AMD Radeon Software is refined and supports Ryzen monitoring

At the end of 2019, AMD introduced a recast and refreshed version of its graphics driver Radeon Software. The menu included a completely new user interface with built-in functionality for game streaming to mobile devices, integrated optimization and performance measurement of games as well as new tools for overclocking. Now AMD is releasing the next major revision of Radeon Software, where the focus is on minor fixes and improvements rather than a complete renovation of the software.

To begin with, the user gets more control over what is installed together with the new version of Radeon Software. In the basic version, the company’s graphics software is quite function-heavy with most modules for, among other things, streaming and built-in game profiles. These functions can now be scaled down using “minimal install”, which only installs a simpler control panel together with the graphics driver. Anyone who wishes can also deselect the control panel completely and only install the graphics driver.

Furthermore, the company integrates a tool to report bugs and crashes related to the software, with the hope of being able to fix these more quickly for future versions. In addition, the new function “AMD Crash Defender” can be seen, which should detect system errors caused by the graphics software and prevent critical crashes that result in, for example, blue screens and reboots.

The section for monitoring the graphics card’s temperatures and clock frequencies has been improved and made clearer in the latest version of the software. On top of this, it is now possible to read and log information from the Ryzen family’s processors directly in Radeon Software, which means that separate software is no longer required for that purpose.

The new graphics card driver introduces a new color blind accessibility feature. This type of functionality is sometimes built directly into the game, but in cases where it does not, it is now possible to perform a global color correction for different types of color blindness directly in the Radeon Software control panel. According to AMD, this color correction takes place completely without affecting performance.

One of the innovations with the Radeon RX 6000 series was hardware support for decoding the AV1 video standard, which is a license-free alternative to the H265 / HEVC that is predicted to become an industry standard in the future. With the new version of Radeon Software, DRM support for AV1 video is implemented via Microsoft’s Playready certification, which means that protected video content can be played when this is made available.

Game streaming technology AMD Link has previously been available for mobile phones as well as Android TV and Apple TV. Now this step is taking over to Windows-based computers, where the user can install the Link app on, for example, their laptop and stream games from their Radeon-equipped computer. It is also possible to stream media content such as video files or even the entire desktop environment.

Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 is available today and can be downloaded via AMD’s website.