With so many games on the horizon, you can expect a frantic pace of new GPU driver releases from AMD and Nvidia. Today it was AMD that released a new Crimson ReLive 17.11.1 driver package for Radeon graphics card owners, with an emphasis on Call of Duty: WWII performance.
According to the release notes, Radeon RX Vega 64 owners should see up to a 5 percent bump in performance when running the game at 2560x1440, compared to the previous ReLive 17.10.3 release. AMD didn't produce any other stats, though we imagine the optimizations yield minor gains at other resolutions, and for other Radeon graphics cards.
The new driver release also adds support for running the Radeon RX Vega 56 line in external GPU enclosures, using AMD's XConnect technology. These types of enclosures are designed to deliver desktop-grade gaming performance in laptops, and are especially intriguing for ultrabooks with comparatively weak integrated graphics. They connect over Thunderbolt 3. There is some loss of performance due to overhead, but it still beats running off an IGP.
AMD fixed some issues with its 17.11.1 driver release, too. They include:
- Radeon Software may intermittently cause an application crash on limited numbers of DirectX11 or OpenGL applications on their first run.
- Some gaming or productivity applications may experience a random hang or application crash when performing task switching.
- Radeon WattMan reset and restore factory default options may not reset graphics or memory clocks.
- Oculus Dash may experience a random application hang.
- Bezel compensation in mixed mode Eyefinity cannot be applied.
- Radeon Settings may experience overlapping text or corruption in the Multi GPU profiles page.
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands may experience minor corruption with Anisotropic Filtering (AF) enabled.
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War may experience ghosting or distortion in gameplay on Multi GPU enabled system configurations.
- AMD XConnect Technology products may not be detected/enabled on reconnection if previously disconnected during system sleep.
- A limited number of system devices such as printers may be removed during Radeon Software uninstallation.
If going for a manual install, you can grab the new driver package here.