AMD has released a major revision of its Radeon Software graphics driver suite. With AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 users will benefit from a large number of new features and enhancements. Headlining additions to the driver are the new AMD Link Windows game streaming functionality, enhanced recording and streaming, expanded performance metrics and tuning, colour deficiency correction settings, Microsoft PlayReady AV1 support, AMD Crash Defender, a new UI, and customisable install options (full, minimal, driver only).
AMD Link for Windows is a free app which allows you to connect another Windows PC to play streamed games. AMD Link started off as a mobile app to control drivers before expanding to streaming games to mobile devices. Its latest incarnation makes it great for those with a powerful PC at home, say, and a less capable thin & light on the road.
Augmenting the above is the new AMD Link Game feature. This simply allows you to invite a Radeon GPU packing friend to enjoy games in local multiplayer or split screen mode. AMD Link supports configurable streaming options, with various bandwidth choices, up to 144fps, 5.1 surround sound audio, and low latency.
I feel that a good proportion of PC DIYers are minimalists who dislike bells, whistles and frills. For these folk welcome choices will be the new options of a full installation or a minimal installation with a streamlined user interface, or a small-footprint, driver-only installation.
System optimising and tweaking demons may appreciate the expanded performance metrics & tuning options in the latest driver. Moreover, users can now view both Radeon graphics and Ryzen processor performance metrics from a single location – a better overarching view.
In other changes, AMD has integrated all recording and streaming settings in a single tab of the UI. People with colour deficiencies should appreciate the protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia customisations providing more vivid graphics to these users without any performance impact. Another small but welcome change is the addition of support for the Microsoft PlayReady AV1 open-source, royalty-free codec on AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards.
Lastly, AMD has added a stability feature called AMD Crash Defender. It is supposed to help systems 'stay alive' in crash situations, preserving data and even recovering in select scenarios. Users are encouraged to use this in conjunction with the AMD Bug Report Tool for user-submitted issues to AMD support.
AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 is available now.
