the card itself and the software data. This application requires Microsoft .NET Framework.

Radeon Software 16.x and higher only for GCN-based Models. With 16.3.2 Vulkan 1.0 support.

Radeon Software 17.7.1 is the final driver for Windows 8.1

Radeon Software 18.9.3 is the final driver for 32-bit Windows 7/10

Radeon Software 22.6.1 is the final driver for Windows 7 (and Windows 8.1 unofficially); 22.6.1 is also the final driver for GCN 1, GCN 2 and GCN 3 based GPUs [40]

Issues

On Windows Platforms

  • Quantity of rendered ahead frames cannot be adjusted
  • Triple buffering in D3D cannot be forced
  • V-sync in many games under Windows 7 cannot be forced disabled

On Linux Platforms

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Recommended releases are releases that have passed both WHQL tests and certification, as well as AMD's own suite of tests, and are guaranteed to be highly stable by AMD. [3]
  2. ↑ Supported platforms for AMD Link on Smart TVs include Android TV 7+ and Apple TV fourth generation or later on tvOS 12+ [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon</span> Brand of computer products

Radeon is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006 for US$5.4 billion.

Mesa, also called Mesa3D and The Mesa 3D Graphics Library, is an open source implementation of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphics API specifications. Mesa translates these specifications to vendor-specific graphics hardware drivers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD FirePro</span> Brand by AMD

AMD FirePro was AMD's brand of graphics cards designed for use in workstations and servers running professional Computer-aided design (CAD), Computer-generated imagery (CGI), Digital content creation (DCC), and High-performance computing/GPGPU applications. The GPU chips on FirePro-branded graphics cards are identical to the ones used on Radeon-branded graphics cards. The end products differentiate substantially by the provided graphics device drivers and through the available professional support for the software. The product line is split into two categories: "W" workstation series focusing on workstation and primarily focusing on graphics and display, and "S" server series focused on virtualization and GPGPU/High-performance computing.

The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for a graphics processing unit series developed by Advanced Micro Devices under the ATI brand name. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0 initiative launch media event, with official release of the Radeon HD 4800 series on June 25, 2008. Other variants include enthusiast-oriented RV790, mainstream product RV730, RV740 and entry-level RV710.

Unified Video Decoder is the name given to AMD's dedicated video decoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a multitude of video codecs, such as H.264 and VC-1.

The Evergreen series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices for its Radeon line under the ATI brand name. It was employed in Radeon HD 5000 graphics card series and competed directly with Nvidia's GeForce 400 series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenCL</span> Open standard for programming heterogenous computing systems, such as CPUs or GPUs

OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other processors or hardware accelerators. OpenCL specifies programming languages for programming these devices and application programming interfaces (APIs) to control the platform and execute programs on the compute devices. OpenCL provides a standard interface for parallel computing using task- and data-based parallelism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon HD 6000 series</span> Series of video cards

The Northern Islands series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) forming part of its Radeon-brand, based on the 40 nm process. Some models are based on TeraScale 2 (VLIW5), some on the new TeraScale 3 (VLIW4) introduced with them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon HD 7000 series</span> Series of video cards

The Radeon HD 7000 series, codenamed "Southern Islands", is a family of GPUs developed by AMD, and manufactured on TSMC's 28 nm process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon HD 8000 series</span> Family of GPUs by AMD

The Radeon HD 8000 series is a family of computer GPUs developed by AMD. AMD was initially rumored to release the family in the second quarter of 2013, with the cards manufactured on a 28 nm process and making use of the improved Graphics Core Next architecture. However the 8000 series turned out to be an OEM rebadge of the 7000 series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon 200 series</span> Series of video cards

The Radeon 200 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These GPUs are manufactured on a 28 nm Gate-Last process through TSMC or Common Platform Alliance.

CodeXL was an open-source software development tool suite which included a GPU debugger, a GPU profiler, a CPU profiler, a graphics frame analyzer and a static shader/kernel analyzer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD Eyefinity</span> Brand of AMD video card products

AMD Eyefinity is a brand name for AMD video card products that support multi-monitor setups by integrating multiple display controllers on one GPU. AMD Eyefinity was introduced with the Radeon HD 5000 series "Evergreen" in September 2009 and has been available on APUs and professional-grade graphics cards branded AMD FirePro as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon 300 series</span> Series of video cards

The Radeon 300 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. All of the GPUs of the series are produced in 28 nm format and use the Graphics Core Next (GCN) micro-architecture.

Vulkan is a low-level, low-overhead cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and operating systems, it is also designed to work with modern multi-core CPUs.

The Radeon 400 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These cards were the first to feature the Polaris GPUs, using the new 14 nm FinFET manufacturing process, developed by Samsung Electronics and licensed to GlobalFoundries. The Polaris family initially included two new chips in the Graphics Core Next (GCN) family. Polaris implements the 4th generation of the Graphics Core Next instruction set, and shares commonalities with the previous GCN microarchitectures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GPUOpen</span> Middleware software suite

GPUOpen is a middleware software suite originally developed by AMD's Radeon Technologies Group that offers advanced visual effects for computer games. It was released in 2016. GPUOpen serves as an alternative to, and a direct competitor of Nvidia GameWorks. GPUOpen is similar to GameWorks in that it encompasses several different graphics technologies as its main components that were previously independent and separate from one another. However, GPUOpen is partially open source software, unlike GameWorks which is proprietary and closed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ROCm</span> Parallel computing platform: GPGPU libraries and application programming interface

ROCm is an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) software stack for graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. ROCm spans several domains: general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), high performance computing (HPC), heterogeneous computing. It offers several programming models: HIP, OpenMP/Message Passing Interface (MPI), and OpenCL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon RX 5000 series</span> Series of video cards

The Radeon RX 5000 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD, based on their RDNA architecture. The series is targeting the mainstream mid to high-end segment and is the successor to the Radeon RX Vega series. The launch occurred on July 7, 2019. It is manufactured using TSMC's 7 nm FinFET semiconductor fabrication process.

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