The big highlight in AMD's "optional" Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.1 driver release is improved support for the Monster Hunter World: Iceborne expansion, though there are over two dozen other reasons why Radeon GPU owners should consider grabbing this release.
AMD's recent driver updates have focused heavily on stomping out bugs, and it says this latest driver package fixes 27 issues. Given that AMD recently overhauled its Adrenalin driver platform for 2020 and added some new features, it's not surprising to see so many bugs crawl out of the woodwork—it was a very big update.
Here's the complete list of issues fixed in the Adrenalin 20.1.1 release:
- The audible beeps at game startup from Radeon Chill, Radeon Boost, and Radeon Anti-Lag have been removed. These features now offer audible indicators only when activated or deactivated via hotkey.
- The Radeon ReLive on screen timer indicator during recordings has been disabled by default but can be enabled in Radeon Software settings.
- Controls for vertical sync may be hidden or disappear when Radeon Enhanced Sync is enabled.
- Radeon ReLive may experience freezing or pausing issues during recordings when a high resolution camera is connected and in use.
- CPU usage may sometimes remain high once Radeon Game Advisor has been invoked during a game.
- Some users may experience an error message 'Another instance is running' during download of a software update through the Radeon Software home screen.
- The DuplicateDesktop process may sometimes cause high CPU usage while a game is running.
- Radeon Software may close or may experience a crash upon resuming from sleep.
- The toast message detailing the hotkey to open Radeon Software’s Overlay may still show up in some games after Radeon Software Overlay has been disabled.
- Lost Ark may experience stuttering intermittently during gameplay.
- Using a custom stream key with Radeon ReLive may fail to stream your content.
- The ‘Stream’ button may remain active when in the process of choosing a region to stream even when a region has not been selected or chosen.
- Some Radeon R9 200, Radeon R9 300 and Radeon R9 Fury series graphics products may experience instability with a limited number of DirectX 9 or DirectX 11 games when using a high refresh rate 120Hz+ display. A workaround if you are experiencing this issue is to lower your displays refresh rate.
- Some mjpeg clips may experience a green tint on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products when using Windows Media Player or the Movies & TV application.
- MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries may experience a game crash and DXGI dialogue error when running the game using HDMI and Radeon FreeSync display configurations.
- Live streaming using the DouYu application with hardware acceleration enabled may cause video corruption on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products.
- Trials Rising may experience excessive fog/smoke in some areas of the game.
- Missing text or corruption may be experienced in the right eye when playing the VR game Boneworks.
- Fixed result overflows that can be experienced with Radeon RX 5700 series when using SETI@Home.
- The ‘Shop AMD Products’ button may open the AMD.com homepage instead of the proper shopping web link.
- The scrolling arrow options may intermittently fail to work during Radeon Software installation.
- Up and Down arrow keys don’t work when using the search bar in Radeon Software.
- Enabling HDR enabled displays in Windows may cause colors to become washed out.
- Radeon Software sidebar appears behind the Windows taskbar when the taskbar is set to the same side of your display.
- Playing Tom Clancy's: The Division 2 with HDR enabled and performing a task switch may cause display color corruption that persists even once the game is exited.
- Mixed Reality Portal may experience color corruption or distortion near the edge of viewing areas on some headsets.
- Resident Evil 2 may experience screen flashing when launching the game using DirectX 12 API.
That's quite the expansive list, with fixes for general problems such as freezing issues and high CPU usage, as well as specific bugs such as washed out colors when enabling HDR in Windows and even an overflow issue in the hunt for extraterrestrials via SETI@Home.
Though AMD's driver team managed to obliterate a whole bunch of bugs, there are still a handful of known issues. They include:
- The Radeon Software Overlay hotkey notification may sometimes be displayed during video playback in web browsers or launching some video player applications.
- Integer Scaling option is not showing up or available on some Windows 7 system configurations.
- Factory Reset install may keep previously configured Radeon Software game profiles. This can cause mismatch between global graphics settings and per profile settings.
- Text overflow in some UI boxes or toast messages may be experienced in some language localizations.
- Radeon Software may open with an inconsistent size or may not keep its previously set size when opened.
- Some Vulkan gaming applications may crash when performing a task switch with Radeon Image Sharpening enabled.
- Integer Scaling may cause some video content to show flicker when the display resolution is set to less than native resolution.
The catch with new driver releases is they can sometimes cause problems that are not yet known. As such, some choose to wait a few days after a driver drops to see if there are any complaints.
We have not tested the 20.1.1 driver release, though if you are experiencing one or more of the fixed issues outlined above, a case could be made for throwing caution to the wind and updating.
You can update to the 20.1.1 release through the Adrenalin software, or download the driver here to install it manually. Check out our guide on how to update drivers for tips on best practices.
