AMD's New Driver Boosts Graphics on Lower-End GPUs

AMD released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.2 driver on Thursday. The driver's primary attraction is the addition of Radeon Image Sharpening for Radeon RX 590, Radeon RX 580, Radeon RX 570, Radeon RX 480 and Radeon RX 470 desktop graphics cards. This new driver is said to improve performance in Borderlands 3 by up to 16%, too, just in time for the action-packed shooter's release today.

So what is Radeon Image Sharpening? AMD described the feature on its website as "an intelligent contrast-adaptive sharpening algorithm that produces visuals that look crisp and detailed, with virtually no performance impact," which means it should improve graphics on lower-end graphics cards. That explains why the company's introducing the feature on a graphics architecture that debuted over two years ago.

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AMD said the Adrenalin 2019 19.9.2 driver also fixed issues with V-Sync locking the framerate to 30 frames per second (fps) on displays with a 75 Hz refresh rate, (where it should be 75 fps), using an RX 5700 graphics card, audio recorded via Radeon ReLive and more.

The driver actually caused more issues than it fixed, however, at least according to the full release notes. Here are the problems AMD was aware of when it released the Adrenalin 2019 19.9.2 driver:

• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice may exhibit texture corruption during later parts of the game.
• Toggling HDR may cause system instability during gaming when Radeon ReLive is enabled.
• Discord may experience an application hang on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products when [hardware] acceleration is enabled.
• Display artifacts may be experienced on some 75Hz display configurations on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics system configurations.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 may experience stutter on some system configurations.
• Open Broadcasting Software may experience frame drops or stutter when using AMF encoding on some system configurations.
• HDMI overscan and underscan options may be missing from Radeon Settings on AMD Radeon VII system configurations when the primary display is set to 60Hz.
• Stutter may be experienced when Radeon FreeSync is enabled on 240Hz refresh displays with Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products.
• AMD Radeon VII may experience elevated memory clocks at idle or on desktop.

If those problems don't discourage you from installing the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.2 driver, you can download it now from AMD's website. There are as always two versions available: one for Windows 10 and one for Windows 7. If the Borderlands 3 performance improvement is the main draw, just remember that gains will vary from system to system, so a 16% bump isn't guaranteed.