AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Introduction @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Introduction

Another year, another AMD Radeon Software release! This year we move to something that hopefully get you AMD video card owners' hearts racing, Radeon "Adrenalin." AMD's GPU driver package has aged very well over the last few years adding a host of new features and Adrenalin is chock full of improvements and couple of new features as well.
 
"Install the driver now (rather when AMD gets it posted on its driver page)"

Question is - where do you get these from currently, are they out now if so is there a direct link? Looking forward to giving them a go, cant make PUBG any worse.. :)

:edit:

Looks like if you google for amd adrenelin download, its freely available.
 
My only question is did AMD/ATI finally enable mGPU/Crossfire for us Vega Frontier Edition users?
 
Having a second look it seems that they have updated the new drivers for us pro card users. Nice that they modified the schedule for the Quarter driver release.
 
the overlay sound awesome along with the mobile app support to modify all the settings as well, nice job AMD.
 
Driver works great. I had a previous bug in that resizing the Wattman window it would crash Radeon Settings (last several drivers), that is fixed now.

Frame Rate Target Control still does not work in Wolfenstein The New Colossus frame rate was way above the 60fps setpoint selected. Chill works great there and it has a slider for both min fps and max fps which I set for within my Freesync range.

The Overlay is AWESOME! Great monitoring tools which you can customize right inside the game (Works in Vulkan with Wolfenstein) plus control other items - this is really great stuff!

Vega 64 does not have the Compute/Game switch in the Global Settings, have not loaded the driver for my other cards yet.

3dmark performance is roughly the same with this driver and the previous.

The Radeon Setting interface I think is the Gold standard for video drivers, very intuitive and effective - Nvidia driver interface is cumbersome and utterly outdated.

I have not yet tried using the monitoring available over the phone - VERY COOL IDEA AND USEFUL!

A very good and timely review as well.
 
I was mostly impressed by adding the features (or most) across the board for "every" API .
Still waiting on AMD to make a card where I have no "trouble" replacing my R9 290X ...
 
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I'm very glad to see these kinds of improvements to Radeon. It really seems AMD is doing a great job moving their drivers forward and sometimes the market as well. Their Linux support has been exceptional as well, much of it now open source as well as high performing. There are a few things I do wish that AMD could offer that Nvidia does for instance, though the list is getting smaller. For instance, lots of the GeForce Experience features are handled in the Radeon drivers themselves with less kludge and similarly, such as both ReLive and ShadowPlay capturing "past" gameplay for streaming or saving. I think both them have good GPU encoding/decoding and video streaming support. However, Nvidia still has the unique feature with GameStream, especially the ability to allow local/splitscreen/couch co-op titles to be played over the Internet with another person, if configured correctly. Thankfully there is the open source Moonlight protocol for clients at least, but it still requires the host to have an Nvidia GPU w/Nvidia GeForce Experience installed! I'd love to see AMD offer a similar GameStream type feature, but ideally totally open source / spec, even if it required an AMD GPU ; consider it a "FreeSync" style competitor.

Overall I am pleased to see AMD's progress and I want to support them, but I just hope they can bring features and performance to parity in terms of both software and hardware.
 
With regard to the size of the driver install, one option might be to have a "full" installer containing all the components letting the user decide which ones get installed, and a "live" installer like some other applications use, where it just starts the install process and select which components you want installed, and it downloads the pieces you choose.
 
noko said:
Driver works great. I had a previous bug in that resizing the Wattman window it would crash Radeon Settings (last several drivers), that is fixed now.

Frame Rate Target Control still does not work in Wolfenstein The New Colossus frame rate was way above the 60fps setpoint selected. Chill works great there and it has a slider for both min fps and max fps which I set for within my Freesync range.

The Overlay is AWESOME! Great monitoring tools which you can customize right inside the game (Works in Vulkan with Wolfenstein) plus control other items - this is really great stuff!

Vega 64 does not have the Compute/Game switch in the Global Settings, have not loaded the driver for my other cards yet.

3dmark performance is roughly the same with this driver and the previous.

The Radeon Setting interface I think is the Gold standard for video drivers, very intuitive and effective - Nvidia driver interface is cumbersome and utterly outdated.

I have not yet tried using the monitoring available over the phone - VERY COOL IDEA AND USEFUL!

A very good and timely review as well.
Click to expand...

RE: frame rate target control - why would you want to do this? Let's say you have a 60hz monitor do you set it to 60 fps so the graphics card doesn't have to 'over work' and thus runs quieter and cooler?
 
ecmaster76 said:
I might have to finally give Chill and Enhanced Sync a try
Click to expand...

