[Gaming related!] AMD Crimson ReLive Drivers for Bootcamp. MBP 2016.

[fs454]

Have you been able to record/stream?

I've got these new drivers installed too but have been unable to get ReLive to work for recording. I don't stream, so I don't have anything set up to do that. I'm gonna stick with my MSI Afterburner/Rivatuner setup for recording.

I still get the battery drain under load while gaming with this driver. One or two notches below maximum brightness seems to slow the drain pretty decently though. I was at 90% after about an hour and a half of BF1. As for performance, it seems to have fixed the awful ten to fifteen second 0.5fps stuttering I was getting once every 20-30 minutes. The game is smooth, it may be a little bit smoother now, but I'm not in a position to do side-by-side scientific benchmarks on this as I'm traveling. I'm really happy with the gaming peformance and everything looks very nice at 1080p with highest AA option and about 50% medium/50% high settings. It feels like I'm getting around 40-60fps (vsync on) depending on what's going on in a full 64 player match. That's more than enough to be competitive and I've been leading matches consistently just like I do on my 980Ti equipped desktop. I'll snap a pic of what I'm using when I'm not on a plane.

End of the day, this thing matches the PS4 in graphics compute power, so expect to be able to play most things at decent graphics quality around 1080p. Some games like Overwatch are better optimized and you'll be getting a locked 60fps or above if you're not using vysnc for some reason.

 

[Clint_Barton]

i am hoping that by the end of the month when mu machine arrives relive will work and i will finally be able to stream my overwatch gameplay to twitch

 

[fs454]

i am hoping that by the end of the month when mu machine arrives relive will work and i will finally be able to stream my overwatch gameplay to twitch

Overwatch is so well optimized you'll have no issues whether it ends up being with OBS or Relive, if it works by then.

 

[Clint_Barton]

Overwatch is so well optimized you'll have no issues whether it ends up being with OBS or Relive, if it works by then.

how much of an impact do you think that streaming with OBS will have?

 

[fs454]

how much of an impact do you think that streaming with OBS will have?

From what I can tell, the background encoding that's being done either happens on another CPU core or is very light on the GPU. I don't have a hard number, but encoding a 720p 5-minute pre buffer (so I can save the last 5 mins anytime at the press of a hotkey) doesn't seem like it has much if any impact on my performance.

Now, if you're trying to do that thing where you've got the gameplay and your isight camera going it may be a bit more, but I'm not sure how that's handled.

 

[thirstydude]

Have you noticed any battery drain while plugged in, while gaming? See here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mpletely-while-plugged-in-under-load.2020233/

actually i tested this, thanks for reminding me to share my insight:
NO! the battery actually charged while gaming. for me, those reports are bullsh*t. it's charging very slowly but it's charging and not loosing any percentage. and at a 100%.. it just stays at a 100% (i had a hootoo hub connected while gaming and had my charger plugged into that hub. while doing so, the mbp actually lost charge! but after plugging the charger into a normal port on the mbp, everything was fine.)

 

[fs454]

actually i tested this, thanks for reminding me to share my insight:
NO! the battery actually charged while gaming. for me, those reports are bullsh*t. it's charging very slowly but it's charging and not loosing any percentage. and at a 100%.. it just stays at a 100% (i had a hootoo hub connected while gaming and had my charger plugged into that hub. while doing so, the mbp actually lost charge! but after plugging the charger into a normal port on the mbp, everything was fine.)

Lol, bulls*** huh? Every single time I game on Windows, the battery goes down at least 10% per hour at two notches from brightest, 15% per hour at maximum brightness. It's not a report, it was literally me creating a topic based on something that's happening on the regular to me, on both my original and (boot camp speaker issue) replacement MBP. The computer's draw is more around 100w at full load with the screen brightness on maximum - the most it can get from the wall is 87w.

It's good to hear that not all scenarios will produce the same effect, but it's likely you're not loading it up as hard or are using a much dimmer brightness setting than would be comfortable for the environment I'm in.

