The new driver update for your AMD Radeon graphics cards brings us a series of optimizations and performance improvements, in addition to addressing some serious issues with these cards.
AMD Adrenalin 21.1.1: optimized for Hitman 3 and Quake II RTX
The first big change is that the recently launched third part with Agent 47, Hitman 3, in 4K Ultra graphics settings, achieves 10% more performance compared to previous drivers of the AMD RX 6800 XT, so if you have the one of these graphics cards and the game does not hesitate to update itself.
The second change is support for the Ray Tracing version of Quake II, which was recently adapted for Vulkan Ray Tracing, so it is no longer exclusive to NVIDIA users and if you want to play the port with ray tracing pure. From the classic Id Software, you will no longer need an NVIDIA RTX graphics card.
Issues Resolved by Adrenalin 21.1.1 Drivers
In addition to the optimizations mentioned in the previous section, a number of issues have also been fixed, and they are as follows:
- Sometimes the broadcast and recording indicator would move to the original position.
- The size of the performance metrics overlay track might intermittently revert to the original size or simply fail to display the correct values from the Radeon software when changing a job.
- Radeon software installer sometimes does not display the update version and release date correctly.
- The performance metrics benefit, Performance Metrics Overlay, can flicker when playing video on HDR compatible displays.
- Reflections in GTA V could crash if “MSAA Reflections” was enabled in game settings.
- PUBG’s session counter might continue to work even after closing the game.
- Doom Eternal could be closed if the Steam interface was summoned in the middle of the game.
- Content recorded via the Hardware Video CODEC on an AMD Radeon Vega may be cropped and even at the wrong resolution
- Samsung Odyssey G9 C49G95T ultra-wide screen showed graphics corruption of 5210 × 1440 and at 240 Hz
- In games programmed using Direct X 9 running on the AMD RX 5000 and RX 6000, the anistropic filter was not displayed. This bug was quite significant because the most advanced texture filter was loaded in hundreds of games.
- Screens like the Samsung Oddysey G9 or the Scepter C line might experience intermittent black screens with an AMD RX 6000.
- If you have an Oculus VR headset connected via the Oculus Link cable, you may experience intermittent blockages with an AMD Polaris architecture GPU (RX 400, RX 500 and RX 600) or with an AMD Vega and Radeon VII.
To highlight the solution to Doom Eternal crashes, Oculus Link and the anisotropic problem in games under DirectX 9.
Known issues, but to be addressed in future updates
AMD also gave a list of issues that they are aware of but were unable to resolve in this version of their drivers.
- Brightness flickering may occur intermittently in some games or apps if we are using Radeon FreeSync and the game is set to full screen with no border.
- If two displays are connected to a Radeon RX Vega graphics card, image issues may be observed on at least one of the two displays.
- Metro Exodus under DirectX Ray Tracing crashes intermittently.
- Streaming and recording software features may not be enabled on the AMD Radeon HD 7800.
- Screen flickering may be observed when using MSI Afterburner
- The enhanced sync, Enhaced Sync, can produce a completely black screen if enabled in certain games and system settings. AMD recommends that you turn off this option for now.
Hopefully AMD fixes all of these issues or at least as many as possible in the next generation of its AMD Adrenalin graphics drivers.
