AMD's 21.4.1 driver brings a ton of cool new features but Super Resolution is still missing

Today, AMD announced its major driver overhaul that was missed last year possibly due to the pandemic situation. The new WHQL driver is coming in the form of the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1. Despite a lot of new additions and updates, the driver is missing the most anticipated FidelityFX Super Resolution feature.

Fidelity FX Super Resolution is a part of AMD's FidelityFX DirectX 12 Ultimate suite and is said to be a framerate boosting technique similar to Nvidia's DLSS where an image will be rendered at a lower resolution and then upscaled to a higher resolution by using AI and ML techniques. However, AMD fans should not despair as there are rumors that FidelityFX Super Resolution will not come with a separate driver and will in fact be implemented in games separately. With that out of the way let's now talk about the loads of features that it does bring.

• General improvements and feature additions which now bring minimal installation options:

  • Customized user interface options are now available in the Radeon Software installation to modify the user interface. Options exist for a Full Installation, Minimal Installation and Driver only installation.

  • Vivid Gaming Display Color Enhancement : A new color profile that allows users to enable a more vivid look for their display color.

  • Color Deficiency Correction : A new feature that allows users to adjust their display colors for all three major color deficiency types with strength sliders.

  • Improved search bar functionality.

  • Stats information for games is now available in the games tab.

  • Historical navigation buttons added to easily move back and forth between tabs.

  • Toggle added to enable or disable the built-in web browser.

  • Settings option added to enable or disable all hotkeys in a single click.

• Updated AMD Link software which enables high-performance remote gaming on Windows PCs in addition to phones, tablets and TVs; new AMD Link Game feature allows another Radeon user to remotely connect to play local multiplayer-supported games.

  • A brand-new AMD Link for Windows client is now available that allows you to stream your games and desktop to other Radeon graphics enabled PCs.

  • New "Link Game" feature that allows you to easily connect with a friend to play games together on a single PC or even help them troubleshoot a PC issue or problem.

  • Redesigned streaming technology for better visuals and lower latency.

  • New quality of service feature that dynamically adjusts your streaming settings based on your internet connection.

  • Now supports up to 4k/144fps streaming.

• Simplified AMD ReLive user interface and other improvements:

  • Recording and streaming settings have been consolidated into one easy to use tab.

  • A new Streaming Wizard is now available which helps users configure their recording and streaming settings for the first time. A new ‘adaptive’ quality setting is available in the wizard that allows Radeon Software to monitor your stream and make changes to quality based on your stream’s performance.

  • Improved scene editor usability for creating and editing scenes.

  • An option is now available to select which display you would like to record or stream from in multiple display system configurations.

• Performance Tuning changes:

  • Introduced CPU metrics and monitoring to the performance metrics tab in Radeon Software.

  • Improvements made to the performance metrics tab including design updates to the graphs for metrics, more performance readouts, improved logging controls and improved performance overlay controls and graphs.

• New AMD Crash Defender feature:

  • Preserves data and keeps your system running in some cases where your system may have otherwise experienced a crash or hang.

• Microsoft PlayReady AV1 Decode Support, which now means AMD GPUs can decode PlayReady DRM- protected AV1 content.

• AMD Eyefinity support, which is AMD's Multi-display technology, has now been extended to Ryzen Mobile 4000 and Ryzen Mobile 5000 series APUs.

Interestingly, while AMD hasn't mentioned it in its press release, VideoCardz says that the driver also brings support for Radeon Boost with integrated Variable Rate Shading (VSR) in the following games, however, you'd need a Radeon RX 6000 series GPU to enable it:

• Rise of the Tomb Raider,
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
• Borderlands 3,
• Metro Exodus,
• Fortnite,
• Cyberpunk 2077,
• Resident Evil 3,
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019.

Check out AMD's video below to get a gist of the new features.

Aside from the new feature additions, the driver also brings a bunch of bug fixes. They are:

• 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.

And below is the list of bugs that are yet unresolved:

• 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 ray tracing 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.

There are also a couple of issues with the new Link for Windows:

• 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.

If you wish to download the Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 21.4.1 driver, you can do so by visiting the driver's release notes page here where you will find separate download links for Windows 10 and Windows 7 64-bit. As usual, the product is compatible with all GCN and RDNA products (HD 7000 series and newer). You can find more information on the new Radeon Adrenalin 21.4.1 driver here.

via VideoCardz