Sea Of Thieves Gets A Big Performance Boost In New AMD Radeon 18.2.3 Drivers

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅23.02.2018 00:14:42



Not all that long ago AMD were being berated for the glacial pace of their driver updates, but in recent years the software team have been impressively on their game with timely improvements and a regular roll-out of new features. Today we once again see evidence of the sea-change with the release of Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.3, intended to optimise for Microsoft's still upcoming Sea of Thieves and the recently released Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age.

With a release date of March 20th you might be forgiven for thinking that issuing improvements for Sea of Thieves was a little premature. That could be the case for some titles, but this particular title is slated to be one of Microsoft's biggest launches in 2018, and so absolutely needs hardware vendors to have all their ducks in a row from day one. Furthermore, pre-launch beta periods are still expected and will no-doubt receive plenty of streamer attention.

RSAE offers up to 39% faster performance in Sea of Thieves, depending on system configuration and in-game settings, with improvements most substantial towards the mid-tier (RX 580) than the premium end of the market. That sort of a margin is huge, and in terms of AMD's raw numbers represents going from ~50fps to over 70. Nice job guys.

Similarly performance improvements of up to 20% are on the cards in FFXII: The Zodiac Age, a title which was recently re-released on Steam and in need of some driver-based TLC. The game should run considerably smoother on recent AMD hardware now.

RSAE 18.2.3 is also the optimal driver for Brass Tactics, a new VR RTS title by Hidden Path Entertainment. Given the sensitive role frame rates have on VR experience, any improvements are more than welcome.

Alongside the performance improvements the latest drivers incorporate bug fixes to Radeon FreeSync, Radeon Overlay, and one particular issue in Fortnite related to incorrectly rendered fog and lightning. It also newly highlights a number of known issues now in their firing line for a future update.

Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition can be downloaded here, and is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and 10. GPUs utilising GCN1.0 architecture or newer (HD7000-series) are supported.

Release Notes

Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.3 Highlights

Support For

Sea of Thieves™

- Up to 29% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.3 on the Radeon™ RX Vega 64 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.2 at 3840x2160. (RS-215)
- Up to 39% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.3 on the Radeon™ RX 580 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.2 at 1920x1080. (RS-216)

Brass Tactics™

Final Fantasy® XII The Zodiac Age

- Up to 13% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.3 on the Radeon™ RX Vega 56 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.2 at 2560x1440. (RS-212)
- Up to 20% faster performance using Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.3 on the Radeon™ RX 580 (8GB) graphics card than with Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.2.2 at 2560x1440p. (RS-213)

Fixed Issues

- Radeon FreeSync may intermittently incorrectly engage during Chrome video playback resulting in playback flicker.
- Radeon FreeSync may rapidly change between min and max range when enabled causing stutter in fullscreen games on multi display system configurations.
- Flickering may be observed on the performance metrics overlay when Enhanced Sync is enabled on some Radeon FreeSync connected displays.
- Radeon Overlay may exhibit minor flickering when enabled while playing games using the Vulkan™ API.
- Fortnite™ may experience lighting or fog corruption on some graphics quality presets.
- Radeon ReLive instant replay clips may intermittently contain small amounts of audio distortion.
- Middle-earth™: Shadow of War™ may experience an application crash when launched as a Universal Windows® Application.
- For Honor™ may experience an intermittent application crash on launch.

Known Issues

- A random system hang may be experienced after extended periods of use on system configurations using 12 GPU's for compute workloads.
- Water textures may appear to be missing in World of Final Fantasy™.
- Destiny 2™ may experience an application hang in the mission "Heist" on some Radeon GCN1.0 products.
- Radeon Overlay may intermittently fail to enable when toggled in some games.
- Radeon Chill hotkey may fail to reset when Radeon Settings is restored to defaults.
- FFmpeg application may experience corrupted output for H264 video streams.

Footnotes

- Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of February 21st, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX Vega 56, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With Ultra settings on Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age , at 2560x1440, the Radeon RX Vega 56 scored 57.6 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.3 whereas the Radeon RX Vega 56 scored 51 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.2. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.2.3 has 13% faster performance in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. -RS-212

- Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of February 21st, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX 580, on a test system comprising of Intel i7 7700X CPU (4.2 GHz), 16GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With Ultra settings on Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age , at 2560x1440, the Radeon RX 580 scored 43.5 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.3 whereas the Radeon RX 580 scored 36.1 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.2. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.2.3 has 20% faster performance in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. -RS-213

- Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of February 22nd, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX Vega 64, on a test system comprising of Intel i9 7900X CPU (3.3GHz), 32GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With Ultra settings on Sea of Thieves at 3840x2160, the Radeon RX Vega 64 scored 51.767 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.3 whereas the Radeon RX Vega 64 scored 40.174 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.2. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.2.3 has 29% faster performance in Sea of Thieves. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. -RS-215

- Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of February 22nd, 2018 on the 8GB Radeon RX 580, on a test system comprising of Ryzen 1700 CPU (3.4GHz), 32GB DDR4-3000 Mhz system memory, and Windows 10 x64. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. With Ultra settings on Sea of Thieves at 1920x1080, the Radeon RX 580 scored 70.55 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.3 whereas the Radeon RX 580 scored 50.9 FPS with Radeon Software 18.2.2. Comparing FPS between software versions, Radeon Software 18.2.3 has 39% faster performance in Sea of Thieves. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. -RS-216




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