Latest AMD Radeon driver is tuned for Horizon Zero Dawn, Grounded, and Hyper Scape

AMD has released a new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver for Radeon GPU owners, and with it comes a handful of game optimizations. The biggest claim in the release notes is that Radeon RX 5700 XT owner stand to see up to a nine percent bump in frame rates when playing Grounded on the Epic preset.

That is one of three games the new 20.8.1 driver is optimized for. The other two include Hyper Scape and Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition, though AMD did not provide any specific performance claims for those titles.

Outside of some performance tweaks, the latest driver fixes a few issues as well. They include:

• With Radeon FreeSync enabled, task switching to another display or application may intermittently cause the desktop refresh rate to be locked to an arbitrary interval causing stuttering.
• Streaming and recording features are not working or are failing to enable on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products in Windows 7 system configurations.
• Radeon Software may experience an application crash or hang when waking from sleep after joining the AMD User Experience program.
• Doom Eternal may experience a very dark or dim screen when changing V-Sync settings in game with HDR enabled.
• Hot plugging a powered off HDMI display and then powering on the display, may intermittently cause a system crash or hang.
• Enabling Instant Replay may rarely cause a system hang or TDR on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics products.
• Compatibility Advisor may show an 'Unable to get requirements' error message when opened. Users will need to perform a factory reset of settings in Radeon Software for this fix to take effect.

The list of known issues is down to under a dozen, with fewer mentions of black screen problems than some of AMD's prior driver releases. There are just two this time around. One of them affects the Enhanced Sync feature, which can cause a black screen to occur in some games, and the other is just a general message from AMD on the matter.

"AMD will continue to monitor and investigate any new reports of black screen or system hang issues during extended periods of gameplay closely. Users are encouraged to use the new Bug Reporting tool for any issues they may encounter," AMD says.

The bug report tool is a relatively recent addition to the Radeon Software utility. Or more precisely, the integrated bug report tool. The ability to report bugs has always been there, but instead of whisking users to AMD's website, the integrated tool makes it quicker and easier to report bugs, from within the software itself.

You can download the latest GPU driver from within the software as well, or install it manually by grabbing it from AMD's website.