AMD Crimson locks horns with the Nvidia GeForce Experience app

If you've been keeping up with AMD headlines, you may remember that at the start of September the company launched the new Radeon Technologies Group.

I think it looks sharp, with crisp and legible representations of key info.

Radeon Crimson isn't just a cosmetic update, though.

Another advantage of using the Qt application framework for Radeon Setting is speed.

For now, AMD is only talking about the UI changes in Crimson, which is dramatically different from the old CCC.

AMD's Radeon Software Crimson replaces Catalyst. That's significantly faster than even Nvidia's Control Panel, and it would be a huge UI improvement to Catalyst.

We can't yet verify those claim since we haven't gotten our hands on a pre-release version of the new software. Periodic driver updates-AMD hopes to push about six WHQL-certified drivers per year going forward, not tied to an email registration, though it promises more details in coming weeks-will be designated by a "year.month" date stamp.

Today, AMD is announcing another big change, and this one affects a piece of software that many of you reading this have running on your systems right now-assuming there's a Radeon in that rig of yours. Individual game profiles are nothing new, but Crimson adds a very interesting twist: Unique OverDrive settings for individual games. Radeon Settings can detect which games are present on a user's system and allow the user to tweak the control panel options like antialiasing modes and Frame Rate Target Control on a per-game basis.

Clicking the Gaming tab reveals an interface that displays all the games installed on your PC, as well as an option for global settings.

Crimson offers up much of the same settings as CCC, but it makes them easier to find. The setup of multi-display configurations purportedly becomes quicker and simpler as a result.

While Crimson hasn't yet been released, the initial screenshots look promising. Since its release in 2002, the Catalyst Software and driver suite, has garnered over a billion downloads from the company's website, with the figure expected to be a lot more considering third-party downloads.

For as long as I can remember, the AMD (previously ATI) graphics driver was know as Catalyst. The introduction of Crimson marks a return to more straightforward Radeon-themed branding from the graphics side of AMD. The latter features can be configured with just one click and the software suite identifies and adapts your software suite accordingly. The Overdrive tool has been overhauled with a cleaner interface that should make tweaking individual game performance much easier. Each major yearly update will be christened with a new name revolving around a red hue-Radeon Software Burgandy being an example provided by AMD. "For this version we haven't done the optimised recommended settings yet, but it's on my roadmap", AMD's senior manager of software strategy Terry Makedon told Ars.

AMD today has announced their next generation driver platform, Crimson, as part of AMD's new more agile and vertical software initiative that's come from the reorganization into the Radeon Technologies Group.