Installing the new AMD Crimson Drivers on NMP

[broketrouble]

So I think I managed to install the Crimson Drivers AMD put out today on a new Mac Pro with dual D700's in Windows 8.1..

Without using DDU (had the latest Bootcamp drivers installed) I ran just the installer by adding EnableFalcon=true in the InstallManager.cfg. It ran through the install but crashed as expected during the Display Driver part. This did however successfully add the new FirePro control panel interface. It crashes immediately when attempting to modify any settings.

Following the guides posted in the 15.11 thread on this same forum I fiddled my way through the actual driver .inf file and added the strings with my hardware ID. I used Device Manager to update my cards.. My monitor flashed black quite a few times until inevitably my computer hung. Pulled the power plug, booted back up and low and behold I'm able to modify settings and use both cards as Crossfire from the new FirePro control panel. Was also able to overclock, use DSR, eyefinity, etc etc. The only feature currently not working is the ability to disable Crossfire.. but I'm okay with that for now.

Experienced a huuuuge performance boost in both Witcher 3 and Fallout 4. Where before I had to run both games in Borderless Windowed mode with a single GPU to have any kind of playable FPS, I'm able to utilize both cards and run Fullscreen at 2560 x 1600 with everything basically Ultra with 60+ FPS. Fallout 4 performing perfectly, and Witcher 3 still needed some fiddling to get rid of flicker.

Not having as much luck with AC Syndicate at this time, but it's still playable at lower resolutions, much more so then before.

Anyone else playing around with this stuff? Have been googling for a while but haven't found any other threads on the usual forums.

 

[Mattstrete]

Wow. I'm really interested in this. I gave up trying to modify the actual drivers and have just been using the Crimson DLL files.

It would be great if you could post a more detailed guide?

 

[broketrouble]

Sure, I'll give a try. Though note, no guarantees at all this will work. It worked for me, but seemed sketchy at best. I'd definitely setup a restore point before you try it.

I found this guide to be the most helpful.

http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2015/09/21/update-amd-display-driver-under-bootcamp/

I'd install the latest bootcamp AMD drivers from Apple Software Update.

Download the latest Crimson drivers for your version of Windows. I only tested this on 8.1 personally.
Extract the drivers, navigate to the Config folder from the extracted drivers and add the line EnableFalcon=true to InstallManager.cfg.

Once this is complete, run the Setup.exe. It should run through most of the installer but fail when it gets to the display driver section. This will at least get you the newer gui for the control center.

From here, follow the guide listed above to edit the driver's .inf file with your own display adapters hardware ID, sign it, and then install it.

In my case, I got lazy while waiting to download the inf2cat tool and attempted to install the driver manually by rebooting and disabling the "Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider." As I said up above, screen flashed as cards were updating, and then my computer hung on a black screen. I rebooted and everything seemed to be fine.

It worked for me but you may want to follow through with the whole guide rather then skipping the end like I did. In my past experience I've had to update both of my cards individually (though I may be misremembering), but when I did this, I selected only one card and according to my device manager, both have gone up to the latest version on their own.

Let me know how it works. I may rollback and try again just for fun to see what happens, but I'm pretty happy with the way things are running currently.

If you or anyone else succeeds, please update how things went. Very curious.

Thanks!

 

[Ovedius]

.
...
I found this guide to be the most helpful.

http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2015/09/21/update-amd-display-driver-under-bootcamp/
...
If you or anyone else succeeds, please update how things went. Very curious.

Thanks!

For crying out loud!
I've been searching actively for a method to force install the latest AMD drivers for the M370X since August.
That guide is two months old!
How many different ways can one google "install latest amd driver m370x bootcamp BLAH BLAH OVER AND OVER" without finding anything useful?

I'll give this a try on my rMBP, will let you know what happens.

Big thanks for the link

 

[Ovedius]

Just installed the latest Crimson driver package on my 2015 rMBP using the guide supplied by brokertrouble.
I used the files supplied in the guide, worked like a charm.

Only trouble is, now I can't adjust screen brightness.
As a side note: the new Crimson drivers dick f-all to alleviate the horrible throttling issue with the M370X.

I'll see if there's a fix for adjusting screen brightnes, otherwise I'm rolling back to supported drivers.

 

[HumpYourWayUp]

Would you recommend to force install the new crimson drivers at this time?
The thermal issue isn't fixed by the crimson but you get brightness problems... are there at least any fps gains in games?