 

[jeh72]

Lol, bulls*** huh? Every single time I game on Windows, the battery goes down at least 10% per hour at two notches from brightest, 15% per hour at maximum brightness. It's not a report, it was literally me creating a topic based on something that's happening on the regular to me, on both my original and (boot camp speaker issue) replacement MBP. The computer's draw is more around 100w at full load with the screen brightness on maximum - the most it can get from the wall is 87w.

It's good to hear that not all scenarios will produce the same effect, but it's likely you're not loading it up as hard or are using a much dimmer brightness setting than would be comfortable for the environment I'm in.

Well, 2 notches down for brightness is still really bright on this laptop right? Have you tried it at 50 percent or 75 percent brightness?

 

[thirstydude]

Lol, bulls*** huh? Every single time I game on Windows, the battery goes down at least 10% per hour at two notches from brightest, 15% per hour at maximum brightness. It's not a report, it was literally me creating a topic based on something that's happening on the regular to me, on both my original and (boot camp speaker issue) replacement MBP. The computer's draw is more around 100w at full load with the screen brightness on maximum - the most it can get from the wall is 87w.

It's good to hear that not all scenarios will produce the same effect, but it's likely you're not loading it up as hard or are using a much dimmer brightness setting than would be comfortable for the environment I'm in.

bullsh*t to me. i can't speak for you. i don't mean to insult you but maybe you should just send your unit back for another replacement? i don't know.. all i can say is that i can't imagine a much harder gaming task than full brightness, gta v loading from external usb c hdd, hub connected, usb gaming headset+xbox controller with steam voicechat open in the background, hwmon open, newest relive drivers. well, i started with 90 percent battery, closed the game after 3 hours with a 100 percent battery. (original charger!) i had a lot of periphery connected!

i also did a few overnight video renders the last couple days, the mbp handled it just fine, so idk, it does the exact job i want it to do and it does not have any of these battery draining issues..

 

[powerocool]

bullsh*t to me. i can't speak for you. i don't mean to insult you but maybe you should just send your unit back for a replacement? i don't know.. all i can say is that i can't imagine a much harder gaming task than full brightness, gta v loading from external usb c hdd, hub connected, usb gaming headset+xbox controller with steam voicechat open in the background, hwmon open, newest relive drivers. well. i started with 90 percent battery, closed the game after 3 hours with a 100 percent battery. (original charger!) i had a lot of periphery connected!

i also did a few overnight video renders the last couple days, the mbp handled it just fine, so idk, it does the exact job i want it to do and it does not have any of these battery draining issues..

Also no battery drain issue for me after plugging in power directly to computer. The AV adapter only outputs 60W, that didn't work.

 

[fs454]

bullsh*t to me.
maybe you should just send your unit back? i don't know.. all i can say is that i can't imagine a much harder gaming task than full brightness, gta v, with a hub connected, usb gaming headset+xbox controller with steam voicechat open in the background, hwmon open, newest relive drivers. well. i started with 90 percent battery, closed the game after 3 hours with a 100 percent battery. (original charger!)

i also did a few renders overnight the last couple days, the mbp handled it just fine, so idk, it does the exact job i want it to do...

In that case, what you're telling me is bullsh*t too. All MacBook Pro 15" 2016 models will exhibit battery drain under very heavy loads. Potentially the GTA V engine (released in 2014, nearly identical to the GTA IV engine released in 2008) isn't as demanding as 64 players in BF1's Frostbite engine, which first saw the light of day in its recent fully-rewritten form with Star Wars Battlefront in late 2015.

I guarantee you will see the drain if you load up BF1. Newer games are more demanding than older games, go figure.
[doublepost=1481589448][/doublepost]

Well, 2 notches down for brightness is still really bright on this laptop right? Have you tried it at 50 percent or 75 percent brightness?

You hit a point where it feels a little ridiculous trying to play competitively at low brightness. You're at a desk, plugged in, and the display has to be really dim? It looks proper at the top 80% of the brightness scale.

 

[thirstydude]

In that case, what you're telling me is bullsh*t too. All MacBook Pro 15" 2016 models will exhibit battery drain under very heavy loads. Potentially the GTA V engine (released in 2014, nearly identical to the GTA IV engine released in 2008) isn't as demanding as 64 players in BF1's Frostbite engine, which first saw the light of day in its recent fully-rewritten form with Star Wars Battlefront in late 2015.

