Preview: AMD Pumps Up Radeon Software to 'Adrenalin 2020' With Brand New Tech

It's been a winning year for AMD in the twin worlds of CPUs and GPUs, and now the company is rounding out its December with its annual major update to its Radeon Software suite of graphics apps and drivers, in the form of另外软件肾上腺素2020Edition(Opens in a new window).

This year, the company focused on improving on and expanding features from the 2019 version, while adding a few unexpected updates that could change the gaming landscape for millions of gamers around the world running on low-power graphics cards.

We got an early tour and hands-on time with the software; here's what we saw.

Streamlined for Streamers

The first major change this year is to the interface of AMD Radeon Settings. It gets a back-to-front visual overhaul, including a one-click installation process and a new profile tool that lets you select among three pre-tuned customization-setting blocks when you boot for the first time: Gaming, eSports, or Standard.

Once you're in the main Radeon Settings hub, you'll see a number of widgets that do everything from launching games to broadcasting your game. The dashboard contains a brief overview of some of your top games, including your average frame rate, in frames per second (fps) in those titles, and how many hours you've played in sum. Also here is a widget that handles all of your streaming needs.

Speaking of which, the Radeon Software streaming tool has gotten a big update. It's now meant to act as a replacement for anyone who uses the popular streaming softwareOpen Broadcaster Software (OBS)(Opens in a new window)to connect with services such as YouTube and Twitch.

Auto-Overclock, and Blurring for Speed

On the hardcore esports-gaming side of things, Radeon Anti-Lag,first introduced at E3 this year, gets a small tweak, adding support for DirectX 9 (DX9) games on AMD video cards that preceded the "Navi"-based Radeon RX 5000 series GPUs. (Radeon Anti-Lag is AMD's answer to the problem of frame buffering, and can reduce the time it takes an action to display on screen by up to 15ms.)Also, the Tuning Control center now has an automatic setting that will give novice users the option to kick up card performance beyond stock settings without knowing how to overclock.

In my testing with a Radeon RX 5000-series card, I found that using this feature just about matched the performance I achieved with manual overclocking. There were certain situations, though, in which I was able to get about 10 percent higher clocks doing it on my own instead of using the automatic feature in Tuning Control.

AMD's been on a tear this year, but in one area it is actually following Nvidia: The company has added an Integer Scaling setting to Adrenalin. For those who haven't experimented with the feature on an Nvidia card, Integer Scaling uses some complicated math to "smooth out" the edges of 2D games, refining their resolution and overall improving the visual quality of older and newer games that use flat, pixelated artwork.

But where things have taken a more interesting and original turn are in new features like Radeon Boost. Supported by just a handful of titles for now (PUBG, Overwatch, and a few more), Radeon Boost tracks your mouse movements in-game to determine when you're moving the camera very quickly, and intelligently determines what parts of the image can be downscaled in resolution to increase your frames per second.

Think of it like this. In any movie that has a lot of VFX action, visual-effects artists often will add in motion blur to make models easier to animate and render. The thinking is, you won't perceive extra detail in those situations to start with. When you're creating a movie likeTransformers, for example, you can get away with blurring the animation and downscaling the render more often, since the action is hard to track in the first place. It's moving so quickly that the eye can't make out fine details, and this sort of "motion blur" shortcut is the same thing AMD is taking advantage of when it tracks your mouse in-game.

How does it work? Your mouse is acting as the de-facto "camera" in this situation. When the camera moves quickly, Radeon Boost can automatically downscale the resolution without it affecting the gameplay or your accuracy. It does this at three different levels, depending on the speed and velocity of your camera movement: 88 percent resolution, 66.67 percent, and 50 percent.

During our demo, we were shown a game of Overwatch running on an AMD APU-based laptop. Standing still in the game's training area at the lowest settings possible, the game was getting, on average, between 70fps and 80fps. But once the mouse was moved, the Boost feature would kick in, and at top mouse speed, the game could start running the same scene at up to 140fps with no discernible loss in visual quality.

I tested the feature for myself in a multiplayer match later on in our video card testbed, and found that, overall, my snap-shootingdidseem to land a bit quicker than usual. At those speeds, admittedly, it's a bit difficult for my older eyes to tell. (One thing's for sure, it won't make me any more competitive with the 14-year-olds out there.)

Another plus to Radeon Boost: Once we combined the Radeon Boost feature with AMD's Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS), it was almost impossible to see that any downsampling was happening in the first place. For now, this feature works only on a few select games, so I don't expect it to upend the business of gaming GPUs anytime soon. But it's still good to see AMD approaching problems like low frame rates in competitive shooters in interesting and innovative ways that don't negatively affect the overall experience.

RIS Gets Granular, Link Gets Broader

Another big add in Adrenalin 2020 is the inclusion of a new slider feature for RIS, which lets you adjust how intense the filter effect will be depending on how much you've downscaled the game you're playing. Also a big deal: RIS now supports games running on DX11.

To me, the best part aboutNvidia's Freestyle(Opens in a new window)and the open-project ReShade over RIS, up until this point, was the ability to use a sliding scale of sharpening intensity in both programs. Being able to acutely tune down the rendering scale of a game while turning up the sharpening software, notch by notch, is what makes the whole system work. Now that RIS has its own slider, and with the DX11 add, I would deem it the most flexible and widely applicable game-sharpening tool of the moment. (I'd also call it the most effective; more on that in a future story.)

The second big announcement was that AMD Link, the company's PC-to-device streaming service, will now work on any connection type rather than just when the two are both hooked up to the same local wireless network. (The latter limitation was the case with the introduction of the feature.) Now, users can create a link between their cell phone or tablet running on an LTE connection to their Radeon-card-equipped PC, or between the two when each is connected to a different wireless router, and still stream games wherever they are.

Previously, the service was mostly good for streaming your PC to a local smart TV. Now, if you already have a powerful PC at home, you can forgo services likeShadoworGeForce Nowif you want to play your PC library on any device you own.

2020 Is Now

Overall, this major overhaul of old features, and the addition of yet more, advances AMD's position in the GPU software market, an area where rival Nvidia had for years been piling on the value-adds. It makes it easier than ever for average users to get the most out of their AMD graphics cards.

The updated 2020 version of Adrenalin is now available fordownload via AMD's website(Opens in a new window).

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