AMD is pushing out its Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.6.1 driver release, which is listed as "optional" on the company's driver page. The primary benefit for gamers is that it boosts performance in Warhammer: Vermintide 2 with up to a double-digit percentage gain, according to the release notes (PDF).
Radeon RX 580 graphic card owners stand to see up to 10 percent faster performance in Warhammer: Vermintide 2 after installing the 18.6.1 driver release, compared to the previous 18.5.2 driver package, when running the game at 2560x1440. In addition, AMD says Radeon RX Vega 56 owners will see nearly the same gain, with a 9 percent bump in performance at the same resolution.
It's not clear if other Polaris and Vega cards will see better framerates as well. We suspect they will, with AMD cherry picking the two biggest beneficiaries for its release notes.
Outside of higher framerates in Warhammer: Vermintide 2, the 18.6.1 driver release also contains a handful of bug fixes, including a couple of multi-GPU issues. Here they are:
- Subnautica may experience a black screen on launch or during gameplay.
- Sea of Thieves may experience a crash or hang while playing in the Cannon Cove area.
- Desktop may not be visible or may appear out of the display area when using 8K resolution on Radeon Pro Duo.
- World of Tanks may experience square corruption on some ground textures in multi GPU system configurations.
- Middle Earth: Shadow of War may experience flickering in some game menus or when configuring displays when using multi GPU system configurations.
- World of Warcraft may experience flickering on the mini map in multi GPU system configurations.
An equal number of known issues remain, and will have to wait for a future driver release to be resolved. They include:
- Some games may experience minor stuttering during gameplay when the Radeon ReLive Instant Replay feature is enabled and FRTC is also enabled.
- Radeon Overlay may not show all available features when some games are run in borderless fullscreen mode.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may experience stuttering during gameplay.
- Corruption may be experienced with OGL or Vulkan API applications on some Hybrid Graphics system configurations.
- Sea of Thieves may experience corruption on ship sails or ropes while standing on a boat.
- Radeon Chill may experience lower than expected minimum frame rates if a game is left idle with Radeon Chill enabled for extended periods of time.
You can install the new driver release through the Radeon Software GUI, or fetch them manually by following this link.