I guarantee you will see the drain if you load up BF1. Newer games are more demanding than older games, go figure.

dude i even played witcher III with no drain for 2 hours straight. and with that much periphery connected i can't really imagine it getting any worse. (usb headsets, external hdd's and controllers suck power too...) this might not be running frostbite engine but i can imagine this game being pretty demanding too.

i don't mean to insult you but maybe you should just send your device back for another replacement, everything works fine for me, that's all i can say so far. also, i don't have battlefield to test, sorry.
maybe it's your 2.9 ghz processor? i have the 2.7. i don't see how you can say that every 2016 macbook suffers from the draining issue when mine... well.. clearly doesn't.

 

[azntaiji]

Sweet, thanks for the info! Gonna try with out with my 455.

 

[fireedo]

Sweet, thanks for the info! Gonna try with out with my 455.

you will be just fine, already test it with my pro 455

 

[Antoni Nygaard]

I've got these new drivers installed too but have been unable to get ReLive to work for recording. I don't stream, so I don't have anything set up to do that. I'm gonna stick with my MSI Afterburner/Rivatuner setup for recording.

I still get the battery drain under load while gaming with this driver. One or two notches below maximum brightness seems to slow the drain pretty decently though. I was at 90% after about an hour and a half of BF1. As for performance, it seems to have fixed the awful ten to fifteen second 0.5fps stuttering I was getting once every 20-30 minutes. The game is smooth, it may be a little bit smoother now, but I'm not in a position to do side-by-side scientific benchmarks on this as I'm traveling. I'm really happy with the gaming peformance and everything looks very nice at 1080p with highest AA option and about 50% medium/50% high settings. It feels like I'm getting around 40-60fps (vsync on) depending on what's going on in a full 64 player match. That's more than enough to be competitive and I've been leading matches consistently just like I do on my 980Ti equipped desktop. I'll snap a pic of what I'm using when I'm not on a plane.

End of the day, this thing matches the PS4 in graphics compute power, so expect to be able to play most things at decent graphics quality around 1080p. Some games like Overwatch are better optimized and you'll be getting a locked 60fps or above if you're not using vysnc for some reason.

Turn off vsync to get a more stable fps. Vsync is quite taxing. Vsync makes the fps drop quite a bit when a lot happens on screen.

 

[Ovedius]

Anyone with the 2015 M370X tried these drivers yet?
It would be interesting to hear if the new "Chill" function helps with the throttling.

 

[Clint_Barton]

Apparently the Xbox streaming app conflicts with relive

 

[mhd2100]

There are a load of known issues with the Relive recording and streaming software which can be viewed with AMDs release notes. One of which mentions that the xbox recording and streaming software for Windows conflicts with it and stops it from working.

Overdrive will not be enabled with these macbook Pros in the software because it has to be manually enabled via msi afterburner before it appears (same is true with my m295x).

Glad the drivers are running well though.

 

[azntaiji]

I got around to installing the drivers, seems smoother in games now! But yeah, the ReLive didn't work (crashed when trying to install)

 

[imacken]

Hey everyone! Recently, i tried to Bootcamp my 15" 2.7Ghz tMBP with the Radeon Pro 460. I tried Games like GTA V, Witcher III, Risen, The Division etc., since apart from working in the Video / Graphics / Art Sector i have a passion for PC gaming. That's why i also have a GTX 970 based gaming PC running Windows 10 at home. I was curious how the Pro 460 performs on those, so i installed them out of curiosity. Well, every game i threw at it was handled at at least medium settings, 1080p with 60 FPS stable. 30 FPS with most games maxed out / high settings. Older games maxed out with 60 FPS, you get it. Very great for a machine with this form factor!

However... i was wondering how those would perform with the newest drivers, but i shockingly discovered that AMD based Macs do NOT get the newest drivers! They're delivered only through apple.
Well that didn't stop me so i headed over to www.bootcampdrivers and downloaded the new drivers. Well, to say the results did actually shock me, if i may be this dramatic. To sum it up: games that have once run 30 FPS (capped) now run at 60, i get at least 10 FPS improvement across all games installed. Very dramatic improvements for newer games like The Division and GTA V.

