AMD Releases Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.8.1

AMD Driver Brings Support for 4 New Titles

In recent weeks, much of the focus at AMD has been on the CPU side. Despite that, the company is still hard at work on the GPU front. Following up on last month’s releases, Sunnyvale is releasing a new driver for the start of August. The company is releasing the new Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.8.1 driver. In an interesting move, the new driver is yet another beta optional release.

Capping off the driver, we have new support for Monster Hunter: World, World of Warcraft: Battle of Azeroth, We Happy Few and Madden NFL 19. For Monster Hunter, performance is up 5 to 6% depending on the GPU. There are also a number of other bug fixes. Importantly, multi-GPU systems are more stable when changing resolutions. GPU and memory clocks also idle correctly when playing video. Finally, Fortnite and Civilization VI both get fixes to game crashes.

Vulkan API Support Gains Additional Extensions

For known issues, there some new ones. One important one that might be common is cursor of system lag with multi-display systems. Luckily, this only happens when one display is off. Upgrade Advisor and Radeon FreeSync are also buggy in some cases. Finally, video profiles may not apply correctly for web browser video content. Finally, we also have a number of Vulkan API extensions added. This should enhance compatibility and make Vulkan better for AMD GPUs.

When AMD announced their new driver initiative in 2014, the promise was more frequent updates and WHQL releases. So far, AMD has managed to release a new WHQL driver every 3 months or so. Given that the last WHQL release was in May, we are due for one in August. This likely means we will see another driver for this month or early in September. You can find the full release notes and driver downloads here.