I really would love to see either AMD or Apple take care of the problem :-(

 

[Ovedius]

Would you recommend to force install the new crimson drivers at this time?
The thermal issue isn't fixed by the crimson but you get brightness problems... are there at least any fps gains in games?

I really would love to see either AMD or Apple take care of the problem :-(

I haven't really tried any games yet.
-had a nasty crash recently and had to create a new Bootcamp.
The most demanding, yet smallest download size, game I bothered downloading was Far Cry 2.
Not exactly bleeding edge but needs some juice to render at maximum.
I just used it to see what happened with regards to throttling.

So I haven't really been able to compare frame rates.
I'll download Alien: Isolation again through the night, I've got a pretty good feeling for how it played with the old drivers.
Of course any reports will be purely anecdotal, so take them with a truckload of salt.

 

[Ovedius]

I've tried pushing the Crimson drivers a little.

The only recent PC games I have "fresh intimate familiarity" with are Alien: Isolation and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

I can't really tell any difference in framerates with the naked eye though.
So maybe I'll try going back to standard BootCamp drivers to record som framerates and then compare.
...maybe.

 

[HumpYourWayUp]

ATTENTION: There appears to be a problem with fan speeds in the crimson driver. Hot fix is getting released on monday!

Here is the story:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/3uqv2o/amd_users_beware_crimson_graphics_driver_contains/

 

[Mattstrete]

Well, I'm happy to report that I was able to install the drivers on my nMP with D500s.

(And the fan speed problem is non existent for the nMP, at least, given that the GPUS don't have their own fans but rely upon the thermal core and the single, main fan for cooling - which can be controlled separately).

In case anyone is interested:

- I modified the .inf files in the manner suggested in the guides referred to above;
- I did not need to "rebuild" any .CAT files or download any other strange utilities in order to "sign" any files . I simply restarted Windows 10 with driver signature enforcement disabled and installed the drivers.

One thing I did note was that only one of the cards appeared to be updated to the new drivers, being reflected as a Radeon HD7800 (which in itself was to be expected after my experience with the Omega drivers). I repeated the process with the other card and both are now reflected in device manager as Radeon HD7800s.

The drivers have given me a nice performance improvement in Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. Crossfire is working properly as is the new "shader cache".

Hopefully this method can be used with future drivers, at least on Windows 10.

 

[broketrouble]

Great to hear everyone! Glad it worked out!

 

[ruddagger]

Great to hear everyone! Glad it worked out!

I might have to give this a try.

I just picked up Rainbow Six Siege, and despite the closed beta running perfectly fine, with the final game there is an issue with older AMD drivers which causes terrible texture glitches. The updated ones are apparently fine, so, I guess this work around presumably would solve my issue?

 

[ruddagger]

Well, I'm happy to report that I was able to install the drivers on my nMP with D500s.

(And the fan speed problem is non existent for the nMP, at least, given that the GPUS don't have their own fans but rely upon the thermal core and the single, main fan for cooling - which can be controlled separately).

In case anyone is interested:

- I modified the .inf files in the manner suggested in the guides referred to above;
- I did not need to "rebuild" any .CAT files or download any other strange utilities in order to "sign" any files . I simply restarted Windows 10 with driver signature enforcement disabled and installed the drivers.

One thing I did note was that only one of the cards appeared to be updated to the new drivers, being reflected as a Radeon HD7800 (which in itself was to be expected after my experience with the Omega drivers). I repeated the process with the other card and both are now reflected in device manager as Radeon HD7800s.

The drivers have given me a nice performance improvement in Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. Crossfire is working properly as is the new "shader cache".

Hopefully this method can be used with future drivers, at least on Windows 10.

Are these the most recent AMD drivers you installed? I'm also running a nMP with D500's + Windows 10. Any tips, might have to do this tonight. Spent all of last night tearing my hair out messing around with drivers trying to get Rainbow Six Siege to not have graphical glitches.

 

[Mattstrete]

Are these the most recent AMD drivers you installed? I'm also running a nMP with D500's + Windows 10. Any tips, might have to do this tonight. Spent all of last night tearing my hair out messing around with drivers trying to get Rainbow Six Siege to not have graphical glitches.

No, they are the "first" version of Crimson before the hot fix. I tried to install the hot fix in the same manner but found that:

- they contain more than one .inf file, two of which contain the relevant references which needed to be replaced, which may have caused problems;
- although the drivers installed using the above method, the system would routinely lock up soon after every boot.

