AMD is limiting Raven Ridge APU graphics updates to four per year

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Raven Ridge is on a quarterly update schedule.

AMD has been kicking out Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition driver releases for its Radeon GPUs at a fairly consistent clip, but the same can't be said about its Raven Ridge processors with integrated Vega graphics (essentially APUs, or accelerated processing units, even though AMD doesn't really use that nomenclature anymore). In stark contrast, Raven Ridge APUs have seen just a single driver update since launching February—it came last month. So what's the deal?

A member of OverclockerUK's forum asked that very question and was told by an AMD employee that APU drivers are only released every three months. Here's how the exchange went:

RavenXXX2: How come there is no Raven Ridge support with the last two [Adrenalin] drivers? I though they were now unified releases.

AMDMatt: APU drivers are updated every 3 months as WHQL releases only.

While not the end of the world, it's a little disappointing that Raven Ridge APUs will only see up to four WHQL driver releases per year. They're good options for anyone looking to build a budget gaming PC, as we noted in our review of the Ryzen 5 2400G. And in our opinion, the Ryzen 3 2200G is the best budget processor for gaming at the moment—it's fast enough to game at 720p and runs on the same platform as Ryzen 7.

Nevertheless, AMDMatt's comment suggests that AMD is not currently planning to integrate Raven Ridge updates into its unified Radeon Software driver package, or devote enough resources to put it on the same release schedule.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).