AMD Radeon GPU driver supports Windows 10 May 2020 Update, but may annoy overclockers
It breaks overclocking profiles for individual games (and globally sometimes)
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Windows 10 May 2020 Updatehas just beenreleased by Microsoft, and those planning to upgrade who have anAMDgraphics card will want to install a newly released Radeon driver.
That’s because the headline feature of AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition version 20.5.1 is support for the May 2020 Update.
No further details are imparted in therelease notesas to exactly what this support involves, but presumably if you’ve been offered the May 2020 Update, and you’re going to upgradeWindows 10, you’ll want to grab this new driver to avoid any potential compatibility issues.
That said, the version 20.5.1 driver does come with some glitches itself, and for those using overclocking tuning profiles, these won’t be applied for individual games (and global settings are reportedly buggy too).
Support for WDDM 2.7 (Windows Display Driver Model) is apparently included, the version introduced toMicrosoft’s OS with the May 2020 Update, but the kicker is that hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling isn’t included. And that’s the v2.7 feature that most people want (it allows the graphics card to manage its own video RAM directly, giving better performance, a major draw as you can imagine).
The other fresh introduction with Adrenalin version 20.5.1 is a new Link Xinput Emulation driver, which AMD explains will improve compatibility with current games, and future titles for that matter.
Fixes and fails
Naturally, there are a bunch of bug fixes too, including resolving issues for players ofStar WarsJedi: Fallen Order andControlwho have been experiencing crashing with the Radeon Anti-Lag feature.
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On the other hand, there are also a raft of known issues, which sadly include RX 5000 series graphics cards ‘exhibiting intermittent stuttering’ in some games, and black screen system crashes remain a gremlin in the Radeon works.
Those problems have been a thorn in AMD’s side for some time now, and you may recall that a bunch of fixes were implemented with thedriver released back in February– but evidently there’s still work to be done.
ViaNeowin
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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