AMD today launched a new update of its Radeon Software Adrenalin graphics drivers, which reach version 21.6.2 beta, and it is a very interesting update because it comes with support for Realtime Ray Tracing for Doom Eternal, the first game to implement Vulkan RT. The drivers also add support for a handful of new Vulkan API extensions and fix some bugs, so it is recommended to install this update to almost all users and especially those who want to enjoy Ray Tracing in Doom Eternal.
As always, from time to time AMD updates its drivers again to add improvements and correct errors from previous versions, although it is true that the list of known errors in the current version is much larger than that of fixed errors. In any case, the most interesting thing is, of course, the inclusion of Ray Tracing support in Doom Eternal through the Vulkan API, something that users of next-generation AMD graphics cards will surely appreciate.
Doom Eternal receives Ray Tracing, but what else is there?
Along with the addition of Ray Tracing support in Doom Eternal (which AMD has called “Doom Eternal next-gen update”), the necessary components are added for the Vulkan graphics API to support this real-time ray tracing technology. Similarly, the following extensions are added to the Vulkan graphical API:
- VK_EXT_custom_border_color – This extension allows applications to specify a custom border color for when using the VK_SAMPLER_ADDRESS_MODE_CLAMP_TO_BORDER sample address mode.
- VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_uniform_control_flow – This other extension exposes the availability of the SPV_KHR_subgroup_uniform_control_flow SPIR-V extension for the use of shader modules. The SPIR-V extension offers better guarantees that divergent subgroups will converge again.
- VK_EXT_color_write_enable – This extension allows applications to selectively enable and disable writes to output color attachments through the dynamic state pipeline. This has the potential to reduce the number of lanes to increase efficiency.
As for the bugs fixed in this version of the AMD graphics drivers, we only found these three:
- When playing MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries under DirectX 11, there were visual artifact effects on some AMD graphics such as the Radeon RX 6000 series.
- Error 184 was sometimes received after running the GPU auto-detect utility and installing AMD updates on Windows 7 systems.
- Adobe Substance 3D Painter would sometimes freeze when running with Radeon RX 6900 graphics.
List of known bugs
Below you can find the list of known bugs in this version of AMD graphics software:
- Some users may experience high memory usage from the AMD user experience program. A temporary solution is to exclude yourself from it.
- Resident Evil Village may experience intermittent crashes or TDR when using Radeon VII GPUs in the first mission of the game.
- Enhanced Sync may cause a black screen when enabled in some games and system settings. Disabling it is a temporary solution.
- Connecting two displays with large resolution / refresh rate differences can cause flickering with Radeon RX Vega graphics.
- You may receive an Oculus service error on Radeon RX 6000 and RX 5000 graphics that prevents Oculus Link from running.
- Performance metrics and logging functions can intermittently report extremely high or incorrect memory clock values.
- If Ryzen Master is not detected after installation, a system reboot may be required.
- A driver mismatch error may appear when two versions of the Radeon software are installed on the system.
- AMD is investigating an issue that may have a small impact on battery life on Ryzen 5000-equipped laptops.
- You may receive a blue screen or the screen may go black after upgrading to this version of the software.
- AMD is investigating a D3 code that can be seen on some motherboards when this version of the software is installed.
- Lower than expected performance may be observed on some systems with Athlon CPUs.
As always, to download this version of the AMD drivers you can do it directly with the update system of its software or by downloading it manually from its website.
