AMD Radeon Technologies Group are back this weekend with their first major driver release for the month of July. Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 optimises for Earthfall, a new 4-player co-op shooter by Holospark, and also fixes a handful of known issues ailing players in previous driver releases.
RSAE 18.7.1's performance improvements for Earthfall are impressive. Up to 28% more headroom should be available to Radeon RX Vega 56 owners, while those on the lower end of the hardware spectrum may see as much as 27% higher fps.
AMD's GPU drivers continue to implement bug-fixes with every release. In the firing line this time around are problems with Fortnite's Season 5 client, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and memory clocks failing to return to normal levels when using multi-monitor setups.
These drivers are 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and 10, and compatible with Radeon GPUs using the GCN architecture. Release notes are reproduced below:
Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 Highlights
Support For
Earthfall™
- Up to 28% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 on the Radeon™ RX Vega 56 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.6.1 at 2560x1440 (1440p).1
- Up to 22% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 on the Radeon™ RX 580 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.6.1 at 2560x1440 (1440p).2
- Up to 27% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 on the Radeon™ RX 560 (4GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.6.1 at 1920x1080 (1080p).3
Fixed Issues
- Fortnite™ Season 5 may experience an application hang on some Radeon graphics products when throwing stars are visible on screen.
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice™ may experience flickering or corruption on some Radeon graphics products.
- Display modes may sometimes appear as not available when setting resolution or refresh rates of a display.
- CorelDraw™ may experience slower than expected performance.
- Memory clocks may remain at higher than expected values on some displays after changing resolution or refresh rates.
- Some displays may exhibit black screen flickering when booting to desktop when using DisplayPort.
Known Issues
- Virtual Super Resolution settings may not retain after updating to this Radeon Software release.
- Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus™ may experience an application crash when disabling Asynchronous Compute via game settings.
- Graphics and memory clocks may remain at higher than expected values after watching a video or using Windows DVR while in game. A workaround is to reboot the system.
- Cursor or system lag may be observed on some system configurations when two or more displays are connected and one display is powered off.
- Radeon WattMan gauges may report as zero on secondary graphics products in multi GPU enabled system configurations.
Footnotes
(1) Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 11, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX Vega 56, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With medium preset settings on Earthfall, at 2560x1440, the Radeon RX Vega 56 scored 86.9 FPS with Radeon Software 18.6.1, whereas the Radeon RX Vega 56 scored 111.1 FPS with Radeon Software 18.7.1. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.7.1 has 28% faster performance in Earthfall. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers.
(2) Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 11, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX 580, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With medium preset settings on Earthfall, at 2560x1440, the Radeon RX 580 scored 61.4 FPS with Radeon Software 18.6.1, whereas the Radeon RX 580 scored 75.1 FPS with Radeon Software 18.7.1. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.7.1 has 22% faster performance in Earthfall. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers.
(3) Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 11, 2018 on the 4GB Radeon RX 560, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With medium preset settings on Earthfall, at 1920x1080, the Radeon RX 560 scored 48.3 FPS with Radeon Software 18.6.1, whereas the Radeon RX 560 scored 61.3 FPS with Radeon Software 18.7.1. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.7.1 has 27% faster performance in Earthfall. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers.
Support For
Earthfall™
- Up to 28% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 on the Radeon™ RX Vega 56 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.6.1 at 2560x1440 (1440p).1
- Up to 22% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 on the Radeon™ RX 580 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.6.1 at 2560x1440 (1440p).2
- Up to 27% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 on the Radeon™ RX 560 (4GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.6.1 at 1920x1080 (1080p).3
Fixed Issues
- Fortnite™ Season 5 may experience an application hang on some Radeon graphics products when throwing stars are visible on screen.
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice™ may experience flickering or corruption on some Radeon graphics products.
- Display modes may sometimes appear as not available when setting resolution or refresh rates of a display.
- CorelDraw™ may experience slower than expected performance.
- Memory clocks may remain at higher than expected values on some displays after changing resolution or refresh rates.
- Some displays may exhibit black screen flickering when booting to desktop when using DisplayPort.
Known Issues
- Virtual Super Resolution settings may not retain after updating to this Radeon Software release.
- Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus™ may experience an application crash when disabling Asynchronous Compute via game settings.
- Graphics and memory clocks may remain at higher than expected values after watching a video or using Windows DVR while in game. A workaround is to reboot the system.
- Cursor or system lag may be observed on some system configurations when two or more displays are connected and one display is powered off.
- Radeon WattMan gauges may report as zero on secondary graphics products in multi GPU enabled system configurations.
Footnotes
(1) Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 11, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX Vega 56, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With medium preset settings on Earthfall, at 2560x1440, the Radeon RX Vega 56 scored 86.9 FPS with Radeon Software 18.6.1, whereas the Radeon RX Vega 56 scored 111.1 FPS with Radeon Software 18.7.1. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.7.1 has 28% faster performance in Earthfall. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers.
(2) Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 11, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX 580, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With medium preset settings on Earthfall, at 2560x1440, the Radeon RX 580 scored 61.4 FPS with Radeon Software 18.6.1, whereas the Radeon RX 580 scored 75.1 FPS with Radeon Software 18.7.1. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.7.1 has 22% faster performance in Earthfall. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers.
(3) Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 11, 2018 on the 4GB Radeon RX 560, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With medium preset settings on Earthfall, at 1920x1080, the Radeon RX 560 scored 48.3 FPS with Radeon Software 18.6.1, whereas the Radeon RX 560 scored 61.3 FPS with Radeon Software 18.7.1. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.7.1 has 27% faster performance in Earthfall. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers.
