AMD Crimson 16.8.1 Hotfix Drivers Released

By Nathan Kirsch

AMD has been cranking out he video card driver updates and we are glad that they are as a number of important issues have been fixed. Yesterday, AMD rolled out Crimson 16.8.1 Hotfix drivers that add support for the new AMD Radeon RX 470 and Radeon RX 460 graphics cards. AMD Radeon Software version 16.8.1 have a good number of RX 480 fixes. You can download the latest Crimson driver in AMD Radeon Settings or on AMDs Radeon Software Crimson Edition download page.

AMD Radeon RX 480 Video Card

You can find the list of fixed issues and known issues below. We’ve run across an issue on our Polaris based graphics cards (Radeon RX 460/470/480) where the screen goes black (or another color) and the system must be restarted to recover the display. We’ve made AMD aware of the issue and they have taken our full system details and are looking into it. If you happen to own a new Radeon RX 400 series card and keep getting a black screen please leave a comment below with your full system specs including your monitor model, resolution and what connector you are using.
Fixed Issues

  • Max memory overclock available on Radeon RX 480 being too low in Radeon WattMan has been resolved.
  • Overwatch may experience an application crash on some Radeon RX 480 configurations when using AMD Crossfire technology mode.
  • The Division poor Crossfire scaling may be experienced in some low resolution configurations when using AMD Crossfire technology mode.
  • DOTA2 may experience lower than expected performance when in AMD Crossfire mode.
  • Radeon Settings may not report the correct Vulkan driver or API version information.
  • Firefox may experience an application crash when hardware acceleration is enabled for content playback.
  • Low frame rate or stutter may be experienced Wolfenstein: The Old Blood on Radeon RX 480.
  • Updating drivers through Radeon Settings may sometimes fail with an error message.

Known Issues

  • A few game titles may fail to launch or crash if the AMD Gaming Evolved overlay is enabled. A temporary workaround is to disable the AMD Gaming Evolved “In Game Overlay”.
  • Ark Survival Evolved may experience an error message when trying to launch the game in some configurations.
  • DOTA2 may experience an application hang when using the Vulkan API and changing resolution or game/quality settings.
  • Corruption may be experienced in Rise of the Tomb Raider using the DirectX12 API on some Hybrid Graphics configurations when performing a task switch.
  • Shader Cache may remain be enabled when set to “off” in Radeon Settings on some Hybrid Graphics configurations.
  • Radeon RX 480 graphics may experience intermittent stuttering in The Division when high game settings are used and vsync is enabled.
  • Battlefield 4 may experience intermittent crashes when using Mantle. As a work around users are suggested to switch to DirectX11.
  • Radeon Pro Duo may experience a black screen in Total War: Warhammer with the games API set to DirectX12 and V-Sync enabled.
  • World of Tanks may experience stuttering after performing a task switch in AMD Crossfire mode.
  • Rocket League may experience flickering when in AMD Crossfire mode.
  • Ashes of the Singularity may experience an application crash with “crazy” in game settings and Multi-GPU enabled.