I reverted to the clone I had made of my bootcamp partition (with Winclone) whilst running the first version of the Crimson drivers and everything is working fine.

I recommend that you, too, make a proper clone of your bootcamp partition before trying this.

As a first step you could try using the .dll replacement method described here:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=399547

before trying to install the new drivers. This method may help you with the game you've referred to without the need to install the Crimson drivers completely.

 

[Aidonia]

Mattstrete, thanks for your post. I also have NMP with D500's, running Windows 10. Following your lead I've managed to install successfully however only one card is showing as HD7800 (the primary card still says D500).

I have a couple questions about getting both cards to show as HD 7800:

- I modified the .inf files in the manner suggested in the guides referred to above;

Do you mean there are multiple .inf files to edit? The remkoweijnen.nl link only mentions one file.


also

I repeated the process with the other card and both are now reflected in device manager as Radeon HD7800s.

Can you please clarify exactly which processes you repeated for the other card? I only found one line in the .inf to replace with the full device ID. Should there be one line for each card? Do I need to run through the setup.exe again?


Any further help much appreciated!

 

[Aidonia]

Nevermind! I edited the .inf a second time replacing the relevant line this time with the other card's ID then ran the setup.exe again. Both now show as HD 7800.

Thanks everyone for the info in this thread

Mattstrete, thanks for your post. I also have NMP with D500's, running Windows 10. Following your lead I've managed to install successfully however only one card is showing as HD7800 (the primary card still says D500).

I have a couple questions about getting both cards to show as HD 7800:



Do you mean there are multiple .inf files to edit? The remkoweijnen.nl link only mentions one file.


also


Can you please clarify exactly which processes you repeated for the other card? I only found one line in the .inf to replace with the full device ID. Should there be one line for each card? Do I need to run through the setup.exe again?


Any further help much appreciated!

 

[Mattstrete]

@ Aidonia:
Sorry for the delay in replying to you and I am glad you got it to work.
While installing the hot fix driver I realised that it is probably unnecessary to replace any device references. You may have noticed that the device IDs for the two D500 cards differ slightly, with one numeral being different. The first portion of the device ID for each card is however common to a card identified in the .inf as the "R575" (which is identified as the HD7800) and, as you will have noticed, it is in a section of the .inf file dedicated to the "R575" that one needs to delete the two "exclude" lines. Each of these "exclude" lines refers directly to the two D500 cards (by naming their slightly different Device IDs). So, I think that all that is necessary is for one to delete the two "exclude" references relating to the two D500 cards.

The reason why there is only a single line identifying the R575 in the earlier section of the inf is that this line refers to the first portion of the Device ID which is common to both D500s and the HD7800.

As far as I can see, the two "exclude" lines were included in the .inf by AMD to tell the installer not to install the drivers where the two D500 cards are detected in the system. Essentially, there is no reason why the drivers cannot install other than the two "exclude" references in the "R575" section of the .inf.

I just thought I'd make this clearer to assist anyone else who tries this.

 

[broketrouble]

Recently tried out Just Cause 3 and experienced the common AMD issues that were fixed in 15.11.1

Rather then do the whole .inf editing with the new drivers I just copied the .dlls from the driver into the Just Cause 3 folder and it fixed it right away. Might save someone time if that's one of the reasons you want to go to 15.11.1..

 

[/dev/toaster]

Recently tried out Just Cause 3 and experienced the common AMD issues that were fixed in 15.11.1

Rather then do the whole .inf editing with the new drivers I just copied the .dlls from the driver into the Just Cause 3 folder and it fixed it right away. Might save someone time if that's one of the reasons you want to go to 15.11.1..

Do you have instructions on what you did ? I started following the guide until I got to the cert signing and realized they are directing me to a paid service.

 

[sickntired]

is it possible that someone could upload their modified drivers somewhere for us to download? There would have to be 3 versions, of course, for each of the 3 video card types.

 

[ChuckBlack]

I'm too embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure all this **** out but man was it worth it. I've got a 2013 NMP, 4 core D300 with 32 GB of ram and WOW what a difference from apple's stock drivers for Call of Duty Black Ops 3. Here are my notes (out of order) on the procedure.

-I'm not sure if it made a difference but when I selected my card from Device Manager I made sure I picked card A. Both video cards had the same numbers in them but one had A's in it and the other had B's as well as numbers.