When Enhanced Sync works, it is top-notch, just be aware that Enhanced Sync will crash some games. I use it in Smite (x64 client, DirectX 11 mode) with no problems, but when I enabled it for some other games, they would crash to the desktop or bluescreen Windows 10 x64 (Fall Creator's) with a TDR_VIDEO_FAILURE on my RX480s (tested on Core I5-6700K at stock and Ryzen 1700 OC to 3.8GHz).

Games I had trouble with, with Enhanced Sync enabled:

Sid Meier's Civilization V
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Supreme Commander II
Skullgirls

Also be aware that Enhanced Sync is only available on the RX 400 series and newer cards, just in case you weren't.
 
mvmiller12 said:
When Enhanced Sync works, it is top-notch, just be aware that Enhanced Sync will crash some games. I use it in Smite (x64 client, DirectX 11 mode) with no problems, but when I enabled it for some other games, they would crash to the desktop or bluescreen Windows 10 x64 (Fall Creator's) with a TDR_VIDEO_FAILURE on my RX480s (tested on Core I5-6700K at stock and Ryzen 1700 OC to 3.8GHz).

Games I had trouble with, with Enhanced Sync enabled:

Sid Meier's Civilization V
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Supreme Commander II
Skullgirls

Also be aware that Enhanced Sync is only available on the RX 400 series and newer cards, just in case you weren't.
Click to expand...

Notably, this feature now works on all Radeon GCN products now. It also works with the Vulkan API. It also works on Notebook products. It also works with Multi-GPU and AMD Eyefinity Technologies. This improved product support and API support will allow everyone to try this out and see if it improves your gaming experience on non-FreeSync monitors.
Click to expand...

No performance boost (rip Vega) but I think it's safe to say that AMD's driver game can no longer be a negative point when comparing to Nvidia. Shame about the high-end through.
 
you can't fix an inferior card with driver updates.
cut the price in half and get to something that works
 
mvmiller12 said:
When Enhanced Sync works, it is top-notch, just be aware that Enhanced Sync will crash some games. I use it in Smite (x64 client, DirectX 11 mode) with no problems, but when I enabled it for some other games, they would crash to the desktop or bluescreen Windows 10 x64 (Fall Creator's) with a TDR_VIDEO_FAILURE on my RX480s (tested on Core I5-6700K at stock and Ryzen 1700 OC to 3.8GHz).

Games I had trouble with, with Enhanced Sync enabled:

Sid Meier's Civilization V
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Supreme Commander II
Skullgirls

Also be aware that Enhanced Sync is only available on the RX 400 series and newer cards, just in case you weren't.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping they ironed out the kinks with this release

Also you may have missed in the article that it now works on all GCN based products. I have an RX480 regardless
 
noko said:
Driver works great. I had a previous bug in that resizing the Wattman window it would crash Radeon Settings (last several drivers), that is fixed now.

Frame Rate Target Control still does not work in Wolfenstein The New Colossus frame rate was way above the 60fps setpoint selected. Chill works great there and it has a slider for both min fps and max fps which I set for within my Freesync range.

The Overlay is AWESOME! Great monitoring tools which you can customize right inside the game (Works in Vulkan with Wolfenstein) plus control other items - this is really great stuff!

Vega 64 does not have the Compute/Game switch in the Global Settings, have not loaded the driver for my other cards yet.

3dmark performance is roughly the same with this driver and the previous.

The Radeon Setting interface I think is the Gold standard for video drivers, very intuitive and effective - Nvidia driver interface is cumbersome and utterly outdated.

I have not yet tried using the monitoring available over the phone - VERY COOL IDEA AND USEFUL!

A very good and timely review as well.
Click to expand...

Clean install would fix it regardless.
I usually ain't careful with clean install's on amd hardware while nvidia seems to be VERY sensitive to stuff like that but I had the same wattman issues like you and a clean was good.
I usually test the latest and greatest and went from 17.11.1 (with wattman resize issues cause i'm lazy to clean it) to newest now and all if fine(Did clean).

vega -17.8.x->all up to 17.11.2 which borked back to 17.11.1 until this last one and now I'm at a point where I don't see anything missing, performance left out etc, I'm happy and for all of the stuff they've put in which I put up as trash when I first saw it after Nvidia for a while have turned it from "won't use" to real selling point.
That being: chill, framerate target, enhanced sync, freesync where it all is really useful and I guess the social media stuff is nice for someone ;P

But AMD!
Give us some damn hardware, some real good hardware!
 
Cool stuff. I bought my brother an RX480 for Christmas last year and I just got him a nice 144hz FreeSync monitor for Christmas this year, I'll have to go for a visit and get it setup and try out some of these new features.
 