This is insane and everyone interested in gaming should really try those new drivers, they give you a HUGE improvement for GPU related tasks! I kid you not, go try it out for yourself!

TL;DR:
Downloaded the new Crimson ReLive Drivers and they gave me huge performance improvements, beating the 965m.

gotta give credit to that dude running bootcampdrivers.com - he's doing great work!

Yep, I posted on this in the Games Forum here some time ago.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/installing-amd-crimson-drivers-on-bootcamp.2016397/
The guy, Mat, is doing an amazing job. I saw a 35% increase in my 3DMark results! For me, the most important thing was being able to run the DX12 option in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex: Mankind which didn't work on the standard Apple Bootcamp drivers.

 

[kasimodem]

Hello,

I have the Radeon 460 model and just tried a few gaming from Bootcamp Windows 10. First good news was I could pair my Sony Dualshock 4 V2 via Bluetooth easily. Then launched Street Fighter 5 from Steam client, and was surprised of quite good performances and fans volume optimization.

I tried different settings in the Radeon control panel and set things at max possible. Then in the SF5 config, I chose 1080p and high level (max level is few laggy). At high level, FPS shown by Steam was always about 60, sometimes 55. Good news !

In the screen below, the characters texturing is not as good as I have seen on an Nvidia 980M notebook, but it's OK.

 

[jeh72]

Hello,

I have the Radeon 460 model and just tried a few gaming from Bootcamp Windows 10. First good news was I could pair my Sony Dualshock 4 V2 via Bluetooth easily. Then launched Street Fighter 5 from Steam client, and was surprised of quite good performances and fans volume optimization.

I tried different settings in the Radeon control panel and set things at max possible. Then in the SF5 config, I chose 1080p and high level (max level is few laggy). At high level, FPS shown by Steam was always about 60, sometimes 55. Good news !

In the screen below, the characters texturing is not as good as I have seen on an Nvidia 980M notebook, but it's OK.

View attachment 679296

Any battery drain when playing?

 

[kasimodem]

You mean playing on battery ? No I did not try this, I wanted to test the max settings I could have, so I played with AC plugged and during it the battery stayed at 100%. I guess that Windows 10 would lower global system performances on battery and Radeon driver too, so it's not very effective to play outside.

 

[wmk]

You mean playing on battery ? No I did not try this, I wanted to test the max settings I could have, so I played with AC plugged and during it the battery stayed at 100%. I guess that Windows 10 would lower global system performances on battery and Radeon driver too, so it's not very effective to play outside.

You can switch to the High Performance plan, modify it, if necessary, to allow 100% CPU, active system cooling, etc., then disable power saving in AMD Crimson config, and you could try to play on the battery only, but you shouldn't expect the laptop to stay alive for too long

As for the Crimson ReLive, I downloaded latest 16.12.2 version from bootcampdrivers.com, removed old drivers with AMD Cleanup Utility and installed 16.12.2 with ReLive -- this time ReLive installer doesn't crash. 16.12.2 performs better than the default Apple-provided Crimson driver, but ReLive game capture functionality still doesn't work -- I disabled Windows Game DVR (Xbox DVR) completely, set up everything on Crimson side, but still nothing, no recording, no overlay, no nothing.

 

[Ovedius]

You mean playing on battery ? No I did not try this, I wanted to test the max settings I could have, so I played with AC plugged and during it the battery stayed at 100%. I guess that Windows 10 would lower global system performances on battery and Radeon driver too, so it's not very effective to play outside.

Just out of curiosity, do you experience any, seemingly, random drops in performance?
Short periods where the frame rate just tanks completely?

I'm curious if the higher powered 460 might be prone to throttling.
-like the M370X found in the 2015 15" Pro.

Would you be willing to download GPU-Z (link) and keep it running while playing a demanding game for 10-15 minutes?
-remember to store the log from GPU-Z afterwards.

I would greatly appreciate it, because if you don't experience excessive throttling, I might get a 15" with the 460