Image: Brad Chacos / IDG
Going by tech headlines alone, one might be forgiven for thinking older graphics cards drop off the planet once the new hardware hits shelves. But GPU makers tend to support several generations of cards at once with their monthly driver updates, improving performance across the board and adding fixes for specific new games. That’s why owners of AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 cards — the cream of the crop until the RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX series dropped late last year — felt miffed that they went two months without an update.
That short drought appears to be over, as AMD has released a new unified Adrenaline driver for RX 5000, 6000, and 7000 cards, plus desktop cards as old as the RX 400 and laptop GPUs going back to the Radeon 600. Software version 23.2.1 is available for direct download and automatic download through Adrenalin now.
In addition to game fixes for popular titles like the Dead Space remake, Forspoken, Spider-Man, and a handful of others, the package includes a new version of AMD Link and “support for newly introduced streaming capabilities including pre-filter toggle, pre-analysis feature and CAML technology” on the RX 6000 series, specifically. The new drivers also fix a handful of bigs like failing to launch on Windows 11 22H2, scrolling issues with Steam, and a handful of other specific game bugs.
A few users are reporting PC boot problems after installing the latest Adrenaline driver, but at this point it’s hard to tell if it’s a truly widespread issue. It might be a good idea to make a PC restore point just to cover your bases.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer
Michael is a former graphic designer who’s been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.
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