Plus, AMD is rolling out a single driver for all Radeon users, consumers and pros alike.

As promised when AMD rolled out its long-overdue Radeon Software Crimson graphics card driver in 2015, the company has followed up with a new major version for 2016. Released today and dubbed Radeon Software Crimson ReLive—conveniently sidestepping the initial plan to introduce a new colour and name each year—the new driver features a bunch of bug fixes, performance boosts of up to eight percent for cards like the RX 480, and new power-saving tech, but also screen capture software to rival Nvidia's ShadowPlay.

Moreover, these features aren't just coming to AMD's consumer graphics cards. For the first time, the company is combining its professional Radeon Pro drivers with its consumer drivers, using the same underlying tech for both. That means whether you're using a normal Radeon GPU on a laptop, or a Radeon Pro user creating 3D models on a desktop, or a server administrator using Radeon VPro virtualisation, all will be served by the same, free driver.

But about that headline feature first. Integrated into the existing Radeon Settings interface as an additional tab, the titular "ReLive" screen capture software allows users to record gameplay or desktop footage, take screenshots, enable a DVR-like instant replay mode, and stream directly to services like YouTube and Twitch. With Instant Replay enabled, up to the last 20-minutes of gameplay or desktop use is buffered to disk, ensuring that those 20-headshot kill streaks don't go uncaptured.

An optional overlay adds the ability to manually start and stop recording, as well as turn streaming on and off. Each capture method has its own individual quality settings, too, including bitrate, resolution, FPS, and the type of encoder used (some options are limited by the age of the graphics card you have, though). Thanks to hardware acceleration, AMD claims that ReLive has a minimal impact (up to four percent) on performance. In brief testing, I found there to be a difference of two or three FPS at most with capture enabled.

Radeon ReLive adds an overlay to games and apps, allowing for easy screen capture and streaming.

That's a substantial improvement over AMD's previous screen capture software, which was developed by Raptr. Those that ever had the misfortune of using Raptr will be pleased to know that the partnership between the two companies has ended, with AMD putting its resources into developing its capture software exclusively in-house.

For laptop users—or desktop users particularly desperate to save a few pence on their power bill each year—the latest Crimson driver package also introduces Radeon Chill. The software, originally a third-party add-on developed by HiAlgo before it was purchased by AMD earlier this year, automatically reduces the frame rate of a game during static scenes. If you're just standing about in an empty field in a game of World of Warcraft, for example, there's no need for a high frame rate, because there's little happening on-screen. As soon as the software detects user input again, it jacks up the frame rate, in theory without any perceptible lag.

While Radeon Chill doesn't work with all games—AMD is working on a white list for the games that work—the benefits can be substantial, particularly with relatively small GPU workloads like e-sports games. In a World of Warcraft test on an 8GB RX 480 (buy now), AMD claimed power consumption dropped 31 percent from 108W to 75W, and decreased the average GPU temperature by 13 degrees Celsius—figures which were mostly matched in a live demo. For laptop users where every drop of power saved is important, such improvements may have a considerable effect on battery life.

Radeon Chill is configurable too, so users can set minimum and maximum frame rate targets. The latter is particularly useful if you have too much GPU power, and are happy with a frame rate cap at 60FPS or lower. By not running the game as fast as possible at all times, the GPU's command queues are freed up. When Radeon Chill then does decide to dispatch a frame, the GPU is ready to produce that frame very quickly, in theory reducing input lag and helping to decrease that all-important 99th percentile display time. The only caveat to Radeon Chill is that it only works with DirectX 9, 10, and 11 applications, not the all-singing, all-dancing DirectX 12 AMD has been pushing for the past couple of years.

Other additions to the new Crimson suite include the extension of WattMan support—that's AMD's in-house overclocking tool—to the R9 Fury series, R9 390 and 380 series, R9 290 series, and a swathe of low-end cards. There's hybrid (not fully in-hardware) VP9 decode acceleration, support for Dolby Vision and HDR10, up to 24 percent lower click-to-response time in FreeSync, and support for the latest DisplayPort HBR3, enabling the use of 8K monitors at 60Hz in future products. AMD's even thrown a bone to Linux users, not only enabling FreeSync support on the platform, but also pledging continued support for the open-source core driver, on top of which sits the proprietary Radeon driver for those that need accelerated performance.

As mentioned, all of the above improvements and features are replicated on the professional side too, including ReLive screen capture. And while it's unlikely that workstation users will be jumping onto Twitch to launch a COD livestream during office hours, there are potential use cases for creating workflow tutorial videos, or showing the IT department precisely what they problem is before it recommends turning the computer off and on again. Perhaps more useful for pros are the performance and engine-specific tweaks of the driver, which—given how increasingly common it is for game engines to be used in live production, architecture, and 3D modelling—should help streamline those production workflows.

AMD is also promising a concrete driver release date schedule for pros, with stability and performance tweaks landing on the forth Thursday of each quarter. That's in addition to certification across key workstation apps, including the Adobe suite, Houdini, Maya, and AutoCAD, to name but a few.

Finally, while not an AMD creation, the company is backing an open-source piece of software called the Open Software Capture and Analytics Tool (OCAT). OCAT is pitched as a replacement for the extremely dated FRAPS software used by enthusiasts and many people in the media to capture FPS data for review purposes. Unlike FRAPS, OCAT works properly in DirectX 12 and Vulkan as well as DirectX 11, allowing for the capture of frame-time data to a CSV file for analysis. OCAT is currently in early beta, but a public release is due soon.

You can download the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive driver package (version 16.12.1) from the AMD website, and read the full release notes.