AMD's Adrenalin 19.3.2 Drivers Expand DirectX 12, Vulkan Support

AMD released new Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 19.3.2 drivers to introduce DirectX 12 support on Windows 7, new Vulkan extensions, and support for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 with its graphics cards.

DirectX 12 support in Windows 7 might seem a little weird. Microsoft plans to cease work on the operating system in January 2020, and more than 800 million devices are running Windows 10, so why are these companies bringing DirectX 12 to Windows 7?

The reality is that many people are still using Windows 7 and will probably continue to do so after its support ends. AMD and Nvidia supporting DirectX 12 allow them to ingratiate themselves with all the Windows 7 diehards rather than alienating them. As for Microsoft, well, it all comes down to World of Warcraft.

Adrenalin Edition 19.3.2 also boasts support for eight Vulkan extensions that allow game developers to collect more debug information, manage memory, and leverage additional features. (More information about the extensions is available in the driver’s release notes.) Supporting the extensions will help AMD keep pace with the increasingly popular graphics API.

Aside from those behind-the-scene changes, the new drivers are supposed to improve the performance of The Division 2 and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm on AMD graphics cards. The company said users could expect a performance increase of up to 4 percent in Gathering Storm with this release.

AMD also said this driver release fixed a few issues, including one with fan curve management, and introduced some problems of its own. Most are minor, but “Mouse cursors may disappear or move out of the boundary of the top of a display on AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics” could be vexing.

You can install the driver by following these links: Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 19.3.2 Driver for Windows 10 64-bit; Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 19.3.2 Driver for Windows 7 64-bit.