I find with all the new drivers for many updates of various sets, the "overclocking" is borked, it will not maintain the clock rates I set (for example 525/600 when I know I do not need the extra performance) or if I set a higher clock for when I do (example 686/1000 core/memory) it will powerplay down to 150/300 which is awesome, but, will not stay at 525/600 core/memory and instead jumps up to 450/1200 at a higher voltage means more power/temps which is not good, they didn't take the time to fully tune for MY GPU, does not mean I should be prevented from doing so.

I wish AMD or Afterburner etc would set it for "maintain user clock/power/voltage settings exclusively" and have a built in fail safe so if it "crashes" it does NOT lock in those settings causing boot loop issues (seems a known Win10 issue or maybe specifically to wattman/AB etc?) or something along those lines.

Hate jumping up or down drivers/overclock tools to find the exact same result and very little gain...yes my gpu is old, but, much of the issues with drivers has affected more than just me for years now, they remove waht works very well for unknown reasons, just because they can ^.^

That being said, this looks like a really nice driver all in all, just do not want to take the chance of jumping to a new driver, and having wattman etc start being a right Ahole LMAO

Adrenalin edition, I would expect it to be like you just gave them fancy new GPU a shot of well Adrenalin.

Hopefully AMD is going to surprise us all very soon with these new driver sets to maintain compatibility but really juice up the raw performance as well, they (AMD) need the designers/marketing etc to really work hand in hand with each other
to make sure each product gets the best attention instead of "dumping" turds on the rest of the team, rushing just to put on the shelf or a new driver out does not usually end well as history has shown time and time again :D
 
Sounds cool.
Thanks for the nice write-up.
Gotta dust off the 290X cards and see what they can do.
 
Supports DX9, DX11, and DX12 only? So if I want to fire up Crysis and utilize the overlay I can't?
 
dragonstongue said:
I find with all the new drivers for many updates of various sets, the "overclocking" is borked, it will not maintain the clock rates I set (for example 525/600 when I know I do not need the extra performance) or if I set a higher clock for when I do (example 686/1000 core/memory) it will powerplay down to 150/300 which is awesome, but, will not stay at 525/600 core/memory and instead jumps up to 450/1200 at a higher voltage means more power/temps which is not good, they didn't take the time to fully tune for MY GPU, does not mean I should be prevented from doing so.

I wish AMD or Afterburner etc would set it for "maintain user clock/power/voltage settings exclusively" and have a built in fail safe so if it "crashes" it does NOT lock in those settings causing boot loop issues (seems a known Win10 issue or maybe specifically to wattman/AB etc?) or something along those lines.

Hate jumping up or down drivers/overclock tools to find the exact same result and very little gain...yes my gpu is old, but, much of the issues with drivers has affected more than just me for years now, they remove waht works very well for unknown reasons, just because they can ^.^

That being said, this looks like a really nice driver all in all, just do not want to take the chance of jumping to a new driver, and having wattman etc start being a right Ahole LMAO

Adrenalin edition, I would expect it to be like you just gave them fancy new GPU a shot of well Adrenalin.

Hopefully AMD is going to surprise us all very soon with these new driver sets to maintain compatibility but really juice up the raw performance as well, they (AMD) need the designers/marketing etc to really work hand in hand with each other
to make sure each product gets the best attention instead of "dumping" turds on the rest of the team, rushing just to put on the shelf or a new driver out does not usually end well as history has shown time and time again :D
Click to expand...

Try the min\max feature , click on the state (7) select min, then it sets clock for min\max.
There is hardware level boost that will throttle based on powerlimit and other factors but it'll be a lot more stable to push max performance all the time.


but the clock behavior is not exclusive to AMD, nvidia behaves in same way
 
All these overlays need to stop, some layman is going to flip the shit when 20 different overlays trys to hook into their games. Every Single piece of "gaming" software doesn't need their own overlay
 
Finally.. just finally.. after a freaking whole year of issues with every driver release I can say, *No more crashes*.. used R9 280X, R9 390X, RX 580 and RX VEGA64 with games I know which were behaving craze in performance or crashing Those are: Mass Effect Andromeda, The Evil Within 2, Fallout 4, Cities Skyline mass transit, Dragon Age Inquisition, Aion, The witcher 3, Prey. So far, No issues, I've tested intensively those games this week as those are what my family are playing the most lately, expecting the release of this drivers, we are testing still today couple of cousins and my brother, on different machines, different settings, etc.. and so far no issues and no more crashing, specially mass effect andromeda which was crashing every 5 minutes, making it unplayable..

