With Dozens of New Features.
AMD today released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 drivers, which introduce major updates to the soft-product that completes your AMD Radeon graphics cards. The drivers come with updates to the Radeon Software interface, and the AMD Link remote-gameplay utility. Radeon Software now comes with an improved installer with installation presets that let you choose between a Full (typical) installation, with all software features installed; a Minimal installation with an interface that only has basic settings related to the display and GPU; and “driver-only” that only installs the display driver, and no additional software.
There are several new features introduced within Radeon Software. Vivid Gaming Display Color Enhancement is a new monitor color profile that enables a more “vivid” color palette that lets you liven up “color deficient” scenes. The interface lets you take control of protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia components of the color. The search bar that lets you dig through the hundreds of features, has been improved. There are many other minor UI improvements, such as stats in the Games tab, a toggle for the in-built web-browser, and global controls for the hotkeys.
DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1
Perhaps the most talked about feature addition with Radeon Software 21.4.1, has to be the AMD Link remote-gaming feature. Until now, AMD Link was a mobile app that let you control your drivers. It’s grown in functionality over the years to include game streaming. Your game, as rendered on your PC, is streamed to your portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs; and now AMD has also introduced a Windows app that lets you share your gameplay with anyone with the app, across the Internet.
The process of sharing is very similar to that of Team Viewer. Besides gameplay, AMD Link can also let you share your non-gaming Desktop. AMD has significantly updated the streaming backend, which now offers better visuals and lower latencies, along with a dynamic quality control that adjusts quality with changes to your Internet bandwidth/latency. The service now supports up to 4K UHD resolution, with refresh-rates of up to 144 Hz.
There’s a lot for game streaming, too. Recording and Streaming has now been consolidated into a single tab in Radeon Software, with an easy-to-use wizard that helps beginners get started with streaming across popular streaming platforms. There are numerous improvements to the Scene Editor. Those with multiple displays can now specify which display head to stream, or even stream multiple heads separately.
For overclockers and enthusiasts, AMD improved the Performance Metrics tab to now include CPU performance if an AMD Ryzen processor is installed. The tab now comes with improved data presentation, letting you monitor your graphics card’s various read-outs better. The new AMD Crash Defender is a feature that prevents a display driver crash from destabilizing your system in some cases. The new installer adds the install preset in one of the initial screens. The driver installation size doesn’t change, and it appears to only toggle features that you can enable later.
Lastly, AMD introduced Microsoft PlayReady AV1 decode support; this works on all compatible GPUs, but the latest RX 6000 RDNA2 GPUs come with hardware acceleration for AV1 decoding. AMD Eyefinity support is now extended to mobile Ryzen 4000 and Ryzen 5000 processors.
A number of bugs have been fixed with this release, as llisted below.
- Brightness flickering may intermittently occur in some games or applications when Radeon FreeSync is enabled, and the game is set to use borderless fullscreen.
- SteamVR may experience an application crash when a VR headset is connected on Radeon RX 500 series graphics products.
- Some high refresh rate, high resolution TV displays may experience corruption when connected via HDMI on Radeon RX 6000 series graphics products.
- Applying changes in Radeon Performance Tuning may sometimes fail to take effect for changes made to power tuning.
- Lower than expected performance may be experienced in some CPU intensive workloads or games.
- Global performance tuning overclock profiles may sometimes override game specific performance tuning profiles or cause game specific performance tuning profiles to fail to load on a games launch.
- Radeon Chill may experience lower than expected performance when a game is left idle for an extended period with Radeon Chill enabled.
- Flickering may be observed in Radeon Software performance overlay while playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Radeon RX 6000 series graphics products.
Known Issues
- Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen to occur when enabled on some games and system configurations. Any users who may be experiencing issues with Enhanced Sync enabled should disable it as a temporary workaround.
- Connecting two displays with large differences in resolution/refresh rates may cause flickering on Radeon RX Vega series graphics products.
- Radeon performance metrics and logging features may intermittently report extremely high and incorrect memory clock values.
- Cyberpunk 2077 may experience shadow corruption on Radeon RX 6000 series graphics when raytracing is enabled.
- Disco Elysium may experience texture flickering on trees with Radeon RX 6000 series graphics products.
- Radeon Software may experience a crash when Record & Stream tab is in use and a display is hot plugged.
- Radeon FreeSync may intermittently become locked while on desktop after performing task switching between extended and primary displays upon closing a game, causing poor performance or stuttering. A system restart is a potential workaround if this is experienced.
- Performance metrics may incorrectly report temperatures on Ryzen 5 1600 series processors.
- The download or launch Ryzen Master buttons in Radeon Software may intermittently disappear or may fail to initialize Ryzen Master.
- If Ryzen Master is not detected in Adrenalin software after installation, a system restart maybe required.
AMD Link for Windows Known Issues
- AMD is investigating isolated reports of intermittent loss of signal during Stream Optimization if HEVC is used on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products or later. A workaround is to use the AVC encoding setting instead.
- Intermittent grey frame corruption might be observed when streaming with HEVC on certain configurations via an Internet connection. A workaround is to use the AVC encoding setting instead.