Conclusion
It is nice to see AMD continue its tradition of the yearly driver and Radeon Software updates that contain meaningful large improvements. This time it is about functionality and user experience enhancements. AMD has taken what is there and just made it better. It is clear there was a focus on features that connect people together in the midst of today’s pandemic.
The ability to connect with your friend and play games using AMD Link and Link Game is pretty important. The ability to also stream to your own devices around the house is very important. The focus on this was clear, and it looks like AMD did a great job improving those things. By enabling a Windows App for laptops, and also having this available on iOS and Android really expands its use cases.
In addition, AMD made improvements to the installer options so you can install just the driver if you want, or a minimal setup. This is welcomed in the ever-increasing driver package install sizes. If you don’t like bloat, you don’t have to have it, you decide how much you want to install, and this is a behavior we hope continues.
The improved streaming and recording wizard and options are very powerful. We were impressed just how quickly you can start streaming whatever you want. It’s easy and fast. The recording options are plentiful. The Radeon Software really is a powerhouse at its recording and streaming abilities. Now that it supports AVI it’s ready for the future of codecs, granted you have a Radeon RX 6000 series card.
The addition of utilizing Ryzen CPU metrics into the software greatly expands its functionality as robust monitoring software. You can use this for more than just GPU monitoring now, it’s a full system monitor with logging ability. That really expands its capability. It’s shaping up to be a very powerful monitoring software for anything.
The overclock tuning is also easy to use. Having an easy one-button push for overclocking your GPU is welcomed for novice users who just want a little more performance but don’t know what to do when overclocking. Of course, all the manual controls are still there, and it supports a lot of them including fan curves and voltage control.
The Final Points
Put it all together and Radeon Software is one powerful piece of software. The only thing we’d like to see of course is big performance updates, but we have to remind everyone that those can come in regular driver updates. We hope AMD continues to focus on day-1 gaming support and performance, and the dedication to stability. Ultimately those things will make or break an end user’s experiences.
Download AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1.