-My Mac had multiple files to edit, not just one like the sample, IE: (this is how all of my "setup information" files looked after editing them, 3 in total had to be edited, after doing one, just copied and pasted to the other two)
"%AMD6810.1%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_0B001028&REV_81
"%AMD6810.2%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_09081043&REV_00
"%AMD6810.3%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_09081458&REV_00
"%AMD6810.4%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_09081462&REV_00
"%AMD6810.5%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_0908148C&REV_00
"%AMD6810.6%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_09081682&REV_00
"%AMD6810.7%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_73701682&REV_00
"%AMD6810.8%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_0908174B&REV_00
"%AMD6810.9%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_012B106B&REV_00
"%AMD6810.10%" = ati2mtag_R575, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&REV_81

-There are multiple ati2mtag files, pick the one that has no letters after the number, search for it with brackets or whatever their called. "[ati2mtag_R575]"

-I also did not need to use the inf2cat app. Skip that ****.

-After you've done everything as above correctly you can now boot into what was mentioned above, "Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider" I googled that and saw a video on how to do it. Basically it's just setting up windows to boot in a safe mode that is for video cards. When you've booted into that you should be able to install with the screen flickering black from time to time during the install as mentioned above.

-You may need a clean install of the Apple Bootcamp drivers as a starting point.

-I did not use the files from "www.remkoweijnen.nl", I downloaded the complete installer from AMD.

That's about all my piss-tank memory can recall at the moment. Best of luck!

 

[ghislain]

Sure, I'll give a try. Though note, no guarantees at all this will work. It worked for me, but seemed sketchy at best. I'd definitely setup a restore point before you try it.

I found this guide to be the most helpful.

http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2015/09/21/update-amd-display-driver-under-bootcamp/

I'd install the latest bootcamp AMD drivers from Apple Software Update.

Download the latest Crimson drivers for your version of Windows. I only tested this on 8.1 personally.
Extract the drivers, navigate to the Config folder from the extracted drivers and add the line EnableFalcon=true to InstallManager.cfg.

Once this is complete, run the Setup.exe. It should run through most of the installer but fail when it gets to the display driver section. This will at least get you the newer gui for the control center.

From here, follow the guide listed above to edit the driver's .inf file with your own display adapters hardware ID, sign it, and then install it.

In my case, I got lazy while waiting to download the inf2cat tool and attempted to install the driver manually by rebooting and disabling the "Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider." As I said up above, screen flashed as cards were updating, and then my computer hung on a black screen. I rebooted and everything seemed to be fine.

It worked for me but you may want to follow through with the whole guide rather then skipping the end like I did. In my past experience I've had to update both of my cards individually (though I may be misremembering), but when I did this, I selected only one card and according to my device manager, both have gone up to the latest version on their own.

Let me know how it works. I may rollback and try again just for fun to see what happens, but I'm pretty happy with the way things are running currently.

If you or anyone else succeeds, please update how things went. Very curious.

Thanks!

I successfully installed Grimson drivers in my nmp (D700) according to your method and modif suggested by Mattstrete. Everything looks good, except that nmp no longer shut down properly, i.e monitor shut down but power never shut off, so that I must use the power button to shut off the computer. Any suggestion? Otherwise, I don't see obvious inmprovements in fsp in Heaven benchmark 4....In fact, shut down occurs normally if crossfire is disabled..What a pity...

 

[Mattstrete]

I successfully installed Grimson drivers in my nmp (D700) according to your method and modif suggested by Mattstrete. Everything looks good, except that nmp no longer shut down properly, i.e monitor shut down but power never shut off, so that I must use the power button to shut off the computer. Any suggestion? Otherwise, I don't see obvious inmprovements in fsp in Heaven benchmark 4....In fact, shut down occurs normally if crossfire is disabled..What a pity...

In my experience the shutdown bug with crossfire enabled arose with the last official bootcamp drivers, rather than with the crimson drivers. In fact, now that I'm on Crimson, I no longer have the problem. (I have D500s so it could be an idiosyncrasy unique to the D700)

 

[TimothyB]

I got my eye on this thread in hopes of installing Crimson for my D700s on Windows 8.1 to better enjoy Fallout 4. Though, I'm unable to access a service to certify the driver modifications.

 

[ghislain]

In my experience the shutdown bug with crossfire enabled arose with the last official bootcamp drivers, rather than with the crimson drivers. In fact, now that I'm on Crimson, I no longer have the problem. (I have D500s so it could be an idiosyncrasy unique to the D700)

Thank you very much. May be this bug is specific to D700; Also, I used the trick to install unsigned drivers. I wonder if this cannot create the problem...