Why it matters to you
AMD says the new driver for Radeon graphics cards will boost the performance of Mass Effect: Andromeda by up to 12 percent.
The latest driver for AMD’s Radeon-branded graphics cards is out, bringing the version number up to 17.3.2. It’s optimized for Mass Effect: Andromeda that is slated to arrive on Tuesday. AMD says customers will see up to 12 percent in performance gains on the Radeon RX 480 card than if the previous v17.3.1 driver is installed. The driver also provides an optimized Tessellation Profile for the upcoming game as well.
As for the resolved issues provided by this new driver, it only addresses two PC games:
The Division:
Corrupted textures appeared on some surfaces when the game relied on DirectX 12.
For Honor:
In a system with four Radeon GPUs, task switching or game menus presented flickering textures or a black screen.
That is it for fixes, which isn’t surprising given that AMD released v17.3.1 a week ago. As for the outstanding issues that still need to be addressed, there are seven specifically tied to PC games spanning Ghost Recon Wildlands, Battlefield 1, Sniper Elite 4, Shadow Warrior 2, and a few more. There are also three non-game-related issues including a problem with Radeon Settings, AMD CrossFire, and running Borderless Fullscreen with AMD FreeSync enabled.
Here are the eight game-specific problems to look out for:
Ghost Recon Wildlands:
The game may fail to launch on systems with three or four Radeon GPUs installed.
Ghost Recon Wildlands:
Players using multiple Radeon GPUs in one system may see flickering when changing the graphics settings or performing a task switch.
Battlefield 1:
If the game has an enabled profile in the Radeon Settings Game Manager, it may not launch using Origin or Radeon Settings.
Sniper Elite 4:
The game may not function with AMD FreeSync enabled.
Sniper Elite 4:
Players may see image cropping with supersampling enabled.
Shadow Warrior 2:
A missing application profile in Radeon Settings may prevent the game from using multiple Radeon GPUs at launch.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
and World of Warcraft:
Flickering or performance issues may be experienced in these games the first time they are launched with AMD FreeSync enabled.
That all said, AMD is still working on specific issues related to its new Radeon ReLive feature. This is AMD’s tool for capturing, streaming, and sharing gameplay footage that made its first appearance in Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 16.12.1 in December. That was slightly over three months ago, so it’s understandable that AMD still has bugs to iron out given the nearly infinite number of hardware configurations it needs to support.
More: AMD presses its advantage, will release affordable Ryzen 5 processors April 11
A good chunk of AMD’s ReLive to-do list still includes a conflict with Xbox DVR, a failure to install on the company’s APU chips, problems when hot unplugging a second display, game hangs when Vulkan is in use, the inability to notify the user of low disk space, and more. AMD even notes that recordings may be corrupt when capturing Microsoft Office applications.
To grab the new driver, choose your operating system below:
Windows 10:
64-bit
32-bit
Windows 8.1:
64-bit
N/A
Windows 7:
64-bit
32-bit