New AMD driver is supposed to boost Rage 2 performance by up to 16%

Right on cue, AMD has begun pushing out a new Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.5.1 driver release that is optimized for Rage 2, the single-player shooter that launched today.

If you happen to own a Radeon VII graphics card, AMD claims you will see up to a 16 percent performance gain in Rage 2, compared to the 19.4.3 driver release. That's based on running the game at 4K at high settings.

AMD did not share any other performance data, so it's not clear what Radeon RX Vega 64/56 and Polaris-based graphics card owners can expect.

Beyond Rage 2, AMD says its latest driver supports the upcoming May 2019 update for Windows 10. And for developers, AMD added instruction tracing for its Radeon GPU Profiler 1.5.x tool. Here's more on the tool, which AMD introduced in 2017:

The latest driver release also fixes over a dozen issues (or exactly a baker's dozen). The include:

  • Performance metrics overlay may experience intermittent flicker when playing back protected content with this feature enabled.
  • Doom may experience an application hang during launch on AMD XConnect Technology system configurations.
  • Radeon Software installation may fail or get stuck at 33 percent when installing on AMD Radeon HD 7970 system configurations.
  • Some Radeon RX 400 and Radeon RX 500 series graphics products may experience a system hang when hot plugging 8K displays.
  • AMD Radeon VII may fail to apply Radeon Settings video profiles to video playback.
  • HTC Vive devices may experience connection or detection issues by the OS or SteamVR.
  • System instability may be experienced on Asus TUF Gaming FX505 laptop when a wireless display is connected.
  • Stuttering or frame drop may be experienced when playing back DivX interlaced content in the Windows Movies & TV application.
  • Radeon RX Vega series graphics products may experience higher than expected memory clocks at idle or desktop with multi-display system configurations.
  • Some system configurations may not be able to set 10-Bit color in Radeon Settings when the connected display is set to 4K 60hz.
  • Enhanced Sync may fail to enable on Radeon FreeSync enabled displays in DirectX 9 API games on game first launch.
  • AMD Link may experience intermittent authentication issues. An update of the AMD Link application is also required.
  • Some games may experience texture flickering or corruption on Radeon RX Vega series graphics products when using the Vulkan API.

AMD continues to work out a few kinks between its mobile GPUs and Asus's TUF Gaming FX505 laptop. You'll noticed in the list above that it resolved one of the issues. However, among the smaller list of known issues, AMD notes that FX505 owners may still experience discrete GPU connection issues with devices disappearing from the device manager when the laptop is idle.

Other known issues include:

  • Radeon ReLive streaming and uploading of videos and other content to Facebook™ is currently unavailable.
  • World War Z may experience an application hang after extended periods of play.
  • AMD Radeon VII may experience screen flicker in multi display setups on desktop or while applications are running.
  • Performance metrics overlay and Radeon WattMan gauges may experience inaccurate fluctuating readings on AMD Radeon VII.
  • HDR Video may freeze or have corruption during playback when using Movies and TV Application with some Ryzen APUs.

Follow this link to download the 19.5.1 driver package.

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).