Also on a side note, my Vega64 and R9 390X aren't dropping anymore PCI-E Lanes while rebooting the machine, leading to a no post/no display, so, no more issues turning off/on those machines.. this is what I was really expecting, im at a point where I don't care for 5% extra performance, what I like is rock solid stability...
 
Semantics said:
All these overlays need to stop, some layman is going to flip the shit when 20 different overlays trys to hook into their games. Every Single piece of "gaming" software doesn't need their own overlay
Click to expand...
But how will I manage my 15 different friends lists?
 
Smitty2k1 said:
RE: frame rate target control - why would you want to do this? Let's say you have a 60hz monitor do you set it to 60 fps so the graphics card doesn't have to 'over work' and thus runs quieter and cooler?
Click to expand...
To keep the frame rates in the FreeSync range is the reason to eliminate tearing and jerkiness. More FPS does not mean better FPS or smoother game play when you have a syncing type monitor.
 
ole-m said:
Clean install would fix it regardless.
I usually ain't careful with clean install's on amd hardware while nvidia seems to be VERY sensitive to stuff like that but I had the same wattman issues like you and a clean was good.
I usually test the latest and greatest and went from 17.11.1 (with wattman resize issues cause i'm lazy to clean it) to newest now and all if fine(Did clean).

vega -17.8.x->all up to 17.11.2 which borked back to 17.11.1 until this last one and now I'm at a point where I don't see anything missing, performance left out etc, I'm happy and for all of the stuff they've put in which I put up as trash when I first saw it after Nvidia for a while have turned it from "won't use" to real selling point.
That being: chill, framerate target, enhanced sync, freesync where it all is really useful and I guess the social media stuff is nice for someone ;P

But AMD!
Give us some damn hardware, some real good hardware!
Click to expand...
Uninstalled drivers a number of times, used DDU in Safe Mode at least four times if not more with the same result with the crashing resizing Wattman Window. It would maximize just fine but not resize - now it works and I did not do a clean install over the 17.11.4 drivers prior this time. I did have the 1080 Ti in the same rig for a short period of time but used DDU to uninstall the drivers.
 
Dang, I guess I have to be careful. I started the 3D Mark 11 benchmark, pressed Alt + R to do the overlay, just as the first part of the benchmark was about to start. Well, the computer hard locked and blacked out when meant I had to hard shut it off and then boot it back up. I have no overclock going either of any kind.
 
Hmm.. I don't know. It might be a bust (probably cause I'm on Crossfire).

First, the AMD app seemed like a great idea. However, I could not connect to my computer with QR code or manual connect. Might be a security issue on my network, but Steam In-Home Streaming works fine on this same machine. Not a good start.

Did clean install and enabled Enhanced Sync and WattMan profile. One thing that is great is that you can save and load profiles now. At least that is cool.

Started Prey. Crashed right before loading the level. There was a pop-up about some memory location error. Hmm.

Loaded Far Cry Primal. Got to play for about 1 minute, but it was choppy and didn't look like 60fps. The AMD performance overlay would not show up after hitting the hotkey. Then it completely froze my system. Control Alt Delete didn't work, had to press the power button. Hmm.

Rebooted, disabled Enhanced Sync. Prey now loaded, was getting awesome performance (around 80fps at 4K max setting except AA). Performance overlay did show up this time. However, the text was super small and impossible to read without standing up and getting close to the screen. Also only showed GPU1, no option for Crossfire or text size that I saw. Hmm.

Far Cry Primal now worked, getting around 70 fps with 4K Very High settings. Overlay worked, but still too small. Had to switch back to Afterburner. Hmm.

Loaded up Deus Ex Mankind Divided. DirectX12 mGPU still not working (this has never worked for me on this machine, so it was sort of a long shot anyhow). Only 1 GPU active, not playable even on High settings (40 fps if even that). Hmm.

OpenGL Crossfire performance bug still not fixed. Tried RAGE, getting only 35fps (when previously with 1 Vega card I could get like 80 fps). Hmm.

I think I've seen what I need to. This release sounded so great, but looks like things are still not solid, again, probably cause I'm the 1 dude with a Vega Crossfire rig. Hmm.
 
ManofGod said:
Dang, I guess I have to be careful. I started the 3D Mark 11 benchmark, pressed Alt + R to do the overlay, just as the first part of the benchmark was about to start. Well, the computer hard locked and blacked out when meant I had to hard shut it off and then boot it back up. I have no overclock going either of any kind.
Click to expand...
yikes that doesnt sound good at all
 
Might need to reset the OS or uninstall the AMD driver at least then reinstall it. Sometimes bits from old stuff messes with the new stuff and you get crash city until you get rid of the old driver.
 
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