Feature Articles

AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition is the biggest driver update this year

By Koh Wanzi - 13 Dec 2017

Improvements to ReLive, Radeon Chill, FreeSync & Enhanced Sync

Existing features get upgraded

Finally, there’s a bunch of under-the-hood improvements to features like ReLive, Radeon Chill, FreeSync, and Enhanced Sync.

For starters, ReLive will now have Chroma Key support, so streamers can make their backgrounds disappear if they have a green screen. Audio recording functionality is also more flexible, and there is an option to record game and microphone audio separately. And if you're running a multi-display configuration, you'll like the new borderless region capture option, which lets you capture only specific regions of the screen.

More importantly, chat from Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, and Mixer can show up as an in-game overlay, so you don't necessarily need a second screen to keep tabs on what your viewers are saying.

In-game chat overlays are now supported. (Image Source: AMD)

Furthermore, AMD says it’s continued to work on reducing the FPS overhead for ReLive, so it has an even smaller performance impact now.

Radeon Chill gets a nice update as well, and it now supports far more games than before. Chill works by scaling down GPU usage during less intensive scenes, so it helps you save power. However, only whitelisted games would work with it previously, and that list wasn’t very long.

That’s changed now, as Chill will work with just about any DirectX 9, 11, 12 or Vulkan title, and AMD will instead blacklist games that aren't compatible with the technology.

AMD took into account user feedback in expanding compatibility for Radeon Chill. (Image Source: AMD)

Similarly, Enhanced Sync just gained compatibility with a wider range of cards, including all Graphics Core Next-based Radeon GPUs. This includes most Radeon cards dating back to 2012’s HD 7000 series, instead of just Polaris and Vega cards.

In addition, Enhanced Sync now supports Vulkan, mobile Radeon GPUs, multi-GPU configurations, and AMD Eyefinity. AMD is expanding Vulkan support in a big way with this update, and FRTC will also work with the low-level API.

Enhanced Sync now works with far more cards than before. (Image Source: AMD)

FreeSync doesn’t see any significant changes, but you can disable or enable it for specific titles, so you get an added bit of flexibility.

Overclockers will also appreciate the ability to save and load custom overclocking profiles in WattMan, including external profiles created by third parties or the community.

AMD made a handful of other small tweaks, including support for borderless windowed mode in multi-GPU configurations, three new UI themes, and a new Connect tab for quickly accessing your captured media and uploading them to various channels. You can link the latter feature to your social network accounts to make sharing even easier.

And just as with the 17.7.2 update, AMD did work to further reduce latency in DirectX 11